Kookamoor
New Member
Phew! I just got through the 14 pages of this thread and I must say that there's a lot of things to consider. If I may summarise:
1. The tone of the forum has changed.
I have only been here 7 months, yet I agree with you. It's not so much the spamming, but the hostility towards particular members, and generated by other members. Not only is it uncomfortable at times, but I'm concerned that new members or members who are sensitive to such conflict will be put off.
The answer: self regulation. It's been said time and again, but unfortunately at the moment many of the members, particularly those most welcoming and accommodating of new members, are themselves not frequenting some of the more serious threads and thus are not there to step in and say, 'You are being rude. You've stepped over the line.' Which leads me to point number 2.
2. People are intimidated/put off posting in the book-related threads and more serious chats by hostility/ perceived elitism/grammar nazis etc.
This has *got* to change! There should be no reason for anyone to feel uncomfortable posting on any thread in the forum, with the possible exception of the Writers Showcase, where you are putting your work out for the world to see.
There is a difference between criticising a book and critisising a reader of that book - this line seems to have been blurred recently. While you may feel passionately about why you enjoy/despise a particular book or author, there is no need to harp on about it. And just because one particular member professes to enjoy every book that Dan Brown ever wrote, there is no need to pidgeon-hole that member and critisise their taste in every subsequent post.
There is so much said on this form about the evils of censorship, but what many of you do with your thoughtless critisism of people's taste in reading is effectively silence those members whom you can bully into thinking that the books they read are tripe. Not everyone enjoys an argument, and not everyone wants to intersperece their thoughts on a particular story with justification for why the book should ever have been published in the first place. By all means say, "I really didn't like the way it was written, because.... I think xxx by xxx was a far better representation of this genre. You should give it a try". This is constructive. On the other hand, "I would rather beat my head with a blunt object than read another word of this hack author's offering" is not.
In the interests of getting people posting about books again, I have started up this thread. Perhaps this will be a 'safe' way for people to get back in posting about books, and more importantly, feeling comfortable about doing so.
3. Things change over time, just as this forum has.
This forum is constantly evolving, and member's priorities change. That cannot be helped. However if the forum is not going in the direction you want it to then for goodness sake say something! I applaude Martin for starting this thread and telling us that something has been irking him. I think this is an excellent therapy session for us all, and a chance to vent our spleens about what we perceive to be different/better or less than appealing.
So if things aren't going the way you wish, then do something about it. I particularly like what Ell had to say, and I think it's something we all need to consider:
1. The tone of the forum has changed.
I have only been here 7 months, yet I agree with you. It's not so much the spamming, but the hostility towards particular members, and generated by other members. Not only is it uncomfortable at times, but I'm concerned that new members or members who are sensitive to such conflict will be put off.
The answer: self regulation. It's been said time and again, but unfortunately at the moment many of the members, particularly those most welcoming and accommodating of new members, are themselves not frequenting some of the more serious threads and thus are not there to step in and say, 'You are being rude. You've stepped over the line.' Which leads me to point number 2.
2. People are intimidated/put off posting in the book-related threads and more serious chats by hostility/ perceived elitism/grammar nazis etc.
This has *got* to change! There should be no reason for anyone to feel uncomfortable posting on any thread in the forum, with the possible exception of the Writers Showcase, where you are putting your work out for the world to see.
There is a difference between criticising a book and critisising a reader of that book - this line seems to have been blurred recently. While you may feel passionately about why you enjoy/despise a particular book or author, there is no need to harp on about it. And just because one particular member professes to enjoy every book that Dan Brown ever wrote, there is no need to pidgeon-hole that member and critisise their taste in every subsequent post.
There is so much said on this form about the evils of censorship, but what many of you do with your thoughtless critisism of people's taste in reading is effectively silence those members whom you can bully into thinking that the books they read are tripe. Not everyone enjoys an argument, and not everyone wants to intersperece their thoughts on a particular story with justification for why the book should ever have been published in the first place. By all means say, "I really didn't like the way it was written, because.... I think xxx by xxx was a far better representation of this genre. You should give it a try". This is constructive. On the other hand, "I would rather beat my head with a blunt object than read another word of this hack author's offering" is not.
In the interests of getting people posting about books again, I have started up this thread. Perhaps this will be a 'safe' way for people to get back in posting about books, and more importantly, feeling comfortable about doing so.
3. Things change over time, just as this forum has.
This forum is constantly evolving, and member's priorities change. That cannot be helped. However if the forum is not going in the direction you want it to then for goodness sake say something! I applaude Martin for starting this thread and telling us that something has been irking him. I think this is an excellent therapy session for us all, and a chance to vent our spleens about what we perceive to be different/better or less than appealing.
So if things aren't going the way you wish, then do something about it. I particularly like what Ell had to say, and I think it's something we all need to consider:
Ell said:
