5 comments by 3 or more people

1. Mathew Mannion

   The thing is that MySpace, blogs, so forth aren’t the place for discussion and “chatty” conversation between people. I would argue personally that I don’t think forums are such a place either… A MySpace is very much a community website mostly in the sense of individuals having a popularity contest to see how many friends they can get, and I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to stimulate discussion there.

   However, it is a beacon for other people. People will end up at the MySpace page without seeing anything such as blogs or forums from the University before, so I think the best thing to do would be to direct people to a place which is designed to be doing that kind of thing.

   The University already runs Warwick Forums, which are tailor made for this kind of thing. I honestly thought very few people actually used Forums except on the Sitebuilder Support Forum, but then I stumbled across the Enrolment (Fresher’s) forum which has x million billion posts per day… So the best thing to do on the MySpace would be to direct even more people there!

   18 Sep 2006, 21:03

2. I’ve only just clicked on Warwick’s Myspace link now (I’m not keen on Myspace) and it’s male! Is that what your blog entry from a few weeks back was trying to answer? I feel a little responsible if so…

   18 Sep 2006, 22:39

3. Eleanor Lovell

   Thanks Mat – the trouble is that although the myspace ‘comments’ section isn’t designed for chat, people do tend to use it for that. If you look at peoples myspace pages you can clearly see that there is a dialogue going on with their friends.

   If you look at the comments on the Warwick page, they are people asking:

   Anyone in Jack Martin???
   Any masters students in Claycroft or at the WMG!? Add me for a chat!! xcx
   Hey! Anyone doing english and French??
   Anyone like me unlucky enough to get Westwood ??

   I just want there to be a place available for these questions to be answered….

   A lot of the people who are ‘friends’ of Warwick are already chatting on the Welcome Forum and also on thestudentroom.com so I think that there is definitely more life in the forums yet. I just want to try and find a place were prospective students can develop a dialogue with current students and alumni – and I think they would be less intimidated by myspace than the University Forums.

   Holly – it is your fault! When I set the page up, I originally chose female but you and Natalie both said male so I changed it! See the influence you have…

   19 Sep 2006, 10:03

4. Eleanor Lovell

   Another point Mat – how can we encourage this dialogue between students on the Welcome Forums to continue post-Freshers or is this where Warwick blogs takes over and diverts discussion away from the Forums?

   19 Sep 2006, 11:32

5. Mathew Mannion

   You could always create a general discussion forum… I think there are a few, but they’re not used much.

   19 Sep 2006, 13:09