Is a "forum" or "discussion board" the same as a blog?
I suspect some are and some aren't. Would like to know what people think about this - Carmin especially. For example, I went to look at the homepage for the Fox show "24", and see that there is a discussion board, but not a blog. After reading through a bit I have to wonder - isn't a discussion board interactive, with people posting their thoughts and people responding? How is a blog different, or is this just one aspect of blogging...?
Karen
3 comments:
In my opinion...
Both are about people communicating with each other, but at the core discussions are many to many while blogs are 1 to many. Discussion boards have threaded discussions. That is you can see the main topic post (thread) and all the comments related to it. The comments related to the comments are also displayed. All comments are typically displayed as indented text, below the text to which the comment is responding. You tend to follow threads with the view expanded so you can see the comments, or scan threads with the view collapsed, seeing only the threads. Blogs are less useful for following discussions. Comments appear below the post to which they are responding, but there is no indentation, and there is no easy way to comment on a comment.
Also blogs started out more like a soapbox – a place to voice your opinion and get feedback. The owner of the blog could start a thread, but everyone else could only post comments. This is still the default blog set up. I invited the students in this class to be authors for this blog, so that you can all post new topics. Otherwise , you would only be able to post comments on posts that I enter.
On the other hand, the default set up for a discussion is that anyone can post new threads and comments. Discussion forums are invoking dialogues to solve a problem or address questions & answers. The forum also allows topics to wander off into several directions at once, and at the same time easily backtrack to the starting thread.
Of course you can set up the blog or forum to be as open or closed as you like today. But a blog would be fine without comments (like a diary), whereas a forum needs comments to be a discussion.
Thanks for all that information Carmin - easily understood but I needed it to be articulated. I think your summarizing statement "But a blog would be fine without comments (like a diary), whereas a forum needs comments to be a discussion", may say it best.
Karen
Um, yeah, I can be long winded sometimes...
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