Introduction and Overview

Forums are very popular software. However, by internet standards, they are a very old technology. Such software are popular because of their ease of use and ease of installation, but they do not serve well the communities using them. In some of the other articles in this section, I give hints as to why forums are more often than not ill-adapted to the site's objectives.

Instead of a traditional forum software, I suggest building web sites around 3 main content types:

1. Wiki: the end result of the collaborative effort of the community.
2. Issue tracker: similar to a bug tracker used for software development, but used in a more generic fashion, even far beyond the realm of software development. The tracker is to be used to manage any question arising, tasks to be done, etc. in pursuit of the site's goals.
3. Blog: for more personal, convivial exchanges among the site members.

Which kind of web sites could benefit from such a model? Actually, almost any kind of community web site, and even personal web sites. The following types of web sites definitely ought to adopt this model:

• Software development: this is the easy target. Bug trackers were first written for that very specific purpose.
• Documentation: any web site where something needs to be documented.
• Activist web site: where "activists" are defined as a group of people performing specific actions in pursuit of a specific goal. Such a group should document the whys and the hows of their actions and coordinate them.
• Charitable web site: this is only a special case of on "activist" web site.
• ...

This Blog + Wiki + Tracker model was first developed and implemented for http://overshoot.tv/ .
Since then, I have been developing the concept. One of my latest web sites has been designed from the ground up to follow the BWT model: http://astralcity.org/
See:
http://astralcity.org/wiki/web_site_organization

Here is my newest web site, in French, build on the same model:
http://3enjeux.overshoot.tv/