In the new era of choices, the great struggle has been joined.

On the one side, you have the Shiney New First Galactic Blogpire, born of the bloated (yet ever-resourceful and informative) carcass of Lucasfilm Online, a dreaded juggernaught of Blog Side Power wrapped in white plasteel armor.

On the other side, you've got the good old friendly Message Board Alliance, in an ongoing battle for the freedom of discussion everywhere. They may be scrappy and war-weary, but they've got Wookiees and stuff, and the Force is with them, yo.

What Message Boards Are For:
The point of message board topics are relatively simple - to talk. This is why they are also known as "Discussion Boards".

Message board topics, which can be posted over at http://forums.starwars.com, are for short questions and are made specifically for discussion - in other words, to get replies. Short questions and topics like "Who is Sifo-Dyas" and "What do you think about Battlefront II" - those are topics best discussed on the message boards because you have the potential to get thousands of replies, or you can join an existing discussion on the same topic that has a wealth of exploration into the topic.

What Blogs Are For:
Blog entries are intended more for something like publishing your own "magazine" online, where you can author your own "articles", if you will. They might be news-based, they might be current events, they might be an ongoing diary of your personal experiences, or a chance for you to editorialize about different things that interest you. Typically blogs are essay length (let's say, for instance a avergae minimum of 200-300 words). Or, other times, a blog entry may be used to announce a new development or an interesting website link - in that case, the content might be lacking, but where the link takes you will be self-explanatory. All in all, you can think of a blog as a chance to report on the world of your personal interest.

Yes, occasionally it's interesting to pose thought-provoking questions, but it's not where you use it as "ask the librarian" type inqueries. It's more the place to ask questions, but perhaps offer some possible answers as well, or for that matter, explore the impact of there not being an answer. Instead of simply asking for a yes/no or one line answer, it's where you delve into the subject matter at length. For instance, asking "Who is Sifo-Dyas" would be followed by a few points on who you think he is, or is not, and perhaps how intersting it is that no answer seems to satisfy all the standing questions, how this mystery affects other aspects of the saga, etc. etc. etc.

Blogs, in short, are not simply a place to say "Hey, what's up", or "What is this", its a place to say "This is what's up" and "What is this? I'll tell you what this is..." followed by a detailed, well thought-out, point-for-point extrapolation on your own point of view.

You don't have to be a prolific writer to have a blog. You don't have to excercise perfect grammar or spelling, either. You don't have to be right all the time, and you don't have to write "War and Peace". But it helps to understand the point of blogging, before undetaking it.

The Rule of Hoof - Why are you Writing?
One "rule of thumb" you can use is to ask yourself this question before writing a blog entry:

"Am I writing this to get replies about this, or am I writing this to give my thoughts about this?"

If it's for replies, you probably want to place the topic on the message boards. If it's to share your thoughts, or some interesting news, it could be a good candidate for a blog entry.

In short, Blog Entries do not depend on replies for success. Message board threads do. If your entry depends on replies, you meant to put it on the message boards. These two sites aren't interchangeable in function.

This is especially true when you consider that if you wanted replies, you only get 50 from a blog entry, whereas you could get up to 8000 or 9000 from a message board topic. For a blog, the replies are really more a chance for people to sound off on your thoughts. It's like writing an interesting article in the newspaper, and people get to write the author back. Replies in blogs are more icing on the cake, not the cake itself.

There are several truly wonderful examples of blogs out there, so look around, get a feel for why people that blog a lot, blog at all in the first place. You'll see it's because they like the opportunity to share in detail the things they find interesting.

DM out

PS-

Meese can't type. Seriously. Who told you that? That's just silly.