I have nothing against the original suggestion.

Personally, I would not do it. Thread derailment is a general problem, not only in the study journals. We have very good moderators - let them handle it.

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Stay out of my territory! (W. White, aka Heisenberg)

I think it's entirely reasonable to allow the first poster to have ownership of their thread in the study journal section. It's rather implicit in the name of the section that it's a thread that belongs to the person who creates it. People tend to act that way for the most part anyways, and as mentioned, one can always split into a new thread if there is some heated discussion on a subject. If something flares up, it may be better to have the discussion moved to the appropriate section anyways, depending on the subject matter, where people who don't read study journals may be interested in commenting as well.

As for blogspot, wordpress, and other blogging sites, if I wanted to set up a blog for myself, I would do it. I prefer to write about my activities here because I come here anyways, so I don't have multiple sites to check, and there is a built-in audience who may be interested as well. As a reader, I know I liked reading yukontodd's journal, but now that he's moving to his own blog, I'm not certain that I will keep checking it unless it's updated more frequently than here.

you mean reading and posting comments?

Wait, how would self-moderation prevent a person from reading threads? And writing to threads is fine, but derailing a study journal is way worse than derailing a normal thread.

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Tactics yes, Tact no...

I'm inclined to agree with this...if someone wishes to have a "free-for-all" discussion about a topic in someone else's study journal, it seems like it should be easy enough to start a new thread, whereas if someone has been keeping a journal for a year or more and it suddenly becomes (to pull a topic out of a hat) a rules-minutia-dispute argument amongst other people it could more or less ruin the journal effect. I'm in the camp that doesn't really read study journals, but as I understand it, it's one person chronicling their studying....seems reasonable that they can control their own journal.

I don't really follow the study journals here. I may click on one from the "view new posts" page, and occasionally, I may even comment in one. I say "may," because I don't pay a whole lot of attention to what particular forum a thread was posted to. So, what follows is just my opinion, and may not even match the facts for this site (in which case, I apologize in advance).

Everyone seems to be treating "study journals" posted here like a private thing that belongs solely to the person who started it, and any other contributors are merely observers or well-wishers or something else (yet definitely secondary to the OP). In a traditional blog setting (eg, Blogger/Blogspot, WordPress, LiveJournal), this makes sense. Each journal entry/blog is its own separate page, created by the blogger, and comments are in their own section. Visually, it's very clear where the emphasis is. The blog entry, not the comments.

In a forum setting, it's very different. Other than order, there isn't really any differentiation between "article" and "comment" (or in this case, "blog entry" and "other type of comment"). In fact, change the sort order, and it becomes much more difficult to tell who started the thread. So, even if the original intention was that this particular forum be similar to a "private" journal (that just happens to be public), the fact is it's much more like a shared journal [exchange diary]. While all the posters may (or may not) implicitly agree that the emphasis of the journal is dictated by the OP, the journal itself really belongs to everyone who participates in it. And it'd be pretty damn rude to rip a page out just because one person doesn't like what was written in it (certain, ToS-violating, content aside, of course).

Now, if someone wants to have a "study journal" where they're in the spotlight, and everyone else is just a silhouette in the audience, the tools already exist to make such a journal. It literally only takes a couple minutes to have a Blogger blog up and running, with the all the power in the hands of the blogger him or herself. If they're not even willing to put in that minimal effort, they'll certainly get no sympathy from me when they run out crying about their study journal being "derailed" by people with their own ideas about what to discuss on a discussion forum.

I think you raise a very interesting point about shared ownership. There are, as far as I can make out, two types of study journals on here. Those like Tami's which are ideas based and discuss study techniques etc and there are those like mine which are mostly game reviews with some personal comment on current study approaches/life circumstances/whatever. In the latter, it is very much shared ownership model. I don't think it could work off of a forum really. In my case you could rename my journal as "Bill, Ed and friends review DDK games" and you wouldn't be misrepresenting the journal. In this case I think you're right on the button and the journal can't be viewed as being owned by one individual. I merely provide the raw material, the actual content of the journal that is of interest and use to others (the reviews) is provided by others. I don't think this type of journal would work on Blogger etc at all.

The thing with Tami's journal (and others like it) is that it's more of guided debate than a free-for-all with the journal owner throwing out topics for discussion/debate/consideration. I don't think I should be able to start any discussion I like on her journal. I should have to respect the topics she wants to discuss purely out of politeness. I think we have to respect that she puts in work coming up with the ideas for discussion and is trying collect her ideas and thoughts in a single thread and that we shouldn't derail (intentionally or unintentionally) the discussion. Yes you could argue it might be better placed on a blogging service but that lacks the sense of community that is on here which I imagine is important for many who start study journals on here.

There's a third type of journal, that chronicles how they're studying and such. I don't have time to go into this one as I'm late for the go club but I think this one is the most suitable for moving to blogger.