I am still feeling out this blog medium, and I think I ran into a personal boundary recently. I created an art criticism monster thread and the experience is nagging at me. At first I loved it that so many people got involved, but in the end it was unweildy and for some reason, that I can't pin down yet, disatisfying. Partly, the heavy, abstracted subject matter just got to be too much. Maybe I should have moderated more? Or maybe its a technical thing. I changed it from flat comments to threaded comments part way through, thinking it would help to lend clarity, but I think it actually broke up any coherent trains of thought that had been developing and made the whole exercise feel more futile. I'm trying to figure out just what I am getting/want to be getting out of this project, and having tons and tons of people post to a thread no longer seems like a big goal. Any thoughts or past experiences from Tree-ers would be much appreciated.
I think you’ve had a pretty typical experience. Web forums are notoriously messy and wandering. Sometimes this is fun, but it’s like a conversation in a bar among several people: almost impossible to keep on one track, except when it develops into a real argument, which can actually be good, but more often descends into mere name calling. I like nested comments, which allow for branching threads, but I think the consensus is that they don’t really work too well (I think Jim went to flat as our default.)
Active moderating can be an answer, if you’re up to it. In this case you had a good, specific idea: soliciting quotations, but the discussion went off on tangents about the content of those quotes, or the general matter of your preamble, leading in all different directions. I don’t know how easy that would be to manage; you could make sub-pages or new posts for those threads you thought were worthwhile, but coming in and insisting “only quotations in this thread” might have helped.
thanks Alex. I think you're right, next time I'll be more bossy. One thing's for sure, I'm not doing anymore external email solicitation for awhile.
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- sally mckay 3-05-2004 8:32 pm
I think you’ve had a pretty typical experience. Web forums are notoriously messy and wandering. Sometimes this is fun, but it’s like a conversation in a bar among several people: almost impossible to keep on one track, except when it develops into a real argument, which can actually be good, but more often descends into mere name calling. I like nested comments, which allow for branching threads, but I think the consensus is that they don’t really work too well (I think Jim went to flat as our default.)
Active moderating can be an answer, if you’re up to it. In this case you had a good, specific idea: soliciting quotations, but the discussion went off on tangents about the content of those quotes, or the general matter of your preamble, leading in all different directions. I don’t know how easy that would be to manage; you could make sub-pages or new posts for those threads you thought were worthwhile, but coming in and insisting “only quotations in this thread” might have helped.
- alex 3-05-2004 8:52 pm [add a comment]
thanks Alex. I think you're right, next time I'll be more bossy. One thing's for sure, I'm not doing anymore external email solicitation for awhile.
- sally mckay 3-05-2004 9:57 pm [add a comment]