Thinking about Discussion Media

[benlehman]

I'm thinking about my website, and if I want to have a separate These Are Our Games discussion forum. I thought it would be neat to do some sort of blog-forum hybrid: basically a forum where the first posts are encouraged to be article-length and -depth, displayed in a blog format (so less articles per page, you read the whole article and then click through for comments.) But that might not be ideal for "quick hits" sort of questions that you get in a dedicated company forum, like "Has anyone translated the key phrases from Polaris into Swedish?" or what have you. So maybe the blorum format would be inappropriate, and I should just go for a regular forum (thinking about doing a PHPBB instead of vanilla, just to have separate forum spaces, and combining spaces in interesting ways: Polaris + Fantasy lit discussion. Bliss Stage + anime/manga discussion. Drifter's Escape + politics discussion. Stuff like that.)

Thoughts?

Comments

[tigerbunny-db.livejournal.com]

I think that the blog-like format probably suits the informational purpose of the site better, but ONLY if comments are threaded and there's solid tagging.

Otherwise, you're probably best off with a conventional forum structure.

You want to watch out for traffic dilution, too - do you want people to look to this as the main place to talk about your games (in which case you will see traffic that's only concerned with those games), or do you want to cross-pollinate with similar games and non-RPG content (in which case you might be better served by a steady presence on a broader-based forum than by a dedicated forum).

[opticalbinary.livejournal.com]

You can always have a section for "Quick Questions," too.