I'm the moderator of The DILFED Forum, a Yahoo Group which focuses on federalism and language policy issues in the Philippines. Due to a recent outbursts of messages and exchanges for the last few days, I suggested that we convert into a "real" forum (as in SMF). Unfortunately the call went unheeded. Not that I feel bad about that; if they had agreed it would have been my responsibility to find a suitable host, and possibly that would include payments for any extra functionality (esp. MySQL, which all forum software worth looking at seems to require).
Also, even if I have my own site, and 110mb.com (my host) had graciously provided me free MySQL (in exchange for 350 useful posts at their forum), I don't think it would be wise to have the forum placed under my domain name (say, http://islesv.net/dilfed). That would mean too that I would have to buy the domain name dilfed.org (which I am planning to, any way).
So, for the time being, The DILFED Forum will remain as a Yahoo Group. Meanwhile, I'm listing some pros and cons of forum software such as SMF vs Yahoo Groups:
Forum software such as SMF allows one to create a profile. Although Yahoo allows the user to do likewise, this profile is not automatically shown to the members of the forum who are looking at a post (and it works for the entire Yahoo system, not just the forum). The threading mechanism in a forum is definitely way better than that of Yahoo Group. Also, forum software tracks post count and amount of time spent online, two very important things for moderator to know who are really into the game and who are just lurking. On the other hand, messages to a Yahoo group are sent as emails to those who opt to, and forum software AFAIK cannot be configured to send the entire message to a specific address once it's posted; the only thing that can be done is to send an email informing the member that a new message had been posted. While forcing the user to go to the website is helpful from the perspective of monetizing the site, it can also be taken negatively to those who are used to Yahoo Groups. (I will state right now that if I can find a way for SMF to automatically send emails and daily digests to members, I would be fully convinced to the forum side.)
As I've stated above, The DILFED Forum will remain, well, as a Yahoo Group. The reasons are not the advantage of Yahoo Groups over forum software, but rather for technical limitations at the moment.
Related article: Forum software vs Yahoo Groups @ breezesys.com
