FOC09 I found a discussion forum I can read

17 September 2009

Hi there, after being refused membership and ignored by other forums, I remembered reading about the Lost forum which is a discussion forum about the TV programme Lost. Members discuss the actors, the plot, the sets, all sorts of questions about the show and their responses to it. It has 94,708 members!

It was good to use for this exercise because the discussions are open to the public to read. This is a really large forum and it is very moderated and organized, so I don’t think I will be asking if they need facilitation services. In fact, the official word on asking to become a moderator is “Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

Their moderators create threads after each episode is aired, to direct discussions and prevent hundreds of duplicate threads. They have mentors for newbie members. These are chosen from long term members. You are rated by how many days you have been a member – from Newbie to Senior Member, and new members first five posts are moderated.

Flaming, spamming, personal attacks etc result in members and posts being removed. Members are asked to report bad posts.

There are creative forums where members create and post Lost-related artwork, writing, music videos and others comment on them. There is also a forum to discuss anything and people ask for help in all sorts of things.

This forum would probably not be very interesting to people who hadn’t watched Lost. TV programmes are a favourite water-cooler topic of conversation, so I would say this is a community and it is well organized.

This is another Lost forum which has 729 members. It looks as though on this one you take on a character and play plot-prediction games. All of the threads seem to be posted by Hollywood Heidi, so it looks as though this one is well-moderated too.