Would you do this from within an "intellectual vacuum?" I.E. disallow commentary and so be capable of pure self criticism?

That's an interesting idea. But I think that outside commentary would be helpful in stimulating self-criticism and growth. This idea arose from viewing what I tend to do anyway, even if the steps don't get published now and new ideas or development sometimes is not noted in blog-form..

Hmm. Why not a wiki? You could put out the lengthy posts on a quarterly basis and leave them open to moderated (or not) editing. You could either go true open source or restricted collaboration. At the end of one year you could return and critique both your original and the collectively edited post. A bit like wikipedia only instead of a fact based encyclopedic effort your investing in a theoretical/intellectual initiative.

A bit like wikipedia only instead of a fact based encyclopedic effort your investing in a theoretical/intellectual initiative.

A very cool idea -- although I'm afraid that it would turn into an encyclopedia of sorts! Not that the project would have wide appeal, necessarily; but edits would eventually lead into fact-based, source-attributed form, I suspect, as differing theorists sought authoritative "proof" of their own particular skew.

However, the idea for developing a semi-open wiki that explores the largely un-explorable -- theological, ideological, and theoretical intellectualizations -- would be interesting.

If I left it in blog-form, I'd allow comments and trackbacks but would not invest too much energy involving myself in the various comment threads; otherwise, I'd be writing the follow-up iterations too early as ideas developed!

I've also lately considered designing a blog with bulletin board forum software rather than the standard blog software. I had found a plugin for Movable Type that allows any visitor authenticated through TypeKey to post new entries to a common blog; that sounded a lot like the way forums work; and I realized that some forum software is highly configurable, could even be designed to "look" like a blog in its output. Using forum software, I could allow visitors to register with the site but only with permissions to post comments to threads rather than new threads in one section -- where I'd blog -- and then have another section of the "blorum" where visitors could post new threads and start discussions. I've seriously considered making the attempt to design such a blorum.

"Blorum." Hah! I like it. A conflation of the essentially "closed" source structure of a blog and the wildly open source structure of a forum. Great idea.

Subadei,

The #1 ranked forum listed on Big Boards is Gaia Online -- which has over 7mil members! That site actually gave me the idea that forum software is fairly configurable; after the intro page, the thread-listing page looks fairly normal, but if you check the discussion under individual threads, you'll see what I mean: a pretty cool design!

The idea for the blorum occurred after I'd been contacted by a former acquaintance and forum member/blogger, about designing a new poetry forum. For a couple years before I began blogging, most of my online activity occurred on poetry forums, which is how I'd met him.

To make a long story short: at D5GW, behind the scenes, we've had a discussion about opening up our private contributors-only forum to the public, ultimately deciding against it for various reasons. However, allowing a more open-source framework for such a wide and evolving topic (5GW) seemed like a good idea. Keeping a balance between having to moderate a forum and having the time to blog would be important; plus, I'm not too keen on mish-mashed cacophony -- enough of it exists already on the Internet and in the world at large. Some blogs have forums that go with them: why not combine all in one? Additionally, the PM (private messaging) features of forum software would be pretty cool for tying the two approaches together.

Plus, I should mention that from the first with D5GW, I've always had in mind having occasional guest posts by certain individuals not listed as regular contributors to D5GW. In fact, I once began a post for D5GW openly inviting guest posts -- but that post turned into the "Empires of the Mind" post as I backed down from confronting that issue. With a blorum setup, new ideas by interesting thinkers would emerge in the open section, and via a PM system, setting up guest posts for the primary "blog" area of the blorum would be much simpler. Indeed, forum software also includes "ranking" features for members, and I could see using such a feature to increase the list of guest contributors to the blog side of the blorum -- depending on how the ranking system works, I suppose.

Damn, talk about cross cultural infusion! The only aspect not Japanese on that forum are the posts. As for the graphical format it is indeed both original and dynamic. 7 million members is a staggering number. A cyber-institution! The moderators must certainly have their hands full.

I think you should pursue this. Maybe (if you haven't already) get your D5GW co-bloggers take as they given their own capabilities can best provide a sound foundation for framing and implementing this idea.

Sounds like fun to me!

At Soob, phil mentions a service called "Drupal" that offers both blog and forum features. I haven't looked at it yet but definitely worth checking out.

I will probably experiment with the barely-used D5GW contributors forum to see how a blorum might be designed. I have the free phpBB forum software set up already and have thought of using it for the blorum -- although I'll probably want to experiment with Drupal as well (If memory serves, Drupal can be easily installed from my CPanel through my account with LivingDot.)

I've already had more ideas, although not for any blorum I would design for myself. For instance, "sub-forums" can be created; so, given a tiered system, members with different rankings could have "sub-blogs" which they control, inviting guest posts from "sub-sub-forums", etc., with individual member posting permissions set accordingly. (I.e., rather than just one "blog" and one open "forum", there could be tiered blogs: a main blog, then individual member blogs below that level, then open forums. Sounds hierarchical, I'll admit; but this would help to keep the site organized and on-topic while also allowing the freer development in the open forum sections.)

For D5GW, if I took a blorum route, it'd be only the two basic sections.

The most difficult aspect would be designing it in the first place, from the basic appearance to deciding how the blorum would operate. phpBB is actually pretty good and could probably handle everything that would need to be done for creating a blorum. (The Gaia Online site is run through phpBB.) Unfortunately, phpBB is soon to be updated to 3.0, but the update is taking a very slow route. I believe that the last beta, Beta 5, was released in December of last year. I wouldn't want to go through the headache of designing the thing in a pre-3.0 environment and then having the special modifications become useless with the release of 3.0.

Update: If I had known about

• Drupal
• XOOPS
• Joomla

from the beginning -- I might not have used Movable Type for these blogs.

I began with Blogger, wanted more functionality and control and so chose MT; but these free open-source content management systems add quite a bit more.