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The "zones" are an EPIC FAIL (of the usability kind). Why? They don't remember your login.

For instance, right now I am logged into D-Zone. If I go to php.dzone.com, it wants me to login again?!?

I alerted support about this behavior a good 6 months ago- and its still completely broken. If the "zones" are to be considered a part of the main site (DZone), and they want interaction there, well.....don't make me login twice. Because I won't.

I forgot another fail, that makes me totally avoid "zones": redundancy. Let's see, if I want to comment on an article posted to DZone, should I comment:

A) on the original article (on whatever site that may be)
B) on the DZone link
C) on the Dzone "zone" link

Basically, what Dzone is doing, is fragmenting the discourse for each article. You get people asking questions in B and C that were answered in A. Or people asking questions in C that were answered in both A and B.

I think if DZone were serious about this "community" thing, the "zones" would simply be a tag that could be applied to a current article. There is negative value in duplicating content and creating confusion for us, the users.

This is so true. I haven't been able to grok the idea of re-posting/duplicating content on their zones. Except from the fact of them having "free content" where they can show adds, instead of just links to good content. But how does it help the user of dzone? It doesn't. If a blog post is good, it gets votes and you will see it. No need to put the full content in a zone site, when it is already there.