anyway.

So, I get why you're concerned about the permanent value of a blog post, but I'm not so clear about the G+ side of things. Why isn't a G+ post just as permanent? Couldn't I read your G+ feed in the exact same way as a blog, going back through past posts?

Of course this same argument potentially leads to the conclusion that G+ is just as good as the blog, but there we are.

In principle you could. I'm sure the robots do, but I don't worry about how they'll judge me out of context.

For humans, there are enough practical challenges to create a convincing appearance of impermanence. Casually clicking on my profile and reading my posts will show you about 3/4 of the threads I've started but none of the threads that others have started that I've participated in.

And I'm a generous G+er! Most of my threads are public. Other people share only with their (usually giant, but finite) roleplaying thread, and if you aren't in it, you don't see it.

So like I say: in principle yes, but no, not really.

It's a good point you rise here. To me, it means that your g+ usage has a similar value to or encompasses the same sphere as what I would keep for face-to-face conversations (impermanent and honest), maybe e-mail exchanges (slower, sorta permanent, but usually about as honest), sometimes telephone calls (just a poor surrogate of face-to-face), etc. Not the same kind of content I expect on a blog, not even the same kind of conversation I expect in blog comments, even when this particular blog is so close to being a forum.
But—since you're the one who brought up forums—I think that, no matter what they were set to achieve, historically forums have always been much closer to the "blog" side of this spectrum then to the "face-to-face" conversation side of it. *Most especially* the Forge (by the time I discovered it, it was basically Ron's very heavily commented blog).

I think you should keep using G+ for contentious conversations and impermanent discussions if you want, but some (many? Most?) people will never see what you post there. I'm pretty dubious of social network sites in general; the only

Arghh! Anyway, closed-off social network sites are the worst of all worlds, in some ways, and if you have cool stuff to share, even if it's nano-sized, I want to find out about it here.

I don't know the answer, but that's a sharp insight.

So, there's some vaguely-defined thing called (say) "quality" that's (for me) the purpose of having the converstaion.  "Honesty about contentious subjects" and "a worthwhile posting" both tend to enhance the quality I seek.  I think your point about G+ vs. blog is valid, but - the honest post encouraged by G+ doesn't really lead to a higher quality DISCUSSION - even when it does (which I do see it can) allow a higher quality POST.

Maybe if anyway could be a discussion of, pointer to, and more detailed/focused/"worthwhile" analysis of last week's/month's/something G+ threads, we'd get the best of it all?

For my part, the reason I got involved in this community in the first place was this blog, through the Forge.  The insights and then revolutionary ideas you guys talked about in the posts and comments were mind-blowing to me as I learned how to think about games.  It may be a biased, anecdotal opinion, but the permanence of these conversations is why I'm here, so of course I'd like to see them continue.

Hell, even if you take the Ron Edwards high road of just posting high-falootin' articles about weighty theory here (and make no mistake, those articles were a gold mine in their own right), and posted in general in G+ like you do, that'd be fine too.

You guys are sweet, but worrying about writing something worthwhile practically equals writing nothing worthwhile.

(There's now a 2nd Evan posting on these threads, hence the handle shift)

I'm in the process of taking Vincent's posts and turning them into essays for, say, a book. anyway is way more useful to me than G+. But I'm selfish.

Re: "but worrying about writing something worthwhile practically equals writing nothing worthwhile."

True.

That's why in the old time it used to go like this:
1. have conversations;
2. get to a worthwhile insight;
3. reformulate your new insight as an essay;
4. publish it.

In the Internet era we also got a less time-consuming (though this is arguable) alternative:
1. have conversations, which happen to be recorded in writing;
2. somebody (participant or not) gets an insight out of it;
3. the one who found it worthwhile points other people to the conversation, which now lives a second life as an essay.

This was both powerful and, at times, problematic.