# Anyone here had experience with "The Well"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 3, 2009, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692 "2009-01-03T10:52:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692/1 "2009-01-03T10:52:30Z")
[The Well](http://www.well.com/) was one of those places I had heard about in hoary old internet legends so imagine my surprise to discover that it still exists. Poking around a bit, it seems to bill itself as something quite close to the SDMB in focus: > [@](#): > > What makes The WELL different from other online communities? > > **The quality and diversity of the dialogue** : No wading through endless dreck to find a few morsels of thoughtful, stimulating discourse. Whether you’re interested in fierce debate, intellectual enrichment, mutual support, just hanging out or professional networking, you’ll simply find more of what you’re looking for at The WELL. > > **You know who you’re talking with** : As a WELL member, you use your real name. This leads to real conversations and relationships. It’s the individual people here who determine the experience and create the community. This highly collaborative work in progress has been rolling since 1985. Access to their forums requires payment so it’s hard to just take a look around. I was wondering if anyone here participates there as well? If so, how would you best describe it? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 11:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692/2 "2009-01-03T11:24:04Z")
Full disclosure: You can see by my join date and post count that I’m not the most garrulous of posters (nonetheless, I do enjoy reading even when I don’t have much to add). I tried The Well (which is part of [Salon.com](http://Salon.com) these days), and quite frankly, didn’t find it very remarkable. It’s got a clunky interface (they don’t use message board software like VBB), and it’s not like it’s some kind of secret conclave of high-minded conversation. I didn’t find it all that much different from this place, actually. Now, it’s quite possible I didn’t spend enough time navigating around and jumping in wherever possible, so obviously your mileage may vary. For what it’s worth, if you subscribe to [Salon.com](http://Salon.com), there are forums (called “Table Talk”) associated with that site that to my eye don’t appear much different than The Well. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692/3 "2009-01-03T11:35:53Z")
> [@Just\_Ed](#): > > Full disclosure: You can see by my join date and post count that I’m not the most garrulous of posters (nonetheless, I do enjoy reading even when I don’t have much to add). I tried The Well (which is part of [Salon.com](http://Salon.com) these days), and quite frankly, didn’t find it very remarkable. It’s got a clunky interface (they don’t use message board software like VBB), and it’s not like it’s some kind of secret conclave of high-minded conversation. I didn’t find it all that much different from this place, actually. > > Now, it’s quite possible I didn’t spend enough time navigating around and jumping in wherever possible, so obviously your mileage may vary. For what it’s worth, if you subscribe to [Salon.com](http://Salon.com), there are forums (called “Table Talk”) associated with that site that to my eye don’t appear much different than The Well. I’m not requiring it to be better than this place, even as good would be acceptable. Thanks for the warning about clunky message board software though, one of the things I hate is a great online community ruined by poor software. I guess it was interesting to me because whenever the topic of “message boards similar to the SDMB” came up, several other boards were always frequently mentioned but I don’t remember The Well ever coming up in conversation. What’s the activity level like? Is it bigger/smaller than the SDMB? Significantly so? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692/4 "2009-01-03T13:01:42Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > What’s the activity level like? Is it bigger/smaller than the SDMB? Significantly so? It didn’t appear quite as active to me as this place does, but again, that may be due to my reluctance to navigate around the place. They do make an effort to welcome newcomers (there are forums set up for access only to people who joined in a particular month (I think), for instance), but I just never felt the need to explore very much (I also had been trying to somewhat limit my time spent idly reading online when I joined). I had a trial membership that I simply cancelled; it wasn’t going to be worth it for me. ---
**Author:** ![sharding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90db22/32.png) [@sharding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sharding)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2009, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-here-had-experience-with-the-well/479692/5 "2009-01-05T07:40:47Z")
I had a Well account for a few years, and I really enjoyed it. I found the discussions to be interesting and intelligent. Not totally dissimilar to SDMB, but the topics were much more well-defined, so I found it a lot easier to look at only the things that interested me (e.g. there’s a politics conference, a Mac users conference, a photography conference, etc.). However, I haven’t used it for a long time so I have no idea what the activity level is like these days. I do think that it was very different in the late 1980s and early 90s (before my time there, but you can go back and read all the old stuff) – that’s when it really built its reputation. And I always used the terminal-based interface (which I liked quite well – better than pretty much any web forum software I’ve tried), so I can’t really speak to the quality of the web interface. I mostly canceled my account because I thought I was spending too much time there and I needed to force myself to stop. It worked, and I haven’t found a web forum that has sucked nearly as much of my time. I’m not sure if that is because the web forums aren’t as good, or because I’m better at controlling myself though.