Setting up a news forum and locking the initial threads to correspond to each article posting and ‘open thread’ post allows front page exposure to the open threads and directs folks to use the forums.

Yes, everyone has to re-register for the forums but this seems like a small price to pay to be part of a very thoughtful niche community.

Thanx

How DO you post images in the forums?

I use imageshack.us.

you can upload a picture directly from your machine, and it gives you a bunch of ways to link it once it is posted.

Use the link in the last box – think it is titled “link directly to image”

Also, you don’t have to give them an email address when you upload.

Apparently they could learn a lot if they even read their own back issues.

How DO you post images in the forums?

Personally, now that I’ve figured out where to host images and how to post them in the forums, I feel like there’s a lot more value there.

The open threads are collectivist mob-rule, with little intellectual heft, but minor, cheap entertainment. I guess there is an attraction to that. You can say anything you want, shout down dissent, and it’s all gone tomorrow.

The forums, on the other hand, are enduring. They encourage more thought and have conseqences, as what you say has more permenance.

I guess it depends on what direction you want this blog to go.

That won’t work for me anymore. I can’t login with my google account in the login fields right below the comment box. Instead, I have to go to http://www.blogger.com, login using my google account there, and THEN come back to the comment box to post to the blog.

Maybe it’s because I don’t actually have a “google” account and just registered a seperate (non-google) e-mail address. But it’s annoying, nevertheless.

I tried your forum webpage and found it less informative, lagging in recent data and too convoluted to read than today’s open threads on recent mortgage or subprime carnage news.

I also found a higher educated class of information from open threads, as these type of professionals don’t have time to hunt through forums.

Its interesting to me to see how we all interpert the recent mainstream media for Seattle in contradicting ways and apply it in different ways on the threads. Its funny too, please keep the threads open, they’re recent and more educational.

I like forums, but it takes a lot of effort (and time) for them to be well trafficked enough to be really interesting. In the meantime, topical threads for each blog posting are indispensable.

Also, the blogger.com threads are REALLY annoying, and became even worse when they started requiring people to have google accounts. The only way I can post now is to login to blogger.com seperately, and THEN come back to the seattlebubble blog thread to post a comment. This is really crummy…

Count me as a blogger only :-)

The key, I think, is to work out the bugs in the forums.

The main one is the width of the columns. There has to be a better fix then just retroactively widening them.

Why I can’t edit any posts but the most recent one, I don’t quite get either.

Also, perhaps you could allow more replies on a page. Having to go back and forth from page to page to follow a discussion is annoying. I don’t think load times would increase substantially even if you bumped it to 50 replies.

Just my 2 cents.

Great work and great blog. Keep it up, Tim.

I also like the software for the forums much better than blogger – as you can post graphics there and the html tagging is easier.

Maybe as a compromise, you have an open thread “area” in the forums (like Seattle Real Estate, Housing Bubble, Economics), and then link to it each day from the blog? That way those with little time can just look at the daily thread, and others will be guided to look at the broader set of topics?

The forums have more structure so it’s easier to follow the discussion as it mostly relates to the posted topic.

However, open thread allows for random posting of relevant info that may not relate to an existing topic and may not be significant / interesting enough to merit it’s own topic in the forums. For example, I just discovered this interview of Robert Shiller. To me, posting this article in the open thread format works alot better than over in the forums, but I could be wrong!

Shiller: Mr. Worst-Case Scenario

Quotes from a recent interview by Money magazine with Robert Shiller

Question: So how rich can you get on real estate?
Answer: From 1890 through 1990, the return on residential real estate was just about zero after inflation.
Question: Excuse me? That’s all? Hasn’t it been higher lately?
Answer: Since 1987 it’s been 6 percent [or about 3 percent a year after inflation].
Question: So real estate doesn’t go up roughly 10 percent a year?
Answer: It can’t be true that homes rise 10 percent a year. If they did, in the long run no one would be able to afford a house.
Question: Let me grab a calculator. If real estate really rose 10 percent a year, a $25,000 home in 1957 should be worth roughly $3 million now.

It is interesting to learn where Mr. Shiller is putting his money right now

Question: How are you investing now?
Answer: I’m probably a little over 60 percent in stocks, almost all of it outside the U.S. I have a lot of cash. And I’ve been reducing my exposure to real estate. It may be at the end of a cycle.

Shiller Interview

Thanks for the feedback.

Actually, each and every open thread is preserved for posterity. They are simply shifted off of the front page to keep the look more “clean.” All you need do is click the “click here for open threads” link at the top of the page (just under the dark blue title block).

Alternatively, you can browse the “Blog Archive” portion at the bottom of the right-side-bar. All past open threads have been re-dated, taking 25 years off of the actual post date. This makes them appear as though they were posted in the ’80s (2007 = 1982, 2006 = 1981, etc.).

Just click the little triangle to the left of a year, then the same to the left of the month, and you’ll see a list of all the open threads for that month.

The best way to search for a particular thing you recall is to do a Google “site search.” I use the Google Toolbar for this, but you can simply go to Google put “site:seattlebubble.blogspot.com ” before whatever you’re searching for.

Hope this helps.

I also like that the open thread is not directed to a particular topic like a forum is, but rather contains the most important topics of the day. Sometimes one conversation sparks another topic and things flow nicely from topic to topic. Forums force an unatural division of topics that isn’t typical of conversation.

I think you should offer both and let people use whichever they want. However, one thing I don’t like is that to my knowledge everything posted in the open threads is lost after each day passes. It would be nice if these posts were later archived somewhere, perhaps to a past open thread forum. I would sometimes like to be able to search through past posts since some great links and other information are presented in the posts.