About forums, he said that, love them or hate them, they are the central no-frills method by which fans communicate with each other and the hosts. BioWare began with a single forum, but now they host forty. “You must provide them with a home base or they will go elsewhere.”

Forums are good because they are dynamic, live, and provide instant communication. They can be seeded with company messages, but the content is mostly generated by the community itself. In addition, everyone at your company can have a public voice and the staff can have a lot of control. The guy with the direct knowledge of a subject can go on the forums and answer questions.

However, forums also have their down sides. If you throw open the doors, you need constant policing. They are not very visual, and they need a lot of technical maintenance. Even when they work 90 percent of the time, when they crash, they crash dramatically. You have to be prepared for emergencies. In addition, there is a lot of competition out there. Another potential drawback is one of the forum's strengths – that everyone in your company has a voice. Not everyone is good at public relations, and they can unwittingly set off reactions with the public. “A small vocal minority can alter the tone of the entire forum,” stated Watamaniuk. “Even with more than eighty thousand posts each month, one person can change the tone.”

You're dealing with the unfiltered public. People can be unreasonable, but with anonymity “you create a curious study in screechy madness.”