Question: Do we still have access to the old forums? (Page 1 of 2)

This is the correct link :

http://old.thenextbigwriter.com/index.html

You can access the forums from there easily.

You did have some great stuff there! You had some great funny stuff there too. Remember the old ‘Nonsense Café’ Forum with your 'that's when the fight started' and those old writers-word-games and stuff?

http://old.thenextbigwriter.com/forum/v … .php?id=33

Maybe I’m missing something via my unfamiliarity with, and a failure to navigate this, the new tNBW site’s forums, but to me it feels like the new site is a little formal, stiff and devoid of interactive fun stuff compared to the previous.

I feel like the new site has no feel of community at all.  I find myself using it less and less as I don't feel connected to anyone anymore.   I miss the forum writing discussions.  Even if I didn't always join into the discussions, I loved reading them whether it was on the oxford comma or a discussion of dialogue.

The new site has many nice features...but a sense of community? No.

Only a few cases and that over a number of years. With a wealth of community sprit, camaraderie  and laughs. The old tNBW was one of the friendliest, welcoming and vibrant writer communities to be found on the web anywhere at the time  -- in the face of that, why would you focus on a couple of little negative nibblets?  In terms of disruptive factors found in any Internet community or interactive site, the old tNBW suffered remarkably few incidents of trolls or disgruntled members.

In comparison the new site is devoid of character and I'm stunned at how few of the old site stalwarts have survived the transition.

Anti-social then?

Yes, I suppose you are correct, the new site is a place to post writing and pickup critique --the serious stuff. Not a place that is conducive for writers to hang out, chat, joke, jape, wind-down from the writing and be social. Obviously the old site was never meant to be like that either; I suppose it just happened along the way; a bi-product.

I'm not complaining BTW, it is what it is; a vast functional improvement, more clinical in its objective. A product that the customer is welcome take or leave upon their own volition.

But you couldn't have made this point without the centralized forum?

My experience with a centralized forum was quite different. I saw people bullied, made fun of and called out to fight over the way someone reacted to a review. I myself was called crazy because I believe in a deity by people who did not know me. Those posts lingered in the forum for every new member to read.

I don't understand why the members in this thread just don't start a group of their own to congregate in. The only reason I can think is that you want a wider audience. If that is the case start a thread here.

If you notice the same people keep complaining and they represent a small percentage of the membership, the same small percentage that haunted the forum on the old site.

I can't follow your logic. You are disproving your own case every time you post here to say that posting here is unnecessary. The only way to prove your point is to stop talking! (That's by your own logic -- not mine!)

Applying what you state is the main ‘purpose’ (objective) of this site within your first comment, to your second comment , then I hope you gather lots of feedback and it begins to have the proposed effect upon your writing.

I didn't say posting in here is unnecessary. I said I didn't understand why you needed ANOTHER place to post, that is a centralized forum divided up into sub-categories, when you could just start a thread in this group's forum, which reaches every member.

After a few years of shutting down threads because they became too heated, and an occasional banishment of a rowdy member from the site, the membership prevailed upon TNBW administrators to give us a forum closed to public view for politics and religion and any other topics that tended to provoke mudslinging and bruised feelings.

Within a few months (weeks?) that forum in which anything went, petered out. I think it would be a great idea to have a group on this site in which we could get as exercised as we were able without danger of being banned from the site. All nasty arguments could be shipped into that group.

My prediction: That group would become seldom visited in short order. ¿Maybe 6 months?

Like illicit sex, politics and religion arguments would peter out if approved by the church elders.

Memphis Trace

I was responding to this (though I concede I half-quoted a different one of your comments since it was your latest remark) -

This suggests to me that you feel that a central forum (a place for in-depth discussion) is unnecessary. I can't work out how you could actually believe that while making use of the central forum to voice your opinion. I think the point in this thread (not to speak for anyone) is that the social aspect of the former site was one of its many riches, in the viewpoint of several members (myself included.) Goodness, what is feedback if not conversation?

I receive the TNBW mailer, which always includes a selection of the latest discussions at the site. This suggests to me Sol also believes the discussions enrich the site -- that in fact TNBW is a social site. (How could it not be? We are all reading and writing and talking. That's... well, that's social, friend.)

What's at issue here is not whether or not we should all button up our lips and be nose to the grindstone without discussions. What's at issue is how those discussions might be organized. You're quite right: people could toss up a thread here in the Premium Group, and have done so a few times, but it's not quite the same. The threads disappear. Those looking for discussions on, for example, quality passages in published literature -- might not think to enter here, because there are abundant options for discussions now, & who knows where to start? There's no group place to file them in this Premium Group, as in the prior forum, where everything was easily accessible in a single room. You suggest that we could put up a thread in a different group, and I don't disagree with that. It's a sound way to categorize discussions. But you see (I'm not sure how this isn't abundantly obvious?), those threads are visible only to those who enter the group. And groups are limited. And ten different people could open ten different "romantic literature" groups, and their members would see only their own group's posts. No cross-sharing. So the conversations have been divided and hidden away.

You do know that arguments can happen in the smaller groups too, right? I'm not sure how that's even a valid complaint. I completely get that the arguments are annoying, but there's just really no way to have an online discussion without dealing with a few stinkers. I had a rip-roaring argument with someone here at the site once. That didn't turn out at all bad. It's called being human, butting heads, and communicating. You (I am using the universal 'you') can't just declare that the site isn't social because you don't like the negative half of a social site. That's all-or-nothing thinking and reminds me of the "I don't like Moby-Dick, let's ban it from schools" sort of philosophy which no writer approves of ever, if she values the human voice.

I don't think you or anyone here is suggesting his or her way is the only way. We're all just sharing perspectives. I also loved the social aspect of the former site, and I'd love it if someone opened up a Shred Thread here and allowed me to be an unreliable contributor. (Hint hint!) But I'd also love it if we could get a centralized forum back, which I vaguely recall Sol saying a few months ago was in the works. Since so many people missed it.