mendax.org

When I brought up the trend of World of Warcraft (WoW) bloggers adding fora to their sites, I commented on the redundancy this created. I’m revisiting this topic because BRK’s commenters didn’t take too kindly to the implication that I was bashing their Hunter-leader, despite the fact that I clearly stated that BRK’s fora managed to establish a niche:

BRK’s forum has shown initial success, and it’s served to bring Hunter bloggers together, so let’s be content with that and move forward.

Move forward from what? The trend itself. While BRK’s fora have managed to get a good number of subscribers, and some fair discussion on the topics of WoW huntering, other WoW bloggers have not managed to do same. That’s pretty much what I expected, since this has happened countless times in Internet history before. While some of these reasons were mentioned in my earlier post, let’s take a deeper look into why.

Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Blogs make the web noisy enough as it is, since anyone with web access can start one. This means that the web, by way of the blogosphere, is more about catharsis and opinion that a medium to present facts, which was arguably its one true purpose in the days when government and universities were its exclusive user-base. Fora, however, allow anyone to comment, including people who refuse to start a blog because of the effort needed to keep it afloat. Arguably, this means that forum-posters are more anonymous than bloggers (i.e. they are not rooted anywhere), and therefore have it less necessary to present their opinions politely, correctly, or in many cases, with any redeeming purpose at all. This is much akin to commenters on blogs, and the juxtaposition between their thoughts and those of the respective bloggers is clear to anyone. (Just compare the reactions of fellow-bloggers to blog commenters regarding my initial post on the matter. The former are much tamer, despite common disagreement, while the latter tend to argue ad hominem abusive.) This doesn’t mean that blog commenters, or forum-goers, are unable to present thoughts appropriately, however. In fact, there are many intelligent, well-spoken individuals who do not blog or operate web sites, but in the face of overwhelming numbers to the contrary, the group comprised of forum-users and blog commenters is filled with people who present little useful information compared to those who publish non-vanity blogs and web pages.

The very mechanics behind blogging versus forum posting places emphasis on signal. Blog posts contain content, and are generally categorized not only by blog section, but often with keywords. This is different from forum posts which often contain no content (e.g. “First!”-posts), and are riddled with content that serves little purpose other than using up bandwidth (e.g. forum signatures, often made up of very large graphics). The fact is, blog posts require a degree of consistency in posting quality in order to maintain readers, whereas forum posts are under no such unspoken regulation, since forum posters rarely generate an active following.

Administration

At any successful level, fora require a staff of moderators. In most cases, the appeal of a forum is as much a combination of consistency and fair-handedness among moderators as it is based on the protocols established by the forum administrator (e.g. policies on signatures). In other words, if forum staff are not all on the same page, there will be considerable difficulties down the road. Furthermore, while blogs are closed to the public in regards to who can post, the nature of forum means that anyone can create a thread, which is often mis-categorized, sometimes inappropriate, and even repetitive of previous topics.

The administrative issues behind fora may not be obvious to those who just set a forum up, but the growing pains behind fora are definitely there. As a long-time forum moderator (and former administrator), I would advise anyone considering running a forum to speak with someone who’s already been there. Otherwise, the state of one’s fora a year from now could be scary.

Content

Obviously, the most important matter behind forum success, the actual content, is what allows web sites and similar entities to last years. What makes a forum even more complicated than a blog is its reliance on content to generate discussion. While blogs work on a similar algorithm, the difference is that blogs present information piece-wise, and therefore control the stream of content to be discussed. In a successful forum, multiple threads exist at the same time, but in order for this to happen, there needs to be enough topics worth discussing.

Would-be forum administrators need to ask themselves: will my forum attract enough people interested in discussing the topics my site is about? If the answer is yes, then a second question comes to bear: is there enough to talk about to sustain multiple threads, not just for now, but for a long time to come? Neither of these questions are even relevant, however, if there already exists a forum exactly like the one the would-be forum administrator is considering building.

Accessibility

The threshold for interacting with a forum is even more complicated than reading a blog. It generally involves creating an account, seeking out threads that appear useful, and staying on top of countless sub-forums. Compare this to the ease of subscribing to RSS feeds, where information is “pushed” to a user instead of sought out. So while it’s easier to troll via fora, it’s more difficult for a lurker to stay in tune with activities associated with fora conversations than with blog posts. This means fora are cutting out a large group of people, especially when it comes to real-life time constraints that are often circumvented with RSS readers. Fora, on the other hand, require manually loading the respective web sites and forum-threads, which means that it’s less likely a person will check four fora for new information, than they would check four RSS feeds/bogs, simply because digging for information isn’t as much of an issue when it comes to the latter.

Coming full circle.

One need only look at any one WoW forum hosted by Blizzard to see a lack of moderation. This, in great part, causes an enormous amount of noise to build up, especially when compounded by repeat threads that are continuously generated. Avatar dynamics, which link poster’s names to their respective characters, is a poor choice for creating a helpful community, as posters frequently dismiss one another based solely on the character their post is linked to.

Class-specific fora, like at Elitist Jerks or TKASomething, do a better job of moderation, but often over-moderation causes the core community to become unnecessarily condescending to newcomers. BRK’s fora are an attempt at being newcomer friendly, but a core community is already revealing itself, and the effects of this will need to be seen in the months to go. Either way, it’s important to make a distinction between a site’s blog and it’s respective fora. Even good blogs can have poor fora, and though BRK’s little empire on the web has quality throughout, let’s not forget that quality doesn’t just rub off because of a creator’s track record.

I’ll end this follow-up with the same general thought I did the first time I ventured here: we don’t need new fora; fora are not a check box on the road to online success. In most all cases, a quality blog/CMS structure is more than capable of building, and fostering, an online community, and doesn’t require the level of management that outdated fora do.

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