Creating a forum: for what purpose?

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To provide a self-evident answer to that question, there is nothing like the good old etymological return to point zero, to redefine our vision of what a forum is supposed to be all about. Let's take the Wiktionary version, authored by those who just won't sign off their contributions: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/forum. Here we are, literally stuck within the subject matter itself!

Now let's sober up to modern times again, to have a look at the most roman of all virtual fora, meaning the social internetwork. Looking back, one wonders if we have made progress at all!!!

Jokes aside: considering that the purpose of any forum is to unleash the idea virus, I'll define the social networks as the intersection between the public domain and private enterprise, which suffices to explain the size of the Cloud!

If your intention is to gather people around you, or if you want to federate the members of your network of relationships around some sense of belonging to a community, you had better start by setting yourself a viable goal, which will be the reason of being (or purpose) of your forum. Mine for example, as a self-authoring web-entrepreneur, will be dedicated to the making of my NetPlusUltra® web franchising system.

In line with that strategy, the purpose of the upcoming series of articles is to provide yet another conceptual problem-solving example, pertaining to the forum issues that define multi-dimensional network systemics.

Daniela BERNDT
This post in French / German