Being inspired to start a discussion based on another discussion

[Ashley]

When you're on forums, and say you're reading a news story or perhaps an announcement made by the staff, or perhaps you're in the staff lounge of your own forum and you get inspired to start a discussion based on a private discussion. Do you feel compelled to start a discussion based on something you were talking about in another forum, whether it be public or private? This doesn't happen to me very often, but say if I'm commenting on a news article, I will get inspired to start on a discussion based on that article in another forum. I don't always use the article in question as an example either, I usually come up with my own examples that may be related to the article in question, but never actually mentioning the article.



So does this happen to you? If so, how often does it happen?

 

[The Dragon Master]

Sometime it does, and sometimes it doesn't. I tend to try and draw off different other discussions to try and make something interesting. Doesn't always work XD

 

[Ashley]

Sometime it does, and sometimes it doesn't. I tend to try and draw off different other discussions to try and make something interesting. Doesn't always work

Like for me, say if we're in the staff lounge and we're discussing a serious, yet interesting issue. This might compel me to start just a general discussion about it, sort of like, what would you do in this situation? kind of thing. Or I know one time we made an announcement for people who have most likely never visited forums before, and we found an article on Wikipedia explaining what forums were about. This lead to some serious gawking and comments like, are you serious? Posting on a forum is just like posting on Facebook blah, blah blah. Finally we decided to start a whole new topic where we posted what we thought forums were about and things like that, as I generally posted that announcement for any of my real life friends who might one day consider join Chatting Time but might not have any idea as to what forums are in general. So I found a little tutorial and did a kind of announcement out of it, which lead to a general discussion on what members thought forums were about. The reactions from members who've been on forums before and who've been foruming for years were pretty interesting to say the least.

 

[Ashley]

It just happened to me, reading this thread.

I want to start a thread titled Is posting on Facebook the same as posting on a forum? Is that what you mean?

Something along the lines of that, and I think that's actually what the title should've been as well.



Actually, the tutorial was sort of about what forums are all about in general. And in the article from Wikipedia, it showed some examples of some forums, although I think most were PHPBB3 ones, and it explained what forums were about, what different functions and features mean, that kind of thing.

 

[Jazzy]

You have to know your own community as to what interests them and will get a response and what won't. What's very interesting on one forum doesn't mean it's going to work on your forum.