So you might have noticed while visiting the site this morning (although probably not, because it’s Sunday – Easter Sunday at that – and almost no one ever comes here on Sundays) that the Forums have disappeared. Well, there’s a good reason for that: I took them down.

I didn’t find there was much interest in the forums; most of the posts were provided by me and by spambots. In fact, I woke up this morning to find that a good dozen possible spammers had joined. Sometimes it would be easy to tell who the spammers were; they would have names like CialisOnlineWeekEndSpecial or AdobePhotoshop4Sale. Sometimes, however, they would have names like kievorsopolous or vlakdivierge, so I would never be quite sure whether I was kicking a spammer or simply some Scandinavian fellow who just so happened to have a name I’ve never heard before. In the end, I’d always tell myself that, if kiev or vlak were real people, and had actual interest in joining the forums, they would  have posted a quick “hello world” message in the intro section.

With that said, I’m still very much interested in forming a NG community, which is why I’m kicking around the idea of allowing comments. The reason I chose to go the forum route originally was because I didn’t want any spam or junk on the main page. By entering the forums it was like saying “This is a place you can come and share your thoughts on things, but understand that this is a DMZ, and you are entering in here by your own free will.” whereas the main page should be somewhere safe, where anyone should be able to venture without having to worry about what they’ll see or read – other than my sporadic nonsense, of course.

But forums require that little extra bit of effort: you have to load the forum page, create a login and sign in, and only then can you say what’s on your mind. With comments, it can be as easy as writing down what’s on the top of your head, then and there. Sometimes that’s all people want.

So let’s try that out. I’ll leave the comments section open for about a week to test the waters. Let me know what you think. Do you like the idea of letting people post comments? Do you think it’s a bad idea? Have I doomed us all by opening up the floodgates? Let’s find out!