RunAthena.com :: Resources

This is the second article in an occasional series highlighting online communities and discussion forums for runners.

While Runner's World and Running Times host online forums connected with their publication's website, newcomer Runango is a stand-alone forum that is steadily attracting new community members, thanks to its simple yet elegant threading of posts.

The forum was started by a group of regular participants on Runner's World who were unhappy with software and administrative changes to the RW forums. Judging from subsequent discussion on the RW forums, a fairly large number of RW participants took their conversation to the new forums.

As one RW forum regular who made the switch explained, "I said it before and I'll say it again. The reason people left is that [the Runner's World forum] software was a step backwards. Plain and simple."

The Runango software is robust yet flexible, displaying posts in a tiered list which clearly depicts the "thread" of the conversation. There seems to be no filtering for "foul language," so curse words and crude words come through loud and clear, sans asterisks.

While non-members are free to read all the posts on the Runango forum, only members can post.

To view the Runango forums, visit Runango.com.