Community Participation

I’m actively involved in 2 on-line communities. When I say communities I mean forums and message boards. In this modern day it’s very difficult to be in a technical occupation without the assistance of forums or message boards to learn and share information. One of the message boards has had a huge impact on my business with customer referrals. The other message board has had a huge impact on my business with knowledge gained. I often marvel at the group dynamic of very large communities that have expanded beyond the point of help-only-content into areas of off-topic discussions or topics that cover anything. I think allowing off-topic or open-topic discussions can be a double-edged sword and it’s one that I’m now beginning to question. It seems that these open-subject areas are most likely to bring out the worst in people and to really taint the positive feeling of community. More specifically I rarely if ever see arguments or slander in help forums. People in help forums are there for one purpose and that’s to get or receive help. Technical help rarely involves the exchange of opinion and is certainly never political or religious unless someone says, “Pray that you can get that working.”. Open-topic message boards seem to have many flare-ups and while these flare-ups do provide a good chance to learn about the dynamics of people I do think they detract from the value of the community. There always seems to be an aggressor that is looking for a fight and I think giving the aggressor a stage to launch attacks from is a mistake.

Now as I’m starting to evolve as a small business and I’m looking for ways to grow. I feel that my participation in the one help-based community is going to shoot way up and my participation in the other open-topic based community is going to drop off… significantly. For me I think it makes more sense to blog on a regular basis about technical and business topics than it does to participate in an open-topic community. I still plan to read the open-topic community on a daily basis because not doing so would have a very negative affect on the growth of my skills and knowledge.

The act of blogging means I open my doors to comments and critique of what I’m doing as a business and in a technical occupation but this will lead to value and maturity. I hope that at some point people will start to find enough content here that they begin asking questions about the how and why of decisions I make. This by no means implies I will change what I do to make the responders happy. What I’m doing has been successful quite on it’s own. In making that statement though I do realize that it might sound like I’m slamming the door on people exchanging ideas with me for doing things better. I’m not at all suggesting that I don’t place extreme value on that. What I’m saying is that the true strength, value and enjoyment of a blog comes from bloggers who stick to their opinions and are not easily swayed. It could be that the blogger might in fact be wrong and it certainly is his/her place to admit such things. But the real enjoyment comes from reading their wrongs and the resulting dialogs. A good blog is strongly opinionated and not afraid to discuss many topics as long as they relate to the vision that is established by the blog and it’s description.

Well, I suppose I digress at this point but I did want to record my thoughts now on community participation and the perceived value of a blog. Only time will tell if I am right on any of this. The evidence will not doubt come from the arrival of new and unsolicited readers who have stumbled upon this blog and enjoy reading the content contained within.