For me, and I seem to be nearly alone in this view, an online forum is for discussion...which is much, much different that a social networking site. Why the need to make the former into the later?

I disagree with you on that Soi. The lines now days are very blurred. Many FB groups are basically forums in disguise. Take a look at "Expats and Locals living in Sihanoukville" for example and you will see what I mean. Things are discussed form where to find the best food, to who the best Doctor in town is, politics, general happenings etc. Basically anything you can find say in this or other forums.

It really depends Phuket. I used to be on some regional forums catering to specific interests (cars/motorcycles). Most people on the forum know/knew each other by name and regularly created meetups. Many posters knew each other by name, but still referred to each other by their usernames on the forum. Also depends on the amount of traffic/users the forum has. In very large forums, no one knows each other.

But even in smaller forums, it really depends what kind of person you are. For example, people like OD and Detroit Muscle, despite being here for a relatively much shorter period than I, know far more people than I do. The reason? Upon arriving to Cambodia, they started posting a lot on K440 and met-up with tons of people. I don't network much, I don't talk to strangers much and it takes some effort to get me out of my shell. I'm not anti-social or anything, but I'm not that outgoing either. I tend to stick with the small group of people I know (I've been this way since kindergarden, so it isn't likely to change). Doesn't mean I don't like meeting new people though. On the other forum, only 2 people or so know who I am in real life (and I've been posting there regularly for over 5 years). The rest probably can't even guess my nationality or what I do here. I've worked out who some posters are in real life, and I've even seen them in bars and such, but never felt the burning need to introduce myself. Would be kind of weird anyways unless it was part of an official meetup: "Hey! Aren't you XYX from that forum?!". I don't think I post anything which I'd be ashamed of if people did find out who I am, but I still like the concept of forum anonymity and the separation of internet/real life. Facebook is Facebook, forums are different. However, some posters use the anonymity to constantly stir shit or be dickish, which I find a bit annoying. I do find it cool when I randomly meet another poster, but I certainly don't feel the need to get to know who everyone is in real life. I couldn't remember all your real names anyways...

Digg3r wrote:Where is this site hosted? Does it use http or https? What cookies (1st and 3rd party) has orange dragon put onto the site? What nasty pieces of js are exploiting our browsers? It's not just about the government coming to the host with a warrant or court order. It's about the multitude of other ways to track/stalk/spy/intercept. Not just here but anywhere on the Internet.

Pretty easy to avoid unwanted tracking, use browser add ons like NotScripts. Gives you control over what scripts and whatnot can be run, used it for quite a while but gave up on it after getting tired of always having to remember to turn it off when doing my online banking.

Tim Linkinwater wrote:As a matter of interest, what does it cost to host a forum like this and who/how do you pay?

If I were to setup a forum using php software today, I would look for a cloud solution, makes scalability much simpler.

We have been putting a few of our resent sites on EngineYard (not pushing for them as such, we just ended up using them, im sure there are better options if you look around), and it has worked out quite well, we have had some media mentions that spiked traffic, I just logged in to the admin console and added ten more instances of the webserver, thats all, no config or setup or anything, all auto-magic and a couple of days later I decommissioned the execss resources.

Some cloud solutions autoscale, but with them you usually end up paying a premium, and if the expected times in the lime light for your site is close to 0, cost is usually more of a concern than handling spikes.

if we start getting hit hard we'll be moving to amazon cloud. for now it's just on my basic vm server and running fine. costs vary depending on traffic volumes, but now on my vm server it's pretty cheap. my other hosting clients really cover that server's cost, so as long as we're not overloading it it's pretty much paid for. if we get big and i have to move it off, well... it's a good problem to have.