Hi!

For almost 2 years before he was forced to shut it down because of spammers and ill behavior on the part of the posters, I belonged to the Charlie Rose message boards, I used this same screen name, so, if you can access the archived files, you can see my posts. That was a forum. There were many of us, from all around the world. Both liberal and conservative posters were present, and the commentary could get heated and to the point. Rumor had it Mr. Rose would occasionaly come on and post under a pseudonym, but we could never be sure if he was there or not, as there was no one who consistently posted with the same élan as the host in his prime.

The board was fun, and it felt pretty good to be posting on the fora of an imminent news man such as Charlie. Unfortunately, there were people who forgot the rules of civility, and flaming wars started to rule the boards, the moderator would shut the flamer out, but they would sign on as someone new, or would be using simultaneous accounts so that another name would take up the flaming. It got boring. I quit posting, and it was not long before Mr. Rose shut the boards down permanently. That was a shame, as it had been a good opinion forum, and there were intelligent news people who would give the rest of us some good clues as to what was going on in the world at large if one was willling to pay attention. I have an inactive forum here, so that you can see what it looks like, and I would love it to become active again, but, I too had spammers, so had to make it such that I had to OK the new members.

That made it harder for new people to join in. I hated that, but there are always people around who are willing to spoil it for others. My forum is pretty much about spiritual life, though anyone wanting to post something on coping with the daily grind would be welccome, the forum is simply called "A Place to Talk".

A blog carries the attitude more of a monologue than a debate. You are posting a daily or weekly commentary on some aspect of your life, or your opinion regarding something going on in the world, or giving instruction regarding a certain thing. I have linked for this audience a couple of bloggers who are artists before, when I addressed how to find a free blog. Blogging is fun, but, it can also be boring, since there is often no feeling for whether the blog is being read or you are just typing in the dark, so to speak. I must admit that this type of writing, where one is answering questions or putting some sort of commentary out into a ready made group for comment is much more fun. And you can change the topic under discussion according to the question you are addressing. That is rather neat.

Su