Communication: Blogs
Imagine that I, some random internet person, is simply oozing with wisdom. And I like to share my wisdom in broad, patronizing strokes, like a king dispensing dried cow patties for fire-starters. I especially like conspiracy theories, because how can anybody challenge me on those, right? How should I dispense? My choices are far and wide on the...
A Blog is a collection of web articles (or a singular web article) authored by select individuals intended largely for one-way commuication. It is akin to a newspaper article, but not necessarily authored by a professional journalist. In VLab, Blogs tend to be very topical in the community in which they reside and can even be papers that have been submitted for technical publication elsewhere. VLab Blogs can also be discussed by users other than the author - similar to a Forum.
(See the wikipedia entry for Blog for more excruciating details.)
In VLab, a Blog is a great way to encourage members to utilize the community. Blogs can garner interest. The more the membership is active in a community, the healthier and more valuable that community is. But - in order for a Blog to really have value, it needs to be of interest to the user base (ie: somehow related to the reason why the community exists in the first place) and be active itself, which means you would need one or more authors to contribute to the Blog on a regular or semi-regular basis. It is also a good idea to use the Subscription Manager (need link) to ensure your membership is subscribed to a Blog so that they can get email notifications when a new Blog entry is created.
