Best forums in the world

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Permalink Reply by Jill Biddington on September 23, 2009 at 9:28am

I haven't logged in for a while - work gets in the road of connecting here:)

I feel this is an interesting question and poses a few challenges to understanding what we might mean by "best" as well as require us to be mindful of organising our thinking into what might be that which form and bind people in groups.

Each of us will have a clear sense of the purpose of the forums that we manage or participate in but it might vary in terms of what we see as being "best" So moving away from the purpose of the community because some are business related and have different outcomes than say a not for profit forum based on an issue or theme, I guess what I would say about how I see the "best" forums operating would include the following:

That there is a sense of a natural though unorganised group that will attract people with a similar need for information or connection through the dialogue.

That there are clear and transparent guidelines about behaviour that are accepted by the group. Whilst I wouldn't want to be part of a forum which challenged my values about respect and dignity, there are forums I am involved in that don't blush with the use of expletives but would explode if a racist or sexist term was used. In others, the use of expletives would not be acceptable to the group and the community would not engage in expressing themselves in that way.

The language that is used is accessible by the whole community - on occassions the community that I am part of uses text/sms language and that is not something that not all community members can understand let alone respond in so it excludes some who may have something to offer but can't.

There would be a sense of movement and flow in the discussions where the community would feel free and open to exploring different ideas and concepts relating to the themes and reflecting on their own experiences with out there being a control and command culture.

A welcoming culture where there was not a sense of new members of the community have a low status or are bullied or made feel poorer from not having been involved since day 1.

Where respect and dignity are the cornerstones of the culture of the community and is demonstrated in the way that the members of the community interact both in the public and private communications.

I guess that would be the keys for me - they might differ for various people.

It may be that I have conveniently interpreted your question to identify characteristics rather than nominate actual forums that I believe meet these characteristics. I enjoy a number of forums - I am not keen on some sites which seem to encourage and raise internal conflict for the joy of trying to out shock each other. I quite like the English site DebateWise which draws on social and political research and challenges members to expand and extend the debates.

I find CrazyBoards to be a very honest yet respectful space which meets the needs of the members.

so Jon, in starting this discussion, were you looking for actual sites or for characteristics? I am interested in what you might feel are the best forums and why also - hope you add in your own ideas.
Jill

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Permalink Reply by Jon on September 24, 2009 at 3:57pm

Well quite simply, I want to create the best forum in the world so I'm trying to figure out who I need to benchmark forum against and what those forums do to be rated as one of the best.

It is my suspicion that the biggest factors in successful forums will be the vibe in the community and a certain X factor which come naturally but there must be systemic things they do to make the forum work great!

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Permalink Reply by Melissa Daniels on October 5, 2009 at 7:04pm

Personally, I think that if you set out to create the "best forum in the world" you might be disappointed.

The beauty of some of the best online communities is that they all began with a few users who had something in common. Additionally, most forums/communities end up using the tools provided in different ways than the developers ever anticipated. (Think: Newsfeed in Facebook; as a result of that idea, Twitter appears. Or, epinions and the mommy reviews-- site began as an unemotional, objective review site but was quickly taken over by compassionate mommies who gave the honest truth and booted out spammers/malicious entities).

I guess what I'm getting at is that the saying of "If you build it, they will come" doesn't always apply. Often you have to go to where the conversation is, build trust, and then innovate based on the community's needs-- not yours.

-Melissa

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Permalink Reply by Marc Siegel on November 6, 2009 at 4:00pm

Hello Jon, Melissa. Jill,
I like very much Melissa's words, especially: "If you build it, they will come" doesn't always apply.

I've seen that the best forums come from energized people engaging with each other and newbies/lurkers. So the key is to identify those few motivated people and slip them lots of encouragement early on, including evolving things to meet their wacky new ideas.

For example, a technical forum I ran had a suck infrastructure (couldn't add attachments, interface to email was inconsistent and difficult). However, it had wise experts who were so helpful and giving. Often, tough questions would get answered in an hour or two, with carefully sculpted specific responses. That community was great, even though the platform was donkey.
Yours, Marc

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcsiegel

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Permalink Reply by Dan Gray on November 30, 2009 at 2:17pm

A "forum" is a public meeting, a gathering, a medium for discussion. It doesn't matter where that takes place, it is the quality of the discourse and those participating that counts. The 'best forum in the world' is not the best because of the software it uses or the servers it runs on, but for the members it has.

That aside, I'd reccomend vBulletin as a base to start from. It's stable, comprehensive, secure, and most of all: customizable. There's a great selection of plug-ins available for added functionality, and some great community oriented features.

Here's a decent example of a well constructed, aesthetically pleasing, healthy, popular vB based forum: http://wetalk.tv/

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