Message Boards have lots of topics, quickly sorted by category, and are much more encouraging of back and forth dialouge. Blogs, however, give people control of the discussion, essentially make them the moderator of their thread. Both are topic based and can generate deep and long discussion.
In the Interwebs, are there any message boards that allow the OP to be the moderator? Are there blog hosts that sort the blog topics like a message board?
I don’t know but it sounds like a great idea for a blogger who occasionally has something to say but not often enough to build up a steady readership.
vBulletin has an official blog plugin that allows what you’re describing. It’s implemented on The Giraffe Boards, and many other sites.
Can’t any half-decent blogging engine do this? Wordpress, for example, lets you sort by date, tags, and categories. You can also search through past posts. Visitors can post comments and you can require registration, moderate each comment as they come in or once per poster, delete/edit comments afterward, etc.
And if you want the users to self-moderate, try something like Slash (which Slashdot uses).