WebWise Solutions

One of the established methods of learning a trade is through an apprenticeship or an internship. Why? We do this so that the new learner has someone with experience at their side, helping them learn the trade. What if you had a panel of 50 experts on a topic available for such new learners? What if you had 100?

This is something that you as the site owner can offer to your community through the use of forums. They provide an environment where someone with a problem or question can solicit help from anyone who may know the solution to their plight. This is an excellent way to alleviate some of the technical support demands from off your own shoulders and still help your community and customers with problems.

This is one great reason you might consider using forums on your site. In fact, there are a number of reasons to do this, some of which may include:

• Forums are easily searchable - The forum discussion threads are permanent. This means that they are easily retrievable later via the forum search mechanism. This provides for people who have problems that have already been solved in the forums to find answers.
  
  
• Organized by topic - When a user wishes to browse postings by topic, forums are generally well-organized into proper topics. This allows people to know where to go for specific information.
  
  
• Gives status to community members - Over time, frequent posters may achieve a certain level of status in your community. This may be a motivation for the more knowledgable members of your community to visit the forums and help out when possible.
  
  
• Develop personal contacts - Community members may find the forums to be a place to meet people with similar interests as their own. The more this happens, the more positive interaction will occur in your forums.
  
  
• Increase traffic through participation - As more community members post, more people will come to your forums. You will get a reputation as the place to go for answers.
  
  

These are some of the great reasons to consider using a forum. However, there are also some caveats to keep in mind when you're thinking of putting up a forum:

• Hard to get started - Because few people are aware of the forums when you first put them up, few people come to visit. Because few people come to visit, few people are posting. In other words, you have to generate massive amounts of postings to draw people to your forum.
  
  
• Lots of work to moderate - With more posts, you have more to moderate. This creates trouble if you have limited time resources. One way around this may be to promote the users who contribute the most. You may wish to make them forum moderators. This will address the problem of moderation volume, and reward them with status.
  
  
• Many lurkers - A lurker is someone who reads only and contributes very little. Because of the nature of the forums, there may be many of these types of community members. This may or may not be a problem, depending on your preferences as the site owner.
  
  
• Seasoned users may get grumpy - As the experts become more and more seasoned, some seem to get less patient. New users may sometimes appear to want help without helping themselves (i.e., researching their problem, reading tutorials or manuals). Seasoned users get impatient with this. If such things occur on your forums, it is an obvious source of unwanted discord.
  
  

Forums are a tried-and-true form of providing support for your community. I have hopefully provided a list of the most important gotchas, helping you to make an informed decision. If done properly, forums can do great good for your site.