... on the way to the Forums

I have been blown away these last few weeks with what's going on in Exit133 forums. After their initial introduction I didn't participate much, but have suddenly found myself drawn back in. There's a wealth of information there and I've been missing out!

If you're not a regular user, it's worth investigating. The Exit133 homepage allows you to see which forums are active and this is my easiest way into the forum. Also, you can register in the forum and then after you've browsed for awhile new sections will show up with a blue square so you can see what's happened in a certain section since the last time you were on.

Part of what makes the forums so good is the amount of information there. It's staggering. The usage numbers are pretty high for a forum dedicated solely to a mid-sized city like Tacoma. 249 users. 502 threads. 2,580 posts! (Note I checked the stats 24 hours before writing this post and there were 9 fewer threads and 21 fewer posts. It's a busy place.)

That's an average of more than 10 posts per user, which is crazy high. The forums have a bunch of running discussions going on. Recently updated threads include topics about the Sounder, high rise in Tacoma vs other local cities, good lunch spots, Tacoma elections, and a whole bunch of other topics.

But what's really interesting is that some people are breaking news in the forums. Just this week a thread in the forums about Calendula's building in the Stadium District selling prompted a post on the main page. Questions and answers about the closing and reopening of the Kickstand and Corina Bakery, new businesses all over the place ... it's really good reading.

Others are posting very interesting essays on urban development, etc.

Anyway, I'm back in to reading them again.

(Since I'm plugging Exit133 today, I'll also go ahead and plug Andrew Fry's Living & Working In A Virtual World. Andrew is very much into arts and technology in Tacoma and writes about how those two topics frequently cross paths. Actually, this post was written in the spirit of his site. There you can find reviews and plugs of interesting tech stuff that bringing people together on-line and off. Well worth adding to your Google Reader page as I have.)