Robert_Charlton - 7:37 pm on Feb 2, 2013 (gmt 0)

I ask because it seems that an editorial blog post which covers the gist of a forum thread in detail is more likely to be well ranked than the forum post itself.

I've noticed this, and have been seeing for some time that a certain level of "cannibalization" occurs between news blogs discussing forums and the forums themselves. Hard to say whether a well formulated editorial blog post will end up driving traffic to the forum or siphoning it off.

Depends in part, I think, on whether a forum's threads tend to get more into depth than the blog post does, and how quickly they do so. That in turn depends on the forum's community and level of participation of its best members, and to some degree on the nature of the particular topic. It's worth noting, btw, that this cannibalization works both ways... ie, forums do borrow from news sites.

In terms of rankings, the same thought crossed my head recently. If it's one site doing both, ie summarizing its own forum discussions, derivative editorial blog posts might well undercut the forum. It can be a fine balancing act, one that needs to be considered carefully.

I agree with netmeg, though... don't reflexively build a blog unless you really do have something to say.