Common Craft - Online Community Strategies: What are the Differences Between message Boards and Weblogs?

This post originally appeared in my blog Digital Amalgam, and was moved to this blog in July, 2007.

Common Craft - Online Community Strategies: What are the Differences Between Message Boards and Weblogs?: "Weblog topics have comments and message board topics have replies. This subtle difference in syntax reveals a difference in the roles. The word comment for weblogs implies that the author does not need further participation to reach a goal- comment if you want. Reply, on the other hand, implies that participation is explicitly requested by the poster. A discussion is not a discussion without a reply."

But blogs can still be a community builder, can't they? And message boards can be just that--message boards. I'm not sure I agree 100% with Lee Lefever on this stuff. I think communities take different shapes and go through different kinds of interactions. Discussion and dialogue are one form of community connection, I think. But somehow I also believe that people who've all commented on the same thing--who've all shown an interest in that thing and made a connection through it--are somehow a community.

Still, this is a great article and contributes a lot to my thinking about online communities.