Web forums useful afterall

I like to think of myself as a revolutionary.

You know this whole online community (PDF) thing that's dominating American society? Well I was there at the start. Before Facebook and Myspace, there were Web forums.

I was one of the few loyal users of ESPN.com's message boards when they were first created in the mid-1990s, after the site abandoned its chat room feature. I was 14 when I first started posting and danged if I wasn't an integral part of a large community of sports fans.

I eventually grew out of the site after ESPN changed the format and I went off to college. But I learned a thing or two during my time there.

First, I learned how to form an argument. This was before the days of trolls and troublemakers—well, there were some, but not nearly as many as there seem to be these days—and if you didn't know your stuff, or if your arguments were weak, you would get eaten alive by the board regulars. I got so good I rarely lost an argument. Not because I was always right, though. I just knew how to argue better than most people.

I also learned how not to form an argument. Name calling and personal attacks were proof you couldn't argue your own point well enough, and that sort of thing got you nowhere.

Second, I learned how to write. Along with that element of validity, if you sounded like a moron in your writing style, no one was going to pay attention. People weren't willing to take the time to wade through poor writing and bad grammar to find content. The boards helped me develop organizational writing skills and my own unique voice.

Forums like this paved the way for the comment sections we take for granted on modern Web sites. I can't say whether message boards serve the same purpose these days, because I'm not a member of any. But as we push forward in the digital world of online communication, I will always look back fondly on the time I spent as a member of the ESPN Nation, perhaps a better person because of it.