Converting this forum into a weblog – and following the recent developments with trackbacks and comments on weblogs – convinced me that there’s a gray zone between forums and weblogs which just cries out to be filled.

For instance, Rael Dornfest just announced that he’s merged comments and trackbacks on his weblog. So his structure now is a reverse-chronological list of his posts, together with a chronological list of comments and trackbacks. The only actual difference is that comments are directly posted to his site (with no copy elsewhere), and trackbacks are excerpts of comments posted to somebody else’s site.

In a forum like this one, the structure is similar. I post stuff which appears in reverse-chronological order. People can post comments directly, or on their own weblog and ping me for a trackback. The major difference is that threads aren’t kept together in chronological order – but I’m working on that. Forum topics are equivalent to weblog categories.

So, a forum – based on phpBB or its competitors – can be viewed as a borderline weblog, with extremes of many collaborators and categories, and a weblog – based on Movable Type or its competitors – can be viewed as a borderline forum, with only one or a few collaborators.

Forum software often has many extra frills like avatars and private messaging, and necessarily invests heavily in collaborator control and moderation facilities. Weblog software is ahead in having trackbacks and RSS feed generation, and is more lightweight (less server-intensive). Both have similar facilities for archiving and searching posted stuff. Both can be seen to have evolved from 80s/90s BBS software – FirstClass, which I worked heavily with a decade ago, is one of the few still available.

Update: Sébastien Paquet is debating whether blogs really foster conversation:

Denham, Lilia and I are debating whether blogs are indeed suited for conversation or if, on the contrary, collective spaces are needed for true dialogue. Ton, you had something to say here, didn’t you?

I suppose when he says “collective spaces” he means forums…