David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
5 Ways NOT to Use a [Forum]
by Shaun
03/06/2009
For those mismatching contrarians out there, here are 5 great ways to make sure your [forum] will not work. Of course there are an infinite number of ways to misuse a perfectly good tool and render it useless, but here are the top 5 mistakes we have seen.
To protect the guilty, we will not show any specific examples of [forum owners and members] who have made, or are still making, the following mistakes. But if any of these sound familiar, you may want to take note.
Here we go:
1. The Narcissist
A [forum] is not about you. It is about the group. We all have a voice and an opinion and the blogosphere is full of lone ranters with a lot to say. If you find that 90% of the communication within your [forum] is just you speaking to the world, you may want to switch to a Blogger account (they're free and you can soliloquize to your heart's content).
[Forums] are not about the individual; they are about a collection of people ... who come together to harness the wisdom of groups to make things happen.
2. The Infinite Homepage
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
The New York Times has only one front page, with only one main headline. Everything that appears on the top half of the front page is referred to as "above the fold." Each day, the papers editors have to decide what stories are important enough to be "above the fold" and only one story gets the main headline. The paper comes in one size only.
Too many websites forget the fact that not everything can be the most important. Because you can make a web page as long as you wish, in theory, everything can be on the front page!
Believe me when I tell you, your readers' attention span is only so long. I have seen SUMMARY pages of [forum]s that scroll on for a dozen screens!
Listen to your group. Understand what is most important and give those topics top visibility. You can change this daily or even by the minute as priorities shift but remember: not everything can be the most important.
3. The Jack of All Trades
You can't be everything to everyone. Groups without a defined purpose, typically wind up serving no purpose. Imagine 10,000 people who show up at a parking lot but are not sure why they are there. Some may be looking for a party, others may be looking to sell something, others may be looking for their soul mate. Some may just be looking for a place to park. What if some received invites to a costume party, others received invites to an educational conference and still others were told this was the place for the project team to collaborate to make their deadline?
It would be a wild scene at the parking lot for sure, but I'm not sure how many people would actually achieve their intended objective.
It's very hard to have a Rave and a yoga class at the same time.
The [forum] is the place. You must define the purpose and invite the people who care about that purpose if you want an engaged productive experience.
4. The Absentee Landlord
"Do as I say, not as I do" has never worked very well in the long run. The manager of a [forum] who doesn't complete their own profile, is not an active member of group discussions and doesn't have a personal vested interest and sincere desire to help the group achieve its goals (beyond simply putting some extra cash in their pocket) should not be surprised when the other members of the group stop caring.
You get what you give.
5. The Frustrated Artist
The web is an amazing place. The things we can do with computer graphics today are amazing. Pixar rocks!
However, not everyone who wants to be a great artist/designer is one. Add to that the fact that sometimes, less is more. A co-worker of mine a number of years ago used to have a quote at the bottom of his emails which read "The epitome of design is not when nothing else can be added, but rather, when nothing else can be removed."
Think about the iPod (no moving parts), the iPhone (a phone with only 1 button) and the Nintendo Wii (my 90-year old Grandmother bowls with it because she already knows how to swing her arm to bowl!)
The Sistine Chapel is an amazing work of art that was designed to amaze and inspire. It was not meant to be a user-interface to encourage communicating, sharing and networking.
Art is wonderful, but when it comes to supporting truly engaged communities on the web ([forum]s), don't fall into the trap of form over function, bells and whistles over useful tools and self expression over helping others make things happen.
The good news? There are 5,000,000 ways to make a [forum] work and we are seeing more great examples every day!
by Shaun
03/06/2009
For those mismatching contrarians out there, here are 5 great ways to make sure your [forum] will not work. Of course there are an infinite number of ways to misuse a perfectly good tool and render it useless, but here are the top 5 mistakes we have seen.
To protect the guilty, we will not show any specific examples of [forum owners and members] who have made, or are still making, the following mistakes. But if any of these sound familiar, you may want to take note.
Here we go:
1. The Narcissist
A [forum] is not about you. It is about the group. We all have a voice and an opinion and the blogosphere is full of lone ranters with a lot to say. If you find that 90% of the communication within your [forum] is just you speaking to the world, you may want to switch to a Blogger account (they're free and you can soliloquize to your heart's content).
[Forums] are not about the individual; they are about a collection of people ... who come together to harness the wisdom of groups to make things happen.
2. The Infinite Homepage
Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
The New York Times has only one front page, with only one main headline. Everything that appears on the top half of the front page is referred to as "above the fold." Each day, the papers editors have to decide what stories are important enough to be "above the fold" and only one story gets the main headline. The paper comes in one size only.
Too many websites forget the fact that not everything can be the most important. Because you can make a web page as long as you wish, in theory, everything can be on the front page!
Believe me when I tell you, your readers' attention span is only so long. I have seen SUMMARY pages of [forum]s that scroll on for a dozen screens!
Listen to your group. Understand what is most important and give those topics top visibility. You can change this daily or even by the minute as priorities shift but remember: not everything can be the most important.
3. The Jack of All Trades
You can't be everything to everyone. Groups without a defined purpose, typically wind up serving no purpose. Imagine 10,000 people who show up at a parking lot but are not sure why they are there. Some may be looking for a party, others may be looking to sell something, others may be looking for their soul mate. Some may just be looking for a place to park. What if some received invites to a costume party, others received invites to an educational conference and still others were told this was the place for the project team to collaborate to make their deadline?
It would be a wild scene at the parking lot for sure, but I'm not sure how many people would actually achieve their intended objective.
It's very hard to have a Rave and a yoga class at the same time.
The [forum] is the place. You must define the purpose and invite the people who care about that purpose if you want an engaged productive experience.
4. The Absentee Landlord
"Do as I say, not as I do" has never worked very well in the long run. The manager of a [forum] who doesn't complete their own profile, is not an active member of group discussions and doesn't have a personal vested interest and sincere desire to help the group achieve its goals (beyond simply putting some extra cash in their pocket) should not be surprised when the other members of the group stop caring.
You get what you give.
5. The Frustrated Artist
The web is an amazing place. The things we can do with computer graphics today are amazing. Pixar rocks!
However, not everyone who wants to be a great artist/designer is one. Add to that the fact that sometimes, less is more. A co-worker of mine a number of years ago used to have a quote at the bottom of his emails which read "The epitome of design is not when nothing else can be added, but rather, when nothing else can be removed."
Think about the iPod (no moving parts), the iPhone (a phone with only 1 button) and the Nintendo Wii (my 90-year old Grandmother bowls with it because she already knows how to swing her arm to bowl!)
The Sistine Chapel is an amazing work of art that was designed to amaze and inspire. It was not meant to be a user-interface to encourage communicating, sharing and networking.
Art is wonderful, but when it comes to supporting truly engaged communities on the web ([forum]s), don't fall into the trap of form over function, bells and whistles over useful tools and self expression over helping others make things happen.
The good news? There are 5,000,000 ways to make a [forum] work and we are seeing more great examples every day!
