Metal Reviews

I'm now plugged into this heavy metal listserv and so I get all of these kinds of articles, but given how the forum as a mode of communication seems to be dying with Facebook and blogs, this guy's research seems intriguing.

http://www.decibelmagazine.com/featured ... ath-metal/
http://www.concordia.ca/now/what-we-do/ ... ademia.php

Basically, he is looking at forums as providing a space for knowledge to circulate amongst participants and the anonymity of such participation. I think it's really interesting comparing forum posts to blog posts. If desired, we can have conversations on here in a very response-oriented manner. That is, if DW and I are arguing Black Sabbath we can make points at each other and our messages are directed at one another in a way that implies conversing. I've been posting more on Metalsucks' blog as posts decline here, and I'm bothered by how it's not messages to each other as much as it is contributions. It's not that people post there to converse, but simply to put there two cents into the conversation. Moments in which I have tried to have a conversation or agree with people, I have gotten responses of "wtf I already said that" or no response at all.

that's interesting, in my experience most forums I've encountered ridicule is common place for agreeing with someone expressing a "controversial" opinion or ridicule from that person if you disagree, I haven't been here long enough to know how it works around here but at metalforum.com everything does flow more like a conversation and a serious one at that

So metalforum.com is a good place to peruse, RO?

Thanks for the articles (good on that professor for marrying his hobby to his work), trapt, and your experience of blog posts is illuminating. No back and forth debating appears alarming to me in the sense that online communication is headed in that direction generally. Everywhere I look on the internet people just throw their opinion out like a mischievous child throwing paint on a wall.

If any of you look at reddit.com, and some subreddits in particular, you'll see a very high noise-to-signal ratio on discussion, generally one line opinions with no attempt at followup conversation between other sides. Whatever is popular gets upvoted, and whatever is unpopular becomes hidden or disappears. As a subreddit becomes popular (and thus more exposed to less interested readers) it becomes ever more inundated with photos and memes and other conveniently digestible content, because the reddit system is based on users upvoting or downvoting content posts, and thus the most likely to be upvoted are the one liners, the memes, the photos. Thus the posting system and the thread discussion system on each post are essentially the same, rewarding whatever post/thread discussion post that is snappy, quick, and immediately rewarding to the reader.

that's one factor that can keep forums alive, which is cool.

I don't really read any blogs but given their rise in popularity and the fall in forum popularity, it makes me sad that they lack a forum's discursive aspect, since I find the knowledge and back-and-forth of a community much more interesting than a single writers' opinions and discoveries.

Also I'm going to the school he's at.

You are!? Too bad he does educ psych or comm or whatever field that is :(

I would say so, it sort of goes through phases though where it's either really busy with a bunch of people all contributing quite a lot or (like the present) only a few people contributing in the more popular threads. On top of metal talk though there's also plenty of room for discussing many non-music subjects quite seriously

Except for if people opt not to participate in such circles, as they seem to be doing.

I often suspected that people on the internet didn't care much about what others have to say.

Haha.

Totally agree.

It's funny in same ways switch from forum to blog is re-emphasising the individual over the community.

A blog is in someway extremely egotistical as it is all about the authors opinion and there is no counter argument.

I noticed today that when I'm reading blogs or articles online I tend to completely ignore the comments, then I realized that's probably more because the comments would come from a community I'm not involved in rather than a consequence of the medium itself. Although it seems likely that the medium would discourage the forming of those communities.

The medium itself argument is weird, because posting at Metalsucks, I see a lot of the same monikers, yet no discussion ever forms. I simply recognize those who are really good at one-liners. And when Sarge D trolls people with something that he posts, a conversation doesn't develop, but a string of responses to him. Maybe that would explain how the medium does it: the blog is a single opinion like dead1 is saying and any comments that happen are not directed at others, except for the sparse direct replies, but instead at the original post itself. And D will actually continue his trolling and respond to people's comments and that creates about the closest you get to conversations, him baiting people.