I&#x27;ve been looking for intelligent conversation online for over 25 years.  For a time it was Usenet. I mostly missed the Well, though I caught mailing lists, Slashdot, and for a brief moment, G+ (it&#x27;s still there, and I&#x27;ve cultivated a useful community, though the reach is small).<p>I&#x27;ve done some exploration of just where intelligent conversation online lies, and frankly was surprised at the results:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;dredmorbius&#x2F;comments&#x2F;3hp41w&#x2F;tracking_the_conversation_fp_global_100_thinkers&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;dredmorbius&#x2F;comments&#x2F;3hp41w&#x2F;trackin...</a><p>The methodology uses the <i>Foreign Policy</i> Top 100 Global Thinkers list as a proxy for &quot;intelligent discussion&quot;, the string &quot;this&quot; to detect English-language content, generally, and the arbitrarily selected string &quot;Kim Kardashian&quot; as a stand-in for antiintellectual content.  Google search results counts on site-restricted queries are used to return the amount of matching content per site, with some bash and awk glue to string it all together and parse results.<p>As expected, Facebook is huge, as is Twitter. When looking at the FP&#x2F;1000 ratio (hits per 1,000 pages) KK&#x2F;1000, and FP:KK ratios, more interesting patterns emerge.<p>Facebook beats G+, largely.<p>Reddit makes up in quality what it lacks in size, but Metafilter blows it out of the water. Perhaps a sensible user filter helps a lot.<p>The real shocker though was how much content was on blogging engines, even with a very partial search -- mostly Wordpress and a few other major blogging engine sites.  Quite simply, blogs favour long-form content, some of it <i>exceptionally</i> good.<p>But blogs suck for <i>exposure</i> and <i>engagement</i>.<p>This screams &quot;Opportunity!!&quot; to me. I&#x27;ve approached several players (G+&#x2F;Google, Ello) with suggestions they look into this. Ello&#x27;s @budnitz seems to be thinking along these lines (I&#x27;m a fan of what Ello&#x27;s doing, but its size is minuscule, and mobile platform usability is abysmal.)<p>One of the most crucial success elements for G+ is the <i>default</i> &quot;subscribe to all subsequent activity on this post&quot; aspect. Well, that and the ability to block fuckwits (though quite honestly <i>ignore</i> would be more than sufficient).  There&#x27;s a hell of a lot else to dislike, but those two elements are crucial to engagement.<p>As for blogging, I&#x27;m a fan of a minimal design (<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codepen.io&#x2F;dredmorbius&#x2F;pen&#x2F;KpMqqB" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;codepen.io&#x2F;dredmorbius&#x2F;pen&#x2F;KpMqqB</a>) and static site generators.