Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Happy Medium

I've been pondering about what the best medium might be for posting hobby updates.
  1. Blog.  The blog format offers a clean presentation for a mix of text and images.  It provides some interesting statistics, but it doesn't lend itself well to feedback, I suspect because it may require a "captcha" in order to post a comment.
  2. Forums.  I've been a long-time and active member on the WAMP forum.  I recently joined the DragonPainting forum as well.  Forums offer a nice structure for organizing discussions.  They offer tools for following discussions of interest while ignoring others.  However, it seems there are only about a dozen really active participants on a forum at any given time.  Comments are hit-or-miss, but there are generally enough to keep me going.
  3. Social media.  I just joined some Communities on Google+, and I'm experimenting with posting stuff there.  I chose Google+ over Facebook, because I can more easily post photos from my Picasa albums onto Google+.  Plus, I've always preferred Google+ over Facebook, in terms of presentation, intuitive ease-of-use, and privacy control.  The feedback for posts is excellent.  Participants can leave a quick +1, or they can engage in dialogue.  The format is real-time sequential, though, which doesn't lend itself to organizing lengthier topics for discussion.
My goal is to have a good dialogue.  After posting to the blog for over a year, it hasn't lent itself well towards dialogue.  However, I just realized today that there's a setting that might turn off the captcha.  If that works, that might encourage more comments.  On the other hand, it opens a door to potential spam.  I tweaked the setting to see what might happen.

So give it a try!   Let me know what your preferred posting medium is.  Or remark on something about the blog that you haven't had a good chance to say before -- about painting, gaming, specific projects, events, whatever.  Hope to hear from you!

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