So comments kind of blew up this past week – hello, 673-comment thread! In one of the recent giant threads Holly suggested that maybe it’s time for Man Boobz to start its own forum, or set up some kind of real-time chatroom or IRC channel. I’m thinking she may be right, but I’m not sure the best way to proceed.
Here, as I see it, are the best options:
Regular Friday and Saturday night “open threads,” plus “open threads” during the week when it makes sense – say, when a thread gets really really long and/or people start chanting “open thread! Open thread!” in the comments. (That could be the batsignal, as it were, for me to post an open thread.)
An actual forum. It looks as though setting up a free forum through something like Invision or proboards or some other free forum host would be pretty easy – though I’d love to hear from people with experience doing this before I proceed. Would you guys be interested in this? What would be the best host to go with? Would it make more sense to host the forum myself? (If so, I would definitely need help.) I sort of love the idea of a forum, but I wouldn’t want it to siphon off too much energy from comments on the blog itself. I’m torn, and any thoughts/advice you guys have would be greatly appreciated.
I’m thinking at the moment that the best idea would be to start with open threads and see how they work before setting up a forum. But if enough of you want a forum that might be the way to go.
As for the other ideas from Holly – a chatroom or IRC channel – I have to admit I have no idea what would be the best option here, assuming there are enough of you interested in this to make it work. I’ve got plenty of experience as a forum-user but I’ve never used IRC or really participated in more than a tiny bit of chat. Not sure what the best options are for a real-time chatroom, or for IRC, so … advice, please!
In any case, I’m psyched about the possibilities here and want to do whatever will best facilitate conversation amongst you guys. And if any of you want to volunteer your time and/or experience, let me know!
(The cartoon here is borrowed from the excellent Comically Vintage.)
I confess I prefer the open threads, the free-ranging discussion is one of the most entertaining things about comments at Sadly, No.
Also, more zombies.
Thanks, everyone. I’m still mulling it over. Will definitely do some open threads, still thinking about a forum.
I vote for forums, personally. 😀
I’m a newbie, but still I have to vote for a forum. They’re so much easier to navigate than a few hundred comments in a post with nothing more than “Older comments/Newer comments”.