Forums suck - Take 2

I see a lot of comments about how difficult is to use this website compared to the old groups website and how a forum is easier, etc. What a load of BS. A blog and a forum are not that different, but the blog is more flexible and useful. Let's break it down.

A website forum is an area where several sections divide the topics to be discussed. So ideally you would only discuss a specific topic in a particular forum. But in reality this rarely happens. Seems like most people always post where they feel like posting, or if they don't know, they will just pick the best forum based on the names. The topic of the forum is seldom respected and this annoys those that really care about keeping things sane. The consistent abuse of off-topic posts soon degrades the forum into a semi-live chat that serves very little to the intended purpose.

So if a forum is supposed to structure discussions by topic, but most people ignore the topics anyway, then why is the forum useful? It isn't, that's why blogs were invented.

A blog removes the rigid structure of the forum and concentrates on what matters: the content; your post. The main purpose of a blog is to give information, structure is optional but allowed. In a blog you don't tie your post to a topic, you tie the topic(s) to your post. This is known as tagging.

The best way to describe tagging is a sticky note. Imagine if I were to print this post on paper. The title would show and below it this text. And then imagine that when I gave you that printout it has three stickies on it that said "blogging", "musings", "forums suck". When you read those, even though you haven't read my printout, you would infer possible topic of the doc. Sure, I could had put "duck", "nuns", and "stripper pole" instead to mess you up but it really doesn't matter because you got the whole printout.

On this website we got two level of tags: collection and shared. The collection is just a list of static tags, and you pick one to which your blog post most likely belongs. In forum-speak this is like a "container", where many topics are collected. It's mostly to keep some sanity and help with searches. The other type of tag are the shared tags - this is where blogging shines. Shared tags are keywords that describe your post. They can be anything, they are yours. But once created, anyone and everyone in the whole website can use them in their posts. For example, if you were to write a rebuttal to this post (ie., "Are you a forum noob?"), you could use "musings" as one of your post's tags. Then when someone clicked on "musings" it would show both our posts and any other posts that used it. Further, you can tie images and news posts to that tag too. The keyword "musings" could take a life of its own.

Blogs do have some responsibility, their flexibility is not without costs. The first issue that most people realize is that blogs puts the spotlight on YOU. If your blog post sucks because you went off-topic or it's about some random idiotic subject, people won't click on it or vote it down, sending you with it down the tubes. Next time you post, nobody will know. Maybe your mom will know, maybe. The other concern is that on this website, blog posts cost credits. Yes ladies and gentlemen, you must produce something of value to the community in order to earn the right to express yourself. Bummer. Our website has a credit system in place that adds and subtracts credits from your account for various actions you do on the website.

But that will be the topic of my next blog...