I just let loose a long rant in a thread on WordPress.org’s support section. I thought I’d throw it out here for the masses. Basically, the topic came up of using blogging software for an online forum, and I was chastised by another for discouraging the use of a blog as a forum. This is my response:
…don’t confuse a blog with a forum. They are different beasts. Their human-machine interface is (or rather should be) different. A blog does not usually make for a good forum. I hate to do this, but take WordPress.org for instance… this support section is really used as a forum, but in a blog format… IMHO, it is not the correct solution.
Forum software usually lists MANY threads going on and they are usually in order of when they were started. This has a few benefits. If you are returning to a specific thread you can remember when abouts it falls in the timeline so you can find it again. Have you ever tried finding a previous thread here with search?
Good luck. And if you return to a forum thread it usually has a marker indicating it has new content… which for forum threads is easier than marking threads with new content by physically moving their position. Moving blog posts around to show activity only confuses the matter. Posts that could be very valuable are susceptible to being pushed into irrelevancy by newer ones, and the older valuable posts become lost. I see this time and again on this site, as well as a hoard of others. This is part of the reason why people ask the same questions over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over….
Forum software sometimes allows the ability to reorder comments in the threads by search relevancy, commenter rating, value points awarded, and some other ways. Not usually blogging software… but that’s fine because that’s not what blogs are for. A blog… short for weblog (coined many years ago by some guy who now doesn’t have a lot of money – seriously), is a different entity with a different user paradigm from a forum… with different purposes and different use case models.
Forum software works poorly for a blog, and blogging software works poorly for a forum. If you want to get sketchy and claim that modifications and subtle user interface customizations could turn a blogging software (like WordPress) into a forum-viable platform, then I would suggest that you are merely using the generic database query engine as a back-tier and rewriting the blog software to instead act as a forum front-tier. Basically, coding forum software into a blog so it’s no longer a blog. So in essence you aren’t using the blogging software anymore for your forum. Otherwise, any solution requiring text entries could use blogging software… CMSs, Forums, B2Bs, and the list goes on.
I know that a person does not need a master’s degree in IT to understand this… but mine sure helps me.
I'm a Christ-follower, compelled by my faith toward reason, which points directly toward conservatism. This world's daily onslaught of lunacy offends my intellect and senses, so this is my venue to blow off steam.
I give my full support to your opinion that forum software is not blogging software. It’s certainly true that WordPress could be rewritten to act as a blog, and I guess that a whole lot more than the database abstraction layer could be reused.
That said, the notion of dedicated threads is hard to find in blogs. They are by nature a day to day log or diary if you will, and are more like the daily news paper, where the new stuff quickly sinks into history and oblivion.
And this is really a problem for many of us, who are used to writing instructions and tutorials, as useful in a year as they are today. Many blogger use blogging software for this purpose, which means that in WordPress we often resort to Pages, to make articles time independent. Solutions for the really good mix will certainly come and quite a few bloggers experiment with combining blogging and forum software to get the best of the two worlds.
Good article, thanks!
Some good insights, petit. After so many good WordPress.org discussions is great to see you here!
What you say about forums vs. blogs is also echoed in various online literature and programming references. And I’m feeling your pain on finding an appropriate way to display time independent material. I just went through this recently… I had been using WordPress “pages”, but it just didn’t feel like a seamless and properly abstracted method.
I have settled, for the time being, with having special category archive pages that only SEEM to be pages, but are really just archived main content. My Projects, Flash, and WP-Themes pages are all like that. The user really sees them as seperate and easily accessible content, despite the age of the posts, but really that is just some php programming functionality where I leverage their post category, some conditional sidebar logic (for customized navigation), and some really good plugins.
Thanks for stoppin’ by!
Sorry, wrong topic. :ups:
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I like your well described distinctions between a blog and a forum because like you I think they often get confused. I have used and interacted with both for a number of years now.
And I have noted that returning to a blog to try and find a specific item is difficult unless you have some idea of the date it was written or the blog has a good category structure. Even if you can search the blog site you do not always find what you are looking for.
A forum on the other hand usually has a relevant thread that you can remember which immediately reduces the search span. And if you have made a contribution to the thread you can look for your contribution as well.
I generally find that forums are also more focused on a the matter at hand rather than the wider ranging nature of some blogs which also makes it helpful.