Things you hate to see in an sffworld thread

[Michigan]

Being directed to another thread, or the recommendation thread, or being told to use the search function. And i'm not only talking about it being directed towards me. Yes I know there is a recommendation thread and there are already other threads, but those threads are 5 years old and nobody bothers to reply to them anymore. If you want any chance of getting a response, and why post on a message board if not looking for a response, your only chance is in a brand new thread or at least a recent thread.

Same goes for being directed to an authors forum. I tried that a couple months ago, entered a thread near the top of the page, posted a question it and last I checked, several months later the thread was still near the top of the page and my post was still the last one. So yes I know there is a Steven Erikson forum but it isn't going to do me much good if nobody else ever uses it.

 

[Eventine]

Hmm, it's interesting that there's such a difference in the reactions at each community Wert.
Anyone doing a sociology degree and interested in writing a thesis on the behavioural differences between online speculative fiction discussion forums?
I have a feeling that some of the complaints raised in this thread, and how they're handled by the moderators in the various communities would shape some of it.

 

[ChrisW]

If the book was a pre-release ARC, then it may be months before such a discussion can take place. That is certainly a much bigger problem and one that is difficult to address.

Umm no it's not. Don't post the review until the books out. Simple.

That's if you actually want to discuss the book and not just pimping the book by posting your review on a dozen forums so they pubs send you more ARC's. Not saying that you don't provide a service that many appreciate but there is a review section for "reviews" or even the reading in "insert month" thread.

Michigan, totally agree with ya.

 

[Afrobro]

Yes I am Psychic. My psychic powers tell me you play too much World of Warcraft Afrobro.

WTF. That's not cool at all man. Who are you and how do you know me. Im freaking out right now???? Is this John? Chaw? Man I'm getting goosebumps

sorry for offtopic

 

[Phyllis]

I'm sick of the pissing wars between fanboys of authors

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Watching (or being) a fanboy ripping another fanboy a new one was what forums were invented for!

 

[argon]

OK, my 2c.

I understand that our Mods try to maintain very high standard of this board, you know kind of careful examination a topic from all point of view and appropriate use of language. And we've got some authors too, that's brilliant, who per definition write up to high standard. The trouble with that is, it seems people refrain from posting anything because this scares them.

Now you don't need to leave the board to find a vibrant, chaotic example that this can be different just head to Alison Croggon section. The kids there have F.U.N, and one day when I was to tired of everything I just sat and watched them exchanging banter. I laughed myself silly and you made my day, guys! So, YAY to all Pellinories! Alison is proud of you, I am sure.

I catch myself too being way to serious, it comes with age I believe, but folks: it's books, it's fiction, I hope you read it for pleasure. No one is going to die because you say something silly. Heck, I make ass of myself all the time I post and lookie I life.

- So that's my appeal for more room to breathe and more silliness!

 

[Dyloot]

Recommendations for the Name of the Wind and long replies to every question.

LOL. I read the recommendation here, bought the book and loved it.

Is this a good time to recommend Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss? Splendid book.

 

[Ironhill]

You ruined the thread.

 

[Werthead]

Hmm, it's interesting that there's such a difference in the reactions at each community Wert.
Anyone doing a sociology degree and interested in writing a thesis on the behavioural differences between online speculative fiction discussion forums?
I have a feeling that some of the complaints raised in this thread, and how they're handled by the moderators in the various communities would shape some of it.

I can only comment from the mod POV for my own message board. We have a large, fairly active and bustling general Lit discussion board which is easily as active as SFFWorlds on most days, if not moreso. We don't split it between four different genres and dozens of different authors, and the moderators have a very light touch compared to here. Multiple recommendation threads are not an issue and people can generally discuss what they want and post what they want. The bloggers are welcome and although we prefer people to repost their full reviews on the board, we don't have an anti-link policy at all, although we do request that debate sparked by the links is carried out on the board rather than on those blogs (this is usually better for the blogger as well, as the board is basically a better forum for discussion than a blog's comments box). The general tone is relaxed, and often lighthearted, until the pro-and-anti Malazan crowds start fighting, which happens every couple of weeks and has to be monitored, but that happens everywhere. I think it's pretty a conducive environment to discussion and debate. The reason for the links not being allowed on SFFWorld - that it would move debate away from the board - has been shown to not be an issue at all. The fact that we are now also getting more and more published authors joining and commenting on the board (Daniel Abraham and Richard Morgan both signed up in recent weeks) would seem to show that our approach is working. Even Goodkind fans have signed up and joined in the discussions, which is something I didn't see happening a year ago given the level of anti-Goodkind feeling on the board, but there you go.

OTOH, Malazanempire is a lot more hostile message board where unless you are a raging Erikson fanboy, discussing other authors can be problematic unless you open and close every comment with "Erikson is the greatest author ever!"

Wotmania is interesting as it is a site of controlled chaos, with not just SF, Fantasy and mainstream books being discussed in the Other Fantasy section, but also TV and movies as well. This actually makes for a bustling, interesting section where people swap lots of different viewpoints. I know Dylanfanatic/Aldarion gets driven up the wall by the latest thread about LOST getting ten times as many replies as his latest review or something, but I've also seen people who've never picked up a book other than WoT stop by the section to talk about a TV show and end up becoming a fan of Neal Stephenson, so it actually seems to work in its chaotic, cheesy mid-1990s-design style way.

Now to this site: over the two-and-a-half years I've been a member of SFFWorld I have noticed a gradual shift in the tone of the forum. I'll be frank and say I agree with ChrisW on the fact that recommendation requests being shut down instantly is not very welcoming to newcomers, and I do note that some of the newcomers, after being treated in that fashion, simply leave and don't come back rather than going to the stickies as directed. There's also been a distinct shift to what I would call over-moderation, with threads and posts deleted for perhaps overly bereaucratic reasons rather than using common sense. For example, discussion of the ASoIaF HBO series was recently moved out of the GRRM forum to the TV one. No explanation was given for this. The thread will be of interest primarily to GRRM fans over general TV fans, at least until the TV show actually airs, and moving it into the much quieter TV section seems to achive no purpose other than to shut down discussion and debate for no reason.

I see these things as frustrating, as when I get into a good debate with Hobbit or Rob over a review, or with KatG over fantasy tropes, or with Bond about something in WoT, SFFWorld is one of the best discussion sites out there.

Umm no it's not. Don't post the review until the books out. Simple.

That's certainly an option. Publishers obviously want reviews published ahead of time so they generate excitment and hopefully build a massive Name of the Wind/Lies of Locke Lamora-style word of mouth so when the book comes out it immediately sells ten thousand-odd copies, which is what happened with both those books. Obviously, we are under no obligation to oblige them.

The question is then, when do you draw the line? Do you wait until the paperback comes out? After all, most people aren't going to buy a new hardcover from an unknown author immediately upon release...unless they read at the very least read some reviews first. Then you're getting into a chicken and egg situation.

That's if you actually want to discuss the book and not just pimping the book by posting your review on a dozen forums so they pubs send you more ARC's. Not saying that you don't provide a service that many appreciate but there is a review section for "reviews" or even the reading in "insert month" thread.

Whether a publisher sends you books or not is based on page-views on the blog itself, nowhere else, so the no-link rules mean that I gain absolutely no material benefits from posting the reviews on SFFWorld. I do so merely as a courtesy, to let people know about upcoming releases and generate discussion.

Putting things into a review thread (I presume you mean the '2007 Reviews' sticky, which needs updating?) is another option and could actually be a better idea, as people could also look back through a thread and see other reviews as well which otherwise would disappear off the front of the SFFWorld forum, other reviewers' opinions of the same work and so on. My concern about that would be that what discussion is taking place at the moment would come to a screeching halt altogether as people think the reviews thread is just for reviews and refuse to put comments on there.

A final point: is it generating a conflict of interest for the SFFWorld website, which hosts book reviews, to be simultaneously hosting a forum where people are hosting reviews of often the same books months before the 'official' releases go up? Maybe the solution would be for SFFWorld to simply ban all reviews of books that the website itself is doing a review of?

 

[Starfish Prime]

I wasn't a great fan of the name of the wind, but I did chuckle at

"But for most practical purposes Tarbean had two pieces: Waterside and
Hillside. Waterside is where people are poor. That makes them beggars,
thieves, and whores. Hillside is where people are rich. That makes them solicitors,
politicians, and courtesans"

As for things I hate in a sffworld thread, I don't really see the problem with the posting a review, its Wert's blog-therefore his opinion-so isnt that much the same as writing out another post saying the same things? maybe I missed some of the dialogue in my scan through... EDIT: in fact on reading the next post im left thinking I know nothing, what gain is there from getting your 'blog count' up? I've never been a blogger or read many, anyone want to inform me or do I have to move my hand two inches and type google, wait I answered this one myself, I shall google.

Aside from that.. I got nothing to add, how sad.

 

[JohnH]

So many things, so little time.

1.The baby bird syndrome: Tell me what to read. Tell me what to buy. Tell me whether I will end up liking it once I do. Wipe my nose, Wipe my bottom. Hold my hand. The lethal mix of self-centered demand and extreme lack of any initiative is depressing and annoying. Pimping books is bad enough. Nannying readers is a crime against reading once that read is old enough to get online on his or her own. The worst is people asking if they will like something before they have read it. Miss Cleo went bankrupt ages ago. I have no idea or care what happened to the pet psychic. There is a twit on A&E that pretends to talk to dead people in between filming a reality show that is so bad it is almost funny. Go ask him. But pretty much everyone hear has no ability to foretell what another person's take is going to be.

2.Opinion as Dogma: This pops up in so many ways. Whether it is an attempt to disparage the reader or just the passive aggressive response to a negative review by a fan that basically says "so there!". Throwing out a "Well I liked it" as a response to someone's actual review just because it is hardly laudatory is really annoying. Certainly everyone can have a say. But no matter how it is done, trying to negate someone's opinion in any way persists like a sore tooth in almost every discussion forum. And nothing grates worse than bad dental work than someone posting "I don't know how you can think ________" or the flat out "no you're wrong" even when it is obvious that an individual take is being offered. And an equally individual take is being countered as fact. Get over the fact that we all have different views and don't all think the same and that pretty much means that someone is going to loathe the book you love, you dream about, you sit and imagine yourself as a character in.

3.Prom Queen Wars: There is no such thing as best author. There isn't. Doesn't matter if there are awards and polls and group mandates. There is no tiara or sash. I'm not talking about individual takes. I'm talking about the persistent effort by many to apply moral imperative to their favorite author. That somehow preferring one author's work to another is tantamount to treason. Or rooting for a particular "star" on Dancing with the Stars. Or who you support for President or Prime Minister. Again. What I like does not affect another person as a reader. You don't need to figure it out. You don't need to diminish it or explain it away to make it more acceptable that someone does not think just like you. From the threads that settle in to expound upon the greatness of one particular author and why another just does not measure up to just the idea that somehow one author has to be paramount over all others. Nor is there a popularity contest going on. And the only cliques in an online discussion forum truly exist only in one's mind.

4.The Henry Higgins Syndrome: Just because I'm not reading what someone else thinks is "literary fantasy" or have fully explored the masterworks or classics of the genre does not mean I can't hold an opinion on what I have read. Nor do I need fixed. I don't need my horizons expanded and I don't need lofty condescension offered up because somehow I'm just not as well read as you like to think you are. Nor do I need to read recommendations that are less (if at all) what the person asking is looking for so much as what you think that person and everyone else should be reading. A recommendation is not a crusade. And no matter how wonderful you think your tastes are and how incredibly profound and insightful your reading experience has been, let the unwashed masses alone. Even if that means they read Goodkind and Dragonlance and Stephanie Meyer. What's the worst is the passive aggressive declarations when mentioning a recent read: "I just read ________ which I know most here have never heard of / probably wouldn't read / etc." Put down the book. Buy a ladder. And get over yourself. Or just slap a gold star on your forehead, find the nearest mirror and beam.

5.Pigeonholing. Some people will flat out identify themselves in terms of their reading. Most of actually don't. It is impossible. Yet people persist in saying things like "well you like ________, so...." as some kind of refutation of that person's views. Borrow the ladder from above already.

6.Bafflement. Every now and again someone will post complete and utter bewilderment that there are no posts on a certain book or author. Along with a level of almost derision that until that person came along and mentioned that author or book, no one else in the history of the forum has done so. Complete with logic that no mention means no one here has read or formed an an opinion on said topic. Resulting in, if not outrage, a level of virtual handwringing like we left our small children in the car on a hot summer day in Phoenix. This sometimes is offset by the fact that such person usually is new and speaks a language where the word "search" means "do not whatsoever use this particular function as a hole will open up beneath your seat and send you plummeting straight to hell". And depending on how my day is going, I can derive some amusement by the fact that someone, out there, is shocked, shocked I tell you, that at that time, that exact moment, no one else is thinking of that particular book or author at least a few seconds prior to have posted about it already.

I will say this for the board. Unlike many other speculative fiction discussion boards, there is a wonderful dearth of blog whoring. Nothing irks me more than to open a thread that is nothing more than a shamefully pathetic attempt to push the blog counter up. The most heinous is the one that directs you to that poster's personal blog only to find out that the blog merely holds another link to yet a third blog or forum. Jezebel's like that need run out on a rail.

 

[suciul]

I've been a frequent poster here and I love this board for many reasons - I am not active on any other independent sff boards - I participate to Baen's Bar once in a while - because most of the popular ones are dedicated to an author

Here I put my thoughts about all sff and associated books and sometimes even about more mainstream books - this year I've read 160+ novels so far, cataloged on Goodreads to keep track -

Since I do not put reviews on my blog which I do not use more than having a Blogger ID by and large - though once in a while a full review of mine will appear on Robert FBC blog - I do not care about links and I do not think that would be a big deal anyway.

The one thing I find annoying is the closing of ask threads - whether requests for info, recommendation - and referring to older threads which may have tons of posts that people just do not have the time to wade through, also threads meander...

Sometimes it is useful to consolidate threads but in my opinion any thread - outside say Reading in ..- that has too many posts is harder to navigate and becomes less useful

 

[KatG]

LOL, ah JohnH, good to see you popping up more lately. I've missed the slice and dice. Of course, you are not helping with our apparent stormtrooper reputation here.

Wert, yes in fact, LukeB did get no response from you on a SF review you did in that forum, so get organized, man! It does happen, and we're not just talking about you. We banned the links because we had a lot of members coming to us and saying that the links were killing conversations, that they didn't want to go clicking on them to other sites just to talk and felt that the bloggers were just trying to get traffic off-site and cluttering up the forums with links. So review excerpts seemed like a better solution -- let the bloggers have their say without rewriting and let the discussion material be in the thread. Now we have some complaints about that, but mostly about whether the reviews are generating discussion. But I think we're probably going to keep it as is for right now.

As for someone who's gotten an ARC talking about it, that's going to remain okay, I think. Alerting folks to up-coming titles helps everyone out -- but I'd urge those who do it to mention the pub month/country/publisher of the book, so that people can get it when it comes out. I don't see a conflict of interest there myself with SFFWorld reviews, and it hasn't come up. Our big problem right now is that the site is getting quoted on books, so we have to work out how to not have foul-ups on that.

We're not web designers or Internet entrepreneurs here. We're a bunch of people who like SFF who have been asked to keep an eye on thousands of people. We have 12-year-olds, so some standards here have to be tougher. And most members tell us they like coming here because they can talk about stuff without being flamed, which as you've pointed out, Wert, is a problem on other sites. What we're hearing is that some people feel we're too intrusive and others that we're not intrusive enough and they get attacked -- so finding that balance is kind of tricky.

But the thing is, if you've got a problem, with a moderator action or anything else you can come and talk to us about it. Send a PM to a mod or go to the feedback forum and post. I don't know why the Martin HBO conversation was moved to T.V., but you can always come ask us or complain. As far as I'm concerned, it shouldn't have been moved, and you can start a new one in the Martin forum and I'll make sure the mods know to leave it. Hell, I'll even venture into the forum (though they scare me,) and ask if anyone has casting news.

This group of people, the mods -- they make lousy stormtroopers. We dither incessantly about problems that come up, trying to find solutions that will work best for the largest number of members, with Dag the owner having the final say on big policy decisions. We have debated getting rid of the author forums and what impact that would have on the Fantasy Forum. We try to figure out how to make the Bookclubs as useful as possible, etc. We had a forum full of recommendation requests with the same question and getting the same answers, and members hated it. Hence, we made Rob herd cats. We certainly don't want to scare off newbies, but we're going to scare off a lot of other people if the same conversation -- verbatim -- occurs twenty times a month.

We are actually in the process of hauling over the Recommendation threads and talking about different ways to handle this side of the forums. Feedback on that is great. The big problem is people having enough time to do all this stuff. That and buying Rob a stormtrooper helmet.

 

[Rob B]

Being directed to another thread, or the recommendation thread, or being told to use the search function. And i'm not only talking about it being directed towards me. Yes I know there is a recommendation thread and there are already other threads, but those threads are 5 years old and nobody bothers to reply to them anymore. If you want any chance of getting a response, and why post on a message board if not looking for a response, your only chance is in a brand new thread or at least a recent thread.

Hi there, I'll take the brunt of that one. I know I do this more often than not and I'm trying to change my ways, honest. Seriously though, if I see a general topic asking people's opinions on, say, David Gemmel*, I'll add all the older links because those links are a repository of information.

If a thread is only a few months old, though, and is on the topic about which you are asking, why not just add to it rather than create a new one? In other words, keep all the apples in the apple cart.

Regarding the Recommendation Thread:

We are actually in the process of hauling over the Recommendation threads and talking about different ways to handle this side of the forums. Feedback on that is great. The big problem is people having enough time to do all this stuff. That and buying Rob a stormtrooper helmet.

We've been hammering out the best way to do this because we (and again I'll take the blame here since I was maintaining the Recommendation Thread) realize it is a static beast that isn't user-friendly.

*Not to single you out Michigan, but your Gemmell thread is the most recent example.

Same goes for being directed to an authors forum. I tried that a couple months ago, entered a thread near the top of the page, posted a question it and last I checked, several months later the thread was still near the top of the page and my post was still the last one. So yes I know there is a Steven Erikson forum but it isn't going to do me much good if nobody else ever uses it.

This is a frustrating beast, isn't it? Again, as Kat said we go back and forth (behind the scenes) on what to do about them - keep them separate or integrate all those threads into the fantasy forum.

JohnH, I do have a thought for you though - Can you tell me what I should read, without hesitation, because I only want to read the bestest book by the bestest author. Just make sure it is like the other books I read since those are the only kinds of books I like. Lastly, please don't baffle me with the recommended author and make sure you only say to check out your blog in order to find out what author you finally recommend to me.

Adam, that is some really good feedback on the other forums.

Regarding posting of thoughts on a book that is still only in ARC form - what is wrong with that? Don't we all want to be alerted to what new books are coming down the pipe?

 

[fk1523]

Regarding the Recommendation Thread:We've been hammering out the best way to do this because we (and again I'll take the blame here since I was maintaining the Recommendation Thread) realize it is a static beast that isn't user-friendly.

i know there is a site that has a list of the top 100 fantasy books, which gets updated, I think weekly, by an ongoing poll of visitors. Most fans will have read most of them, but for new readers, its a good place to find the next book to read.

 

[Phyllis]

So many things, so little time.

1.The baby bird syndrome: Tell me what to read. Tell me what to buy. Tell me whether I will end up liking it once I do. Wipe my nose, Wipe my bottom. Hold my hand. The lethal mix of self-centered demand and extreme lack of any initiative is depressing and annoying. Pimping books is bad enough. Nannying readers is a crime against reading once that read is old enough to get online on his or her own. The worst is people asking if they will like something before they have read it. Miss Cleo went bankrupt ages ago. I have no idea or care what happened to the pet psychic. There is a twit on A&E that pretends to talk to dead people in between filming a reality show that is so bad it is almost funny. Go ask him. But pretty much everyone hear has no ability to foretell what another person's take is going to be.

2.Opinion as Dogma: This pops up in so many ways. Whether it is an attempt to disparage the reader or just the passive aggressive response to a negative review by a fan that basically says "so there!". Throwing out a "Well I liked it" as a response to someone's actual review just because it is hardly laudatory is really annoying. Certainly everyone can have a say. But no matter how it is done, trying to negate someone's opinion in any way persists like a sore tooth in almost every discussion forum. And nothing grates worse than bad dental work than someone posting "I don't know how you can think ________" or the flat out "no you're wrong" even when it is obvious that an individual take is being offered. And an equally individual take is being countered as fact. Get over the fact that we all have different views and don't all think the same and that pretty much means that someone is going to loathe the book you love, you dream about, you sit and imagine yourself as a character in.

3.Prom Queen Wars: There is no such thing as best author. There isn't. Doesn't matter if there are awards and polls and group mandates. There is no tiara or sash. I'm not talking about individual takes. I'm talking about the persistent effort by many to apply moral imperative to their favorite author. That somehow preferring one author's work to another is tantamount to treason. Or rooting for a particular "star" on Dancing with the Stars. Or who you support for President or Prime Minister. Again. What I like does not affect another person as a reader. You don't need to figure it out. You don't need to diminish it or explain it away to make it more acceptable that someone does not think just like you. From the threads that settle in to expound upon the greatness of one particular author and why another just does not measure up to just the idea that somehow one author has to be paramount over all others. Nor is there a popularity contest going on. And the only cliques in an online discussion forum truly exist only in one's mind.

4.The Henry Higgins Syndrome: Just because I'm not reading what someone else thinks is "literary fantasy" or have fully explored the masterworks or classics of the genre does not mean I can't hold an opinion on what I have read. Nor do I need fixed. I don't need my horizons expanded and I don't need lofty condescension offered up because somehow I'm just not as well read as you like to think you are. Nor do I need to read recommendations that are less (if at all) what the person asking is looking for so much as what you think that person and everyone else should be reading. A recommendation is not a crusade. And no matter how wonderful you think your tastes are and how incredibly profound and insightful your reading experience has been, let the unwashed masses alone. Even if that means they read Goodkind and Dragonlance and Stephanie Meyer. What's the worst is the passive aggressive declarations when mentioning a recent read: "I just read ________ which I know most here have never heard of / probably wouldn't read / etc." Put down the book. Buy a ladder. And get over yourself. Or just slap a gold star on your forehead, find the nearest mirror and beam.

5.Pigeonholing. Some people will flat out identify themselves in terms of their reading. Most of actually don't. It is impossible. Yet people persist in saying things like "well you like ________, so...." as some kind of refutation of that person's views. Borrow the ladder from above already.

6.Bafflement. Every now and again someone will post complete and utter bewilderment that there are no posts on a certain book or author. Along with a level of almost derision that until that person came along and mentioned that author or book, no one else in the history of the forum has done so. Complete with logic that no mention means no one here has read or formed an an opinion on said topic. Resulting in, if not outrage, a level of virtual handwringing like we left our small children in the car on a hot summer day in Phoenix. This sometimes is offset by the fact that such person usually is new and speaks a language where the word "search" means "do not whatsoever use this particular function as a hole will open up beneath your seat and send you plummeting straight to hell". And depending on how my day is going, I can derive some amusement by the fact that someone, out there, is shocked, shocked I tell you, that at that time, that exact moment, no one else is thinking of that particular book or author at least a few seconds prior to have posted about it already.

I will say this for the board. Unlike many other speculative fiction discussion boards, there is a wonderful dearth of blog whoring. Nothing irks me more than to open a thread that is nothing more than a shamefully pathetic attempt to push the blog counter up. The most heinous is the one that directs you to that poster's personal blog only to find out that the blog merely holds another link to yet a third blog or forum. Jezebel's like that need run out on a rail.

I think you need to get out a little more, if you actually pay this much attention.

You are an idiot. I am an idiot. Everyone is an idiot. This is the internet, people are going to do the above for as long as it exists.

 

[Damiynn]

My gripe

Ok I don't have a lot to say bad about this site but since this is getting a lot of play I do have one or two questions and one gripe, as for the gripe first. How come when a new author has his book reviewed by the reviewers on this site they dont post anything on it in the fantasy forum? and if the author himself posts on it saying thank you, he is accused of spamming? And my second question is why are books reviewed here if no one is allowed to talk about the reviews unless it is a well known popular author. Other than that I love this site and visit it daily but that is my thing I hate to see in a post.

 

[Radthorne]

I've been a member here for some years now, and have one good thing and one frustration to add.

On the positive ledger, I think the moderators here do a really good job of balancing freedom of expression and protecting the rights of others. It's not an easy job to draw the line between "firmly expressed opinion" and hurtful abuse, and they can't be expected to always get it right. But given that they are driven to even undertake the job out of an interest in things SFF when they could be (gasp!) reading instead, I think they deserve a nice round of applause for the balance they've achieved (I'd include a little smilie here to represent that, but, hmm, seems we're a little shy of those... LOL!)

The one thing that frustrates me, as a pretty much unknown author, is the number of posts where people are on the hunt for something "new" and "not the same old big names", but when some of the old hands here very kindly mention some of us little folks, the discussions always seem to manage to wander back to the big names eventually. This is certainly not the board's fault, by any means. But it shows, I think, how dependent people can be for advice from peers before committing to the "unknown." As many of you may know, there is a whole separate section here at SFFWorld called Official Author Forums that Dag has very kindly made available to some of the mid-list (and below) authors who frequent these parts (and yes, I'm one of them, full disclosure). If you look at the activity there, though, much of it only falls among a few of those forums (most by far in Alison's, because she's got the rabid YA crowd hanging out there). Gary Wassner and I come up next in a very distant second and third (and most of the conversation in my forum tends to be about my art more than my books, although I'd love to be talking about the books and engaging in dialogue with readers). Certainly various friendly people like KatG and Rob point people to the Official Author Forums from time to time in response to people's queries about new authors to try, but it doesn't seem to drift over there.

I don't have a good answer for that (other than for one of our books to get picked up by Oprah and start a mass buzz exodus to those forums), but hopefully when folks are on the hunt for some new material they'll start stopping by and looking at some of the authors there. Scott Bakker, Caitlen Sweet, Matthew Stover... there's some really good writers in that bunch!

 

[Dyloot]

So many things, so little time.

1.The baby bird syndrome: Tell me what to read. Tell me what to buy. Tell me whether I will end up liking it once I do. Wipe my nose, Wipe my bottom. Hold my hand. The lethal mix of self-centered demand and extreme lack of any initiative is depressing and annoying. Pimping books is bad enough. Nannying readers is a crime against reading once that read is old enough to get online on his or her own. The worst is people asking if they will like something before they have read it. Miss Cleo went bankrupt ages ago. I have no idea or care what happened to the pet psychic. There is a twit on A&E that pretends to talk to dead people in between filming a reality show that is so bad it is almost funny. Go ask him. But pretty much everyone hear has no ability to foretell what another person's take is going to be.

2.Opinion as Dogma: This pops up in so many ways. Whether it is an attempt to disparage the reader or just the passive aggressive response to a negative review by a fan that basically says "so there!". Throwing out a "Well I liked it" as a response to someone's actual review just because it is hardly laudatory is really annoying. Certainly everyone can have a say. But no matter how it is done, trying to negate someone's opinion in any way persists like a sore tooth in almost every discussion forum. And nothing grates worse than bad dental work than someone posting "I don't know how you can think ________" or the flat out "no you're wrong" even when it is obvious that an individual take is being offered. And an equally individual take is being countered as fact. Get over the fact that we all have different views and don't all think the same and that pretty much means that someone is going to loathe the book you love, you dream about, you sit and imagine yourself as a character in.

3.Prom Queen Wars: There is no such thing as best author. There isn't. Doesn't matter if there are awards and polls and group mandates. There is no tiara or sash. I'm not talking about individual takes. I'm talking about the persistent effort by many to apply moral imperative to their favorite author. That somehow preferring one author's work to another is tantamount to treason. Or rooting for a particular "star" on Dancing with the Stars. Or who you support for President or Prime Minister. Again. What I like does not affect another person as a reader. You don't need to figure it out. You don't need to diminish it or explain it away to make it more acceptable that someone does not think just like you. From the threads that settle in to expound upon the greatness of one particular author and why another just does not measure up to just the idea that somehow one author has to be paramount over all others. Nor is there a popularity contest going on. And the only cliques in an online discussion forum truly exist only in one's mind.

4.The Henry Higgins Syndrome: Just because I'm not reading what someone else thinks is "literary fantasy" or have fully explored the masterworks or classics of the genre does not mean I can't hold an opinion on what I have read. Nor do I need fixed. I don't need my horizons expanded and I don't need lofty condescension offered up because somehow I'm just not as well read as you like to think you are. Nor do I need to read recommendations that are less (if at all) what the person asking is looking for so much as what you think that person and everyone else should be reading. A recommendation is not a crusade. And no matter how wonderful you think your tastes are and how incredibly profound and insightful your reading experience has been, let the unwashed masses alone. Even if that means they read Goodkind and Dragonlance and Stephanie Meyer. What's the worst is the passive aggressive declarations when mentioning a recent read: "I just read ________ which I know most here have never heard of / probably wouldn't read / etc." Put down the book. Buy a ladder. And get over yourself. Or just slap a gold star on your forehead, find the nearest mirror and beam.

5.Pigeonholing. Some people will flat out identify themselves in terms of their reading. Most of actually don't. It is impossible. Yet people persist in saying things like "well you like ________, so...." as some kind of refutation of that person's views. Borrow the ladder from above already.

6.Bafflement. Every now and again someone will post complete and utter bewilderment that there are no posts on a certain book or author. Along with a level of almost derision that until that person came along and mentioned that author or book, no one else in the history of the forum has done so. Complete with logic that no mention means no one here has read or formed an an opinion on said topic. Resulting in, if not outrage, a level of virtual handwringing like we left our small children in the car on a hot summer day in Phoenix. This sometimes is offset by the fact that such person usually is new and speaks a language where the word "search" means "do not whatsoever use this particular function as a hole will open up beneath your seat and send you plummeting straight to hell". And depending on how my day is going, I can derive some amusement by the fact that someone, out there, is shocked, shocked I tell you, that at that time, that exact moment, no one else is thinking of that particular book or author at least a few seconds prior to have posted about it already.

I will say this for the board. Unlike many other speculative fiction discussion boards, there is a wonderful dearth of blog whoring. Nothing irks me more than to open a thread that is nothing more than a shamefully pathetic attempt to push the blog counter up. The most heinous is the one that directs you to that poster's personal blog only to find out that the blog merely holds another link to yet a third blog or forum. Jezebel's like that need run out on a rail.

Classic. I honestly think you've got the forums pegged. Opinion as Dogma is a chronic occurrence in pretty much every forum I visit on any topic. I also call it: the need to be right. Sometimes I'm guilty of it myself and need to laugh at myself for it.

 

[Larry]

My main gripe is that I've been namechecked in this thread and the linked one on the Death of Dialogue and no one bothered to tell me this very important thing! I mean, I might have responded quicker if I had known and all that...

As to the issue of blog whoring mentioned in this thread and the other, I was a registered member of this site 8 months before I began the OF Blog of the Fallen. When I post here, erratic and as infrequent it might be (when I'm away from home 12 hours a day most days, forum posting is the last thing on my mind, alas), I'd rather it be all about a conversation. I have no problem with restating my comments, especially since the demands of a forum discussion are often quite different from that of a formal review. So I can understand the frustrations of those who get tired of the link to a link that basically says in 1000 words what could have been summed up in 150-200 words in a single post.

However, I would gripe (and this is a universal for most spec-fic forums) about how it's such a fuzzy area in regards to "related fiction" or even "mainstream" fiction. Does one have to search for a "lit fic" forum (anyone know of a good one, by the way?) to talk about books by authors such as Brian Evenson that straddle the imaginary line between "lit fic" and "spec fic"? Just wondering if others have had similar thoughts on this issue.

And as for Wert's comment about wotmania...I believe my frustration is more over the loss of dialogue over the years than anything else. I get plenty of page views there and elsewhere and I don't particularly care about the numbers as much as I care about the quality of the discussion. Always sucks when it's hard to respond to a mere recapitulation of an event that lacks much in the way of analysis or of a personal, reasoned stance.