This section would be a little different to our current Blogs & Podcasts > Blog Posts section where people share links to blog posts they’ve posted on their own blog - this new section would essentially be for writing blog posts directly on the forum.
Why might you want to?
You might not have your own blog.
You might want to give blogging a try before starting your own blog.
As these blogs would be posted on the forum they would be subject to a few additional rules:
Please don’t post AI slop (please use your own words).
Please make use of headings using Markdown formatting.
Please try to include a TLDR.
Please try to make the post as easy to read as possible.
Please avoid controversial topics or titles that might go against our usual rules (eg: please don’t use titles that might be sensationalist, ranty, offensive or lead to maintainer burnout etc).
To elaborate…
AI slop
AI has many uses that people like, however AI slop is pretty much universally hated. Perhaps in part because it is so recognisable, or that it is missing that ‘human’ feel, or maybe because it has no personality other than that of a dull (even if a bit smart) machine - all of which is not you, and personal blogs are meant to be exactly that - a reflection of you, your thoughts and your personality
So feel free to use AI as a smart translator, thesaurus or dictionary, but don’t let it write the post (or chunks) for you. (And if you didn’t use AI, try to ensure your post doesn’t come across like you have.)
Make the post easy to digest
Use Markdown formatting to lay your post out into sections, use headings to signify what each section is about.
Add a TLDR or a short summary at the top
Make it easy for people to see what your post is about - if they have to read a big chunk of it just to get an idea of what you are talking about, frustration levels will be high and that might result in a negative comment.
Be mindful of your content
Here’s some quick guidelines:
Try to ensure it doesn’t come across as spam.
Try to ensure you are not criticising someone or something they have worked on.
Try to be mindful of the impact your post might have on someone/project maintainers/the Elixir Core Team, etc.
Please do not use sensationalist or ranty type titles (they are as universally despised as much as AI slop :p)
Please do not post about anything that might not be permitted on the public forum (please don’t use the Blog section to circumvent our members-only sections, for example).
Please do not post a reaction, solution, or discussion, about any kind of mishap involving a member or members of the community.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of the reader - how would you feel if someone else wrote the same piece in the same way?
So there would be restrictions compared to posting a piece on a personal blog, but there are plenty of…
Positive things that could be posted about:
A post about a project or library you’ve worked on.
Something you found helpful and want to share with others.
Thanking people in the community for tech you use or love.
Writing a journal about a book, or a new job, etc.
Can you move your blog post to your own blog at some point?
Yes! Once you’ve moved the post to your own blog we can simply convert your Blog thread into a Blog Posts thread - I.e where the first post is replaced by a description/quote and a link to your blog post’s new home.
Do you think our guidelines should include anything else?
If we were to proceed, do you think these guidelines should include anything else? If so please say here (or PM @AstonJ if you would prefer to say privately).
Poll
Would you use a Blog section on the forum/think it’s a good idea?
Forums are for short form writings. A long form writing (not AI slop) takes much more time and effort; So if I spent a considerable amount of time to write a blog post, I would want a permanent URL, not subject to the whims of moderators. Posting long form writings directly on a forum will put more burden on the moderators (see the additional rules you have), without getting appreciation from the posters. It is a lose-lose proposition.
I’d argue that “I don’t like the idea and think it would be a net detriment to the forum” should be an option alongside “dislike wouldn’t personally use”, otherwise it feels like a forgone conclusion (note neither of these are views I hold).
Would such a publishing platform be able to take advantage of Markdown headers to produce a proper ToC? If not, I probably wouldn’t use it as I do view that as table stakes for any long-form content I personally author.
I’ve managed forums which have grown into fully fledged sites, with News, Articles and Blog sections - and all with forums using the same forum platform to power all those sections (you just give the first post (i.e the news, article, or blog) a different design to subsequent posts (i.e the comments).
Whenever you post on a platform you do not own you are subject to that platform’s community guidelines. If you do not want to be subject to them then it’s best to create/post on your own blog that you host on your own server (but even then, you are subject to the datacenter’s terms, often based on the laws of countries in which they are physically located).
That is true… but there are swings and roundabouts. We recently had a thread that would have been a good candidate for such a section - as it was a ‘forum discussion’ it received replies that it might not have were it a ‘personal blog’.
Additionally, people are already posting blog-like threads on the forum. Here are a couple of recent threads from just the last few days:
At this stage we’re more interested in whether anyone would use it. Negatives (esp on a per user basis) can often be worked around, for instance, the blogger or the entire section could be muted. The main potential negatives to the forum are listed in the “not-to-do” list in the first post - was there anything else you can think of that might be a detriment to the forum?
You can create anchors with headings, eg:
This should become a linkable heading
Which you can then add towards the top of the post. Discourse actually does have a ToC feature which I think might be via a plugin, you can see an example here: https://meta.discourse.org/t/creating-form-templates/397564 (I’m not sure we’d need it tho as a list could be created manually as per above)
I saw that my post was mentioned so I wanted to add a brief comment just from a user perspective. I browse ElixirForum often but rarely post. I would usually see libraries make an initial post and then within the same thread make updates and/or reply to people and that was my intention. I did take some time to try to find the proper way to do this but I wasn’t sure. Mine wasn’t a library but I saw a few projects/products use chat/discussion so I thought that was my best bet. My assumption was that the initial post + follow ups in the same thread was a small convention so I thought to go with that in the end.
I’m not an avid poster in any forums to be honest so I’m not sure what the protocol or recommended practice is here.
That is true. All I wanted to do is to warn people that there is a much better and only slightly inconvenient way, which is to start your own blog. I have written and posted series postings that amount to novella length on BBSs 30 years ago but they are all lost now. If only I knew.
Currently that’s exactly what we prefer (one thread per library or project with updates posted in it) but since our frameworks category has grown, and there were three more potential projects to be added just from last year (Popcorn, Nex and Beam Bots) as mentioned in our Elixir Forum 2026 Update - It’s Our 10th Birthday! announcement we are moving away from the one thread per library or project rule to make the system fairer for everyone (so every library or project can post news/update threads as well). The first step towards this was with our new Your Libraries & OS Mentoring > Library Updates / Feedback section
They can be quite popular (depending on the forum) and perhaps it’s worth more of a try now for two reasons:
Fewer and fewer people go to the trouble of setting up a personal blog
More and more people are turning to AI to write posts for them
Our section and guidelines could encourage the opposite of both of the above?
I voted yes, but with the caveat that I probably wouldn’t use it much. I have my own programming blog on which I write about whatever I want, and I would probably cross-post on my own site and the forum even if I did use this feature since I like having my own library of articles that I’ve put time and effort into (even though I rarely write articles cause I’m busy).
I do think this would be a beneficial feature though. I’ve been thinking of doing a writeup of how I use the two LV libraries I published recently in production, but that would only be interesting or useful to the handful of devs watching those two libs, which I’m pretty sure all came from this forum, so this is the correct place to put that kind of content.
Also, SEO is much better on this forum than on my site. I mostly just send links to my blog out to the programming discords I’m in if the article is relevant to the people there, but for Elixir-specific content, it would be nice to see what the broader internet thinks.
Lastly, the only reason I have my own blog is because when I tried to open a Medium account a couple years back, their sign up modal was borked, and their suggested fix was to disable all of my browser’s tracking and privacy protections, so I immediately closed their website and built and deployed my own in an afternoon. I think the Elixir Forum could provide some of the benefits of something like Medium (SEO for example) without the horrible UX and privacy issues, so I think it would be valuable for a lot of users.
As a section mod, this does make me think twice about what our content moderation policy would be for blog posts.
Less because it’s unclear to moderators, and more that we’d want to make it especially crystal clear for blog authors. The investment of sitting down to compose a long post should be matched with confidence that it’s not going to modded behind MO immediately (or at least confident foreknowledge that the subject material in question is MO). Otherwise we’re adding friction to using this forum as a platform that would rightfully make authors wary of posting (making people wary about being uncivil is good but we can remove the friction and uncertainty upfront).
Obviously moderating one’s own blog is the ultimate escape hatch for being polemic, but I think we should be very clear in the blog post category template 1) what subject matter we default to considering forbidden and MO 2) under what conditions we might migrate a post to MO after publication if any (ie what kind of reception/responses might necessitate this beyond normal comment moderation) 3) emphasizing that these things are always subject to moderator discretion. And note that even a post that is delisted it will remain available for the author to migrate off-platform after submission (ie, a consistent mod policy of moving to mod queue if ex: off-topic, rather than deleting, for all but the most flagrant spam/advertising/offensiveness/automated slop).
TL;DR: one of the main benefits I see of posting blogs here would be the free moderation, but we should make sure that authors are well-informed about the trade-offs and our policies are clear in advance. I bring this up only because I have seen some confusion lately on why a post gets MO’d, it feels like we should get ahead of it for long-form content. We should respect those investing their time and personal brand in the forum by making the social contract clearer than normal in the template.
Most reasonable people posting on a platform that they do not own understand that the content they post will be subject to community guidelines or that sometimes there may be something about that particular content that may not be suitable at that particular time. For example, on a platform like this (which cares about its community) we do not allow threads (and so wouldn’t allow blog posts) that create or further drama or publicly draw attention to any mishaps by another member or members of the community. Someone might inadvertently or unwittingly be doing something wrong - there’s no need to embarrass them in front of the entire community (even if indirectly) and certainly no need for what they might feel is akin to a public lashing. As you’ll note as a Section Mod, our moderation style here aims to be as kind as we can, and in a way which gives people room to recover from the situation - whether that’s by talking to them privately, or if we have to do it publicly, by trying to pencil posts or threads in to be deleted or unlisted so there is no lasting embarrassment.
That is just one example, however as mentioned above to Derek - if people want to post controversial topics, or in a way that is not considerate towards or our community, then they are better off posting on their own blog. (If they are ever in any doubt, they could always run things by us first, and we can make this clear in the guidelines as well.)
So going back to this^^ it won’t be all that different to what’s currently permissible on the forum - however if you have any specific items that you think should be covered in the guidelines/templates please let us know (though just keep in mind, at this stage, we really are just trying to figure out what kind of interest there would be from those who might want to use it).
As a side note, I’d add that the forum is currently in an adjustment phase (as mentioned in our latest update - because of things like LLM use) so we need to explore ideas like these to ensure the forum remains a useful, interesting and active place - so we can continue to offer members (and visitors) something worthwhile while also continue to do things like encourage adoption (through things like buzz & activity). As mentioned in our update, I’m sure we’ll find our happy place soon enough. Thank you airing your concerns and for taking the time to post your thoughts (try not to worry, you’re in good hands ).
I specifically held off voting in the poll as to not influence anyone - there seems to be a fair bit of interest so we will give it a trial. However rather than use multiple sections for the cats:
We’ll just use tags instead, eg: blogs-cat-newsblogs-cat-aiblogs-cat-hardware etc. This’ll make it easier to accommodate more categories
What’s next?
Please let us know…
If you can think of any major downsides that have not already been covered or addressed.
If you can think of any other guidelines or rules we should include.
If you can think of any other categories we might need.
If you’d like to be an early adopter and would like to run a blog post by us (feel free to PM me if you prefer).
(try not to worry, you’re in good hands 
).
