Take a regular blog, and flip it around. What do you get? A reversed blog, of course, where vistors write questions or comments and the author anwers. Sounds stupid, but I think people could get a lot of fun and use out of this. I see this manifesting as a single site with multiple instances (e.g. blogger or livejournal), funded by ads, and configurable to control who can ask questions, who can answer, and so on.
Here are a few examples. A couple’s answers their friends’ questions. A researcher’s or expert’s revblog answers questions from others in her field. A CEO’s revblog answers his company’s employees. Changing the parameters around may allow anybody to ask and answer (a forum) or only the author to ask (a traditional blog), but keeping in the spirit of “questions” and “answers.”
For instance, imagine this were a reversed blog where I come up with silly ideas and you tell me if they suck or not. Would that be a good idea?
Update: As pointed out in the comments, this idea has now been implemented by Stack Overflow and its brethren: Super User, Server Fault, and Math Overflow.
Seems very reminiscent of a forum, but having control over who responds to questions, and perhaps who can write the questions, might make it much more productive. A lot of forums I’ve seen just generate lots of useless chatter. [Granted, there are plenty of useful/interesting ones, but there are plenty of, what I would label as, "OmGZ u sUk" forums.] This could be much more interesting.
Seems like it could lead to lots of personal flaming. Maybe if you received a list of questions and they only get posted when you answer them.
i think it is a needed thing right now. Please build it
It has now been successfully implemented as stackoverflow or mathoverflow I believe.
Good point! I’m glad to see the connection between Stack Overflow and my idea. It’s also great that the Stack Overflow model has expanded so much recently. Good luck with Math Overflow!
To be fair, I suppose the “reversed blog” idea owes a lot to bulletin board forums (both web and non-web based), especially Usenet-style mailing lists. My point was that the web did not have a modern equivalent, forums being a thing of the past.