My view of the world

Someone I know just put up an emploees only forum and is going to be terribly disappointed.
The theory is that the emploees will use the forum for gossip, news and information. Unfortunately most of the employees are computer illiterate, they understand the telephone, but very few of them use a computer anywhere but work, so they are not comfortable putting things in writing, when they could just pick up the phone and call.
I understand the intent, but I find the basic concept of a small company relying on a forum to be funny.
These people don’t use blogs, they only use a computer for accounting because they have to, they don’t use IM and for the most part, they never check their email.
The company needs a very specific reason for this forum.
The theory is, if they use this forum, they won’t be misunderstood (Yea, right……most of them can’t spell and very few of them articulate well), the data will stay around forever, unless the admin doesn’t like it, in which case it will disappear.

We’ve all seen this before, when you go to a large forum, you see the same names over and over.
With larger companies it’s a great idea if you have enough people and tech support isn’t needed yesterday, problems can be discussed and suggestions can be made, unfortunately, even in large, computer-centric companies, only a fairly small percentage actually participate.

Have you ever noticed that at meetings very few people say anything except in agreement with what someone else just said.
The basic problem is human nature, most people are sheep and won’t express themselves no matter what the subject.
When you combine sheeple with technology they are not comfortable with and you get deafening silence.

Still, in spite of the incredibly small number of people who might have something to say and the inconvenience of having to check the bloody thing every day, this experiment might work. All they have to do is find a reason for people to want to participate, it needs to be fun, or at least interesting.
I wish them luck.

I have an idea.
I’ll suggest a party with free food and booze, but only people who post to the forum get to go. If they think this is a good idea, I’ll join as a consultant and post something right away.