codyg1985’s Think Tank

Ever since about 2001, I have been drawn to website forums.  I have met people on forums, and I have even ran a forum for two years.  I don’t know what draws me to forums; I guess people having a civil conversation about a subject in one forum and people just chilling and discussing a random subject in another forum on the same website just represents the diversity and unpredictability of life.

Forums are better than newsgroups or email lists because they are moderated.  Just about any good forum that I have come across has a rule set that members are held up to.  If members don’t abide by the rules, out they go.  It is that simple.  Also, forum websites have discussions divided into separate forums so that people can only go to a forum that pertains to his/her interests.  This is impossible in an emailing list or a newsgroup.

Ever since I resigned as administrator of Next L3vel in November 2004, I have had a small urge to help out there every now and then.  Since they have shut down, I obviously can’t help there anymore.  One of the main reasons that I resigned was because of school.  I needed to get rid of the fun, but time-consuming role as administrator so I could better focus on school.  I also messed up the domain name there too, but that is for another story.

Now that I am out of school and not working this summer, I have found that frequenting forums and providing my two cents worth of contribution towards whatever interests me to be a good hobby.  By doing this, however, makes me long even more to want to at least help someone out with a forum if he/she needs it.  I feel a niche to build a community again, similar to how I felt when I helped found Next L3vel in 2002.

One does not get paid to run a website forum, but you get plenty of respect (and some disrespect), and you also get to work with great people and meet plenty of other people. 

Blogging is a fun activity, but only now I have time to post meaningful content on here such as this little article.  With the time to post on here, I also have time to post more on forums, and if necessary, contribute to forums in more ways than just posting meaningful threads.