Not alone
A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon Planet Cincinnati, a listing of several Cincinnati blogs, similar to our own Planet Xavier. The blogs that it syndicates probably aren’t of much interest to you, but it’s nice to know that we’re not alone.
Yesterday, Brad sent me an e-mail telling me about an online forum for St. X students, not surprisingly named the St. Xavier Forums. Clearly we bloggers aren’t the only ones trying to start up a community. Those of you who paid attention to recent discussion here will wonder how they’ve survived this long, even though the administration apparently knows about them. Behold the power of the disclaimer.
For now, I’m still sticking to my position that a forum is for the “creatively challenged,” if its mission is just to talk about “stuff,” rather than to actually do something. You’ll note that forums like mozillaZine Forums (collaborate to make Mozilla better and help new users) and Slashdot (report the news, no matter how trivial) are successes, whereas ones with similar ambitions, such as CzekTech Forums (“talk about what we think is cool”)… well, they haven’t fared quite as well.
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That said, the St. X Forums look promising, because it’s run by someone who seems to actually care, and because it could actually be useful: if the community grows enough (likely through word of mouth), it could become the premier place to find out what’s going on. Or pX could. It doesn’t really seem like we’re going to be competitors, anyhow; more like complements: the forums will probably be a lot less formal than pX, as hard as that is to imagine. For now, at least, we’re only advertising off of each other. But it would be great to see some kind of cooperation develop.
Any ideas?