Sharepoint: Using multiple content types in list. Pros and Cons

I newbie in Sharepoint development.

I has some hierarchical structure like internet forum:

Forum
 Post
  Comment

For each of this entities I create content type.

I see, that Sharepoint allow store in list different content types and I can store all forums with their posts and comments in single list (Forum and Post will be 'Folder', Comment - Item).

From other side, I can create separate lists for each content type: Forums List, Posts List, Comments List and link them开发者_开发知识库 in some way.

Is anybody can outline Pros and Cons for both solutions? I have about 2 weeks experience in Sharepoint and can't select best way.

P.S. Sorry for my English.

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The short answer is: it depends.

First, they need to logically fit together. A user should expect items of these various types to be grouped together (or at least wouldn't be surprised that they have been grouped together). And in terms of design, they should have some common intersection of list type and fields. Combining Documents, Discussions, and Events into a single list wouldn't be a good idea. Likewise, I'm not sure Posts and Comments (as you mention above) would be a good fit for a single list. They just don't logically fit and their schemas probably do not have enough in common.

Once that has been determined, I would put multiple Content Types in the same list if they are meant to be used together. Will you want to show all of these items, regardless of Content Type, together in a view? Do all of these items share the same workflows, policies, permissions, etc? If the answer is no for any of these, then split the Content Types into different lists.

As I said, it depends. I'm not sure there really is a hard or fast rule for this. I see it a little like database normalization. We know the forms and the options. But depending on the project, sometimes we normalize a little more, sometimes we denormalize a little more, but we almost never (I hope) have one, monster table that contains every type of row in the database.