Communication levels

I wonder what level of communication is possible with the different forms of communicating we use today. I am not concerned with speaking face to face or over the phone, but I wonder more about written communication and the potential dialog level that one can expect.
□ E-mail
□ Bulletin board with a rather open discussion group.
□ Structure on-line course
□ Chat room

CHAT ROOM (rating 2) I would place the chat room at the bottom. On a scale from (1) the lowest, to (10) the highest, a chat room would only rate a 1 in my estimation, but I’ll give it a two because I know there are some people who do carry on extended, in depth, and relevant communication in these rooms.

Bulletin board with a rather open discussion group (rating 4) I place the on-line bulletin board next, and I will give it a 4. It is a low rating and I know the potential for very in-depth discussions exist but I think “open” is what drops this mode of discussion. People can come and go as they please and they owe nothing to the board. Off post comments can be made and credentials cannot be verified.

E-MAIl (rating 5) I’m not sure what to do with e-mail. I’ll give it a five because theoretically you will come to know a person more intimately if you are e-mailing, and it holds all the potential of the bulletin board. One draw back is that there is no easy way to sift back through piles of old e-mails except to sift through them. Maybe there’s more with them that I have just never learned. I suppose e-mailing back and forth files, word documents for example, doing the corrections and comments might be helpful. I guess I could have given e-mail a 6 or 7.

Blog (rating 4) Here I really am at a loss. Because few, if any, will ever read this, its pointless except for my own thinking through of things. I suppose it would be possible for two people to agree to work on a project in a web blog and it would be like a private bulletin board and so I guess I should give it at least a 4.

ON-LINE CLASSROOM (rating 7) Receives my highest award. It's certainly not a ten but I think it holds the most promise of achieving quality exchange of ideas since you can incorporate all of the above ways of communicating plus exercise control with regard to the people, discussions, and goals of the communication.

I’ll have to do a little searching on this topic now and try to find some one else who has contemplated this question.