Discussion on the future of weblog comments, the migration to discussion forums, and the merger between the two. Issues to consider:
the competitive nature of public discussion forums
the need to promote active reflection
the usefulness of bridging private, semi-private, and public discourse
JournURL. JournURL: More BBS/Blog Fusion. Another entry in the fusion of the BBS and Blog patterns, JournURL, an attempt to create a CCMS (that'd be Community Content Management System to you and me.) The focus here is improving on the model of simple comments for supporting real discussions in weblogs: "Robust threaded and linear discussion that encourages extended conversations and debate. No simplistic comment system here, folks. No anonymous spam."
JournURL recently launched a way to use its comments system from 3rd party blogging tools:
As I've said in the past, blog comment systems generally suck. They're fine for "me too" responses and the occasional one-liner, but they quickly show their limitations when put to the task of managing large, intense discussions. ... Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on what is probably the most robust, blog-friendly discussion app anywhere, and all of those people out there using Movable Type and similar apps can't take advantage of it. [...] [Corante: Social Software]
Roger Benningfield has appeared on the ThreadsML list and showed us all his JournURL. I wonder if he knows that Steve Yost is about to unveil QuickTopic Pro -with QuickThread - the first implementation of ThreadsML?nbsp JournURL would be cool to be the second product to support ThreadsML.nbsp Then we could...... [Marc's Voice] [via Conversations with Dina]
Isn't all this really just moving right back to basic threaded message forums -- with the added ability of highlighting a post, binding it to its own URL, grouping it with other highlighted posts on a web page, and displaying them in reverse chronological order? (BTW, a complete implementation of this mechanism already exists in the Conversant groupware platform.) Isn't the locus of conversation going right back to threaded messages? Are weblogs now little more than HTML advertisements for discussion groups? Maybe that's what they've been all along, but it seems like we took an awfully circuitous path to get here.
And what of the cultural and personal barriers that exist for many people when it comes to speaking in a competitive environment. Make no mistake -- public discussion forums are comptetitive. Is that what we want from weblogs?
What of privacy? Many discussions can, and should, occur within private communities. But often one or more of the emerging ideas needs to go public. Can those ideas be made public without a wholesale rebuilding of the discussion?
Below, George Siemens and Jim McGee emphasize the need for active reflection in order to fully absorb, understand, and learn.
Active reflection, managed learning, and organizational change
Organizational learning. Organizational Learning is No Accident makes an important point: effective learning requires time to reflect...and our "right now" form of communication (email, IM, etc.) doesn't allow reflection time...making it difficult for people and organizations to change (time being an important component to acclimate to changes). [elearnspace blog]
Excellent material on the challenges of building in the necessary time for reflection to power organizational learning and change. One interesting aspect to this line of thought is that reflection has to become an explicit process for it to work at the operating pace of today's economy. It's a bit of a paradox. When we had time for reflection to work at its natural pace, we didn't have to depend on learning to keep our organizations aligned with their environment. Now that we need the learning, we can't rely on unaided reflection. [...] [via McGee's Musings]
Dumping everything into a publicly indexed, unrestricted message forum does not necessarily promote active reflection, or provide an opportunity to learn it. Weblogs were interesting because they limited the amount of feedback -- people had to be very motivated to institute a conversation on a weblog. Lowering that barrier might be a good thing, but it might also take away the insulative quality that allows participation by some who would never speak up in a forum.
The need for a private-public interchange point -- or some structured release mechanism where messages can be gradually be released to broader and broader audiences by using the same tools/systems -- might also be significant. Active reflection requires a sense of safety, and safety is the last thing one gets from public forums.
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