An interesting article - 6 Steps to Effective Discussion Forums on your Intranet, but I don't necessarily agree with all of his ideas. Let me start with the first one, to have an effective discussion, you need critical mass. The problem for most forums starts (and ends) here.
I don't remember where I read this, but several people have found a similar 100-10-1 metric for forums. Out of 100 people in the rough target audience, 10 will sign-up and read forums, 1 will contribute. Thus, when the author talks about having 500 people in their company, if you use this really crude forum, you may only get 5 people who are active contributors. Not sure this will generate critical mass. Especially if the topics vary.
Second, he suggests attaching discussion to every page (much like how a blog works). Again, I'm not sure this is good practice. Discussion becomes too difuse and you don't reach critical mass.
I do agree with several all of his other points:
2. PROVIDE AN AGGREGATED, PRIORITIZED VIEW OF DISCUSSIONS.
3. INTEGRATE FORUMS WITH THE COMPANY DIRECTORY (no registration required)
4. STRIP THE INTERFACE TO THE BASICS.
5. SIGNAL PARTICIPANTS WHEN A POST IS MADE.
6. ENGAGE YOUR ORGANIZATION'S THOUGHT LEADERS.
I would also add that approaches like IBM's Jams where topics are raised to be discussed over relatively short windows with high visability will create interesting discussions. This is a way to overcome some of the critical mass issue.
However, I'd be surprised to find that many organizations with 500 employees are getting much value out of broad spectrum discussion forums as are described in his article. Maybe I'm wrong.
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