The future of online community. I used to think I knew what online community was all about. I thought it had something to do with discussion forums, like the one here at InfoWorld I’ve recently tried to colonize. Having spent too many years, keystrokes, and brain cells debating the pros and cons of various discussion technologies, I’ll just cut to the chase. This WebX thing is not working for me. It’s not simply that the software mangles URLs, doesn’t preview messages, and handles topics and threads in a way I find awkward. What’s broken, for me, is the idea that an online community is a place where people gather, and a centralized repository of the discussions held in that place. In that model, I’ve concluded, the costs are just too high. It’s expensive to join. It’s expensive to participate, because interactive discussion demands a lot of attention. And it’s expensive to leave, because the repository has your data, and may or may not (probably won’t) preserve its linkable namespace or hand the data back to you in a reasonable form. … [Jon’s Radio]
