Socratic dialogue requires you to write dialogue, which only some people have the ear for. It can also tend to be long-winded and indirect, like real dialogue.

Extended metaphors, like cantilevered structures, will eventually break. Usually sooner rather than later. When I started writing the zoo comment, I had no idea the damn thing was going to sustain itself across a whole essay; I figured it would reach a length of two sentences and then need to be edited down to one or zero, which is the fate of most newborn metaphors.

Anthropomorphism is another form of extended metaphor, except that it is especially likely to overreach badly. You can end up making big logical mistakes, because the human brain is very forgiving of anything that lets it exercise its built-in machinery for understanding humans. We love that. So history is rife with epic-level anthrocentric fallacies that lasted for hundreds or thousands of years. (How can the Earth be so much older than humans? How can life have been designed, if not by an independent consciousness that likes to build things? Of course the sun orbits us, and not the other way around!)

The typical FAQ is terribly disorganized and unbalanced, even more so than the list. (To achieve a FAQ that is actually readable, you must carefully compose your FAQ. Do not make the natural mistake of thinking that throwing all your FAQs into a pile will produce a readable FAQ. ;)

And, while narratives work well, only a tiny percentage of anecdotes are of any use as entertainment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7KQ4vkiNUk&feature=relat...

[This link is to anecdote professional Ira Glass. I recommend watching the whole series on YouTube but do not miss segment three:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hidvElQ0xE&feature=relat...

which is not exactly on topic but is too excellent not to plug.]