Thursday, July 20, 2006

Blogs, forums and their metaphors

John, your comments and suggestions relating to my previous entry have made me think a bit about the nature of a blog itself and it's metaphor: I see your feedback, and likewise my response to you, located off in a space apart from the original entry whereas to me this theme merits an ongoing conversation between 2 or 3 or more people and blogs aren't really set up for that, are they?

The metaphor underlying blog architecture is like that of an journalist article with some space for brief comments by the reader whereas a topic like this could usefully lead to an ongoing conversation which I suppose is better supported by something like a forum or community software designed more around a conversational metaphor.
Not that you can't go on and have a conversation down through a chain of comments, of course, but its not ideal, is it?

1 comment:

Joitske said...

Bill, that's exactly my experience too. I see blogging as my personal reflection space- public- so shared. The interaction comes more from crosspolination (forgot the right word but what the bees do :)) of ideas when bloggers read each others blogs. I like comments more as an indication of the fact that people read it and recognise something or oppose to something.