Portal/forum is pretty much the same thing. I'm not entirely sure what the difference is... it was some sort of add-on that was used to create the front page. Some outside labor was involved in setting CC up. I'm not sure what all it was... it was before my time.
A dirty little secret I have is that whenever someone posts a thread headlining Atman, I watch the "users online" thing, waiting for Atman to show up to read it. He rarely disappoints; it's usually within minutes.
And then he leaves a window on that thread for further developments, as he apparently goes on to other things on the internet (in other windows), checking this one now-and-then for new comments.
I used to do that with the sparkling old dude too, but not so much now anymore because he seems to have all but gone away from Skins's island.
Judy grasswire's here quite a bit, and without knowing for sure what she's doing, I get the impression she's collecting links to personal-message other primitives on Skins's island about threads where they're mentioned, which brings them over too.
