Expand the Forums
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I hope this one hasn’t been suggested 10,000 times already.
In addition to “Support,” “Questions,” “Widgets,” and other technical topics, I think it would be useful to have forums designated for people who blog (or read blogs) on specific subjects. These topics could be taken from the popular tags: humor, news, entertainment, education, photography, etc. This would make it a lot easier to meet and greet people who are interested in the same things and it might help a lot of people get more traffic to their blogs.
The challenge would be setting this up in a way that doesn’t cause everyone’s ideas to migrate from the blogs to the forums.
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I respect your idea but I find that the Showcase Forum for blog promotion and the Off-Topic forums suit my needs. There’s no way I have the time to blog, answer comments, leave comments, social network, promote my posts here and in social media sites, and still have time to be an active an contributing member of multiple topical forums as well. Frankly, I am focused on building a blog centered community on my own blogs, and equally focused on being an active member of the blog centered communities on the blogs I subscribe to. That’s where discussion counts most of all when it comes to blogging ie. on blogs. So my response, with respect, is I would not use such forums even if WordPress.com created them.
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How would that differ from the Global Tag Pages?
WordPress.com is basically all about blogging. WP.com wants the conversation to happen on your blogs, in the comments section. Tag pages drive that; forums don’t, they replace the blogs as a home for conversation. There’s no reason for WP.com to facilitate that.
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@ TT
In theory, I see your point. In practice, what tiny percent of people ever leave info on the Showcase forum? Something that would more overtly tell bloggers that “you can reach your target readers here” would be a positive thing. The function may already exist but the packaging is less than effective. (We all know how little traffic you can get from blah post titles. The same goes for the forums.)
@ RC
There’s a huge difference. Forums let you tell your audience what your general style is and lets your potential readers get an overall sense of your blog. Global tag pages only let me see a headline for one post and the first couple of sentences. It gives me no sense of which blogs I might like to frequent on a regular basis or which bloggers I might want to connect with. And when you’ve got dozens or even hundreds of new posts per day per tag, it just isn’t possible to click on every one and read the “about” page.
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Do you really get a sense of those things from forums? Would you know what to expect from MY blog by reading my posts in the forum?
I never read About pages, either, because I don’t really care who these people are: I just want to know if they can inform or amuse me, which I can get from their blogs better than from any forums.
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Yes, I do get a sense of those things from some people; your forum posts rarely have anything to do with your content so you’re not a good case study. If we’re talking about the “Widgets” forum, then of course I can’t tell, but that’s not what the Widgets forum is made for. There are some people on these forums who do an excellent job of describing what’s on their blogs.
And I said “about,” not “about me.” And believe it or not, the reason I don’t have the ‘Top Posts and Pages” widget up on my blog is because the top two pages (other than my home page) on my blog are “About” and “About Me.” Apparently, I’m not the only one looking for that kind of information.
And I also want to know if blogs can inform or amuse me, but the global tag pages do nothing to help me identify which blogs will do that. I’m not looking to have forums replace blogs… I’m looking for a more effective way to find blogs I would want to read.
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I still wouldn’t recommend Forums. They’re only going to expose you to those who are optimized for marketing themselves, not those who are the best at whatever you’re looking for. There are some blog review sites, why not try them?
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Blog review sites could be a good idea. I definitely want to steer clear of the blogs that are optimized for marketing themselves. It sounds too close to the problems I’ve had with global tag pages. (I’ve clicked on so many disappointing posts that I hardly look at anything outside of the tag surfer anymore… except for a few bloggers in the Showcase forum. And that means no one gets stat improvements.)
I also wonder if it would be possible for WP to open up something like the global tag pages for entire blogs instead of single posts. Perhaps let each blogger provide a 50-100 word summary of their blog and a few tags to find them by. (And then if you don’t post for a certain amount of time, your entry falls out of the blog directory until you post again.) But: that’s more work for WP and I was trying to avoid suggesting anything that would require much work.
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I’ve also found some interesting sites by going to Freshly Pressed (which are chosen by some wordpress.com staff person), or even by clicking on theme examples on the theme pages (who’s using theme x). I’ve also clicked on global tags that are of interest to me and have occasionally found some interesting blogs that way. Sheer serendipity has found me some of my favorite blogs. :)
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