Community & Forum

Reddit

Reddit is the core community of this blog, and the community it was born out of. Check it out and subscribe if you’re not already a member.

Forum (Poll further down)

I would like to build a community here and one of things I’d like to do is set up a forum. I want to recognise the advantages it might have over reddit though, and whether it would be used before launching it. Here are some advantages I’ve thought off.  I would like this to exist alongside the reddit, rather than in competition.

• While reddit is great for discussions and posting great links, I don’t feel like a community really develops. You don’t really get to know other members. On forums you quickly get to know each other.
• Discussions on reddit tend to have a short life span, forum discussions can go on for much longer. I’ve noticed discussions on reddit only last about two days.
• Content wont get lost and buried like it does on reddit and minority opinions, or late comments aren’t hidden down the bottom. Active discussions stay active until no longer active rather than sinking down after a day or two.
• Wider range of available discussions as you can jump in and give your thoughts on older discussions.
• Discourages groupthink, encourages diversity.
• Can have specialised sections, eg conlanging, maps, technology etc and varied discussions.
• Can have non wordbuilding, but related, sections such as writing, art, graphics, cartography, character building etc.
• Can have coherent, single thread discussions rather than branching, rising and falling comments chains.
• You can rejoin a discussion where you left off, rather than having to search through all the branches.
• Roleplay section. For those of you who don’t know, forum roleplay has been a massive part of forums in my experience. Its great for practicing writing (plus fun too!)
• Easier to submit content to this blog
• Off-Topic & Non related sections.

I would like to encourage a good level of discussion on many different surrounding areas of the hobby on the forum and invite people to write guest articles if something good arises that would benefit people. This would help make it easier to find good guides and resources rather than having to trawl through threads and subredddits.

I would also like to encourage visual art on the forum and showcase this on the site as well as whatever good content is produced.

The vision is to have the site drive traffic to the forum and for the forum to drive content to the site, to the benefit of all.

Would love to hear your thoughts, and please cast your vote in the poll. Make sure to follow the blog (in the right hand side column) so you are notified when/if we launch the forum.

If you have some features in mind that you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.