On 21/04/2008, Carl D Cravens (Mod) wrote:

I'd be reluctant to build a new technology mashup based on a technology that already has trouble combating spam.

No offense, but that's a silly reason to not do it. I don't see why spam has entered the equation here at all. Blogs get spam via comments and trackbacks. This has nothing to do with importing posts from *member's* blogs and providing/sending a link back to the original blog. I can't see any way that you're opening up the mailing list to spam, unless I'm missing something? Are you saying that the mailing list will introduce spam to people's blogs and that's why we shouldn't do it?

(But on the flip-side, a lot of indie gamers view their blogs as platforms from which they talk to each other. I think that view is possibly broken, because it requires you to have a blog to be part of the conversation, and it doesn't build a coherent community...

If people view their blogs as "platforms from which they talk to each other" then does it matter what you or I actually think it should be? People are doing it. And do you need a coherent community for blogging? Planets/Feed aggravates, Blogrolls, trackbacks/pings, etc. all these technologies alow "conversations" to flow. Often people will pull a conversation into actual forums. Certainly it's happened to me on one or two topics. (Last year's exchanges about the death of fudge are prime example... that whole discussion occured *because* I blogged about it rather than posted in a forum)

I always viewed blogs as being a sort of "distributed" forum. The Vanilla forum software comes to mind because it feels more like a community blogging than forum. I've turned a blogging software into a full realised forum, because the technology is the same. Call it what you will, a forum post or a blog post... at the end of the day, it's content that can make up a part of a conversation. And once it's on the internet, you don't really have control over where it will go.

I think mashing up blogs and forums confuses personal soap box with community discussion, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.

Hey, this is the internet. It's everyone's personal soap box! Just look at what we're saying in this thread. I mean, who am I, to say that blogging is the same as forum? :) Besides, if it generates discussion and creates "community" then why *not* do it?

In a sense, what Karen is suggesting, is sort of already happening. The Fudge planet feed, people use it to see what people are talking about and then if they see something they find interesting, they'll comment on that blog. The difference here is the conversation occurs on the mailing list rather than on other people's blogs where it might not be seen by the rest of the members.

I do think though you need to get a good sense if people want it or not though, just turning it on in an existing mailing list where only two people want it and one doesn't, may not work.