Practicum 6

It's sort of difficult to know what to talk about anymore. I think the main reasons for my practicum was to see how forums/message boards/etc were or were not a community. I may be wrong but I feel as though I've covered that pretty well and that I will just begin repeating myself if I continue on that path. Facebook still has very little inter-commenter communication, ProSportsDaily is still more difficult to read through, and BrewCrewBall seems closer to the epitome of an internet community than the others. I know I've mostly been focusing on the other two, but that's mostly because facebook just does not facilitate anything worthwhile it seems. More on that later.

One thing I would like to make a comment about, actually, is the difference in topics on BCB and PSD. Both being Brewers forums, the discussion obviously centers around the team and players. However, the feel of it is different. With the tiered comments on BCB, it really helps conversation go to the next level. While the Brewers are what brings everyone to the site, conversation becomes almost like if you were talking to a friend. There are off-topic (non-brewers) comments frequently, jokes (often inside jokes) and short discussions about other things. I remember a long 50-100ish comment string on Harry Potter of all things.

On PSD, you don't see that. There isn't that level of community. The topic stays the Brewers and that's that. And that's because in forums like PSD, there are a list of topics started by users, and comments are all about those topics. To start something off-topic, one would have to make a thread about it rather than it just coming up in conversation. To do that might be frowned upon on PSD and would probably be rare, anyway, as there are many other places to go for information/discussion on things like, say, Harry Potter.