Things you hate to see in an sffworld thread

What might end up happening now is that the frequently talked of authors will overwhelm threads devoted to less well known authors or more general topics.
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Well, that was one of the reasons that the divisions were created in the first place many moons ago.

Personally I'm interested to see how it goes: so far, the overwhelming hasn't happened. What I have noticed a little though is a little of the opposite: older threads suddenly being resurrected from the depths (or at least another Forum) now that they are all in one place.

Which can only be good, I guess.

Mark / Hobbit
 
LOL. AuntieP, that's my excuse! :)

On the last site upgrade we found we were able to create tags for threads.

This is something the bloggers have been able to do for a while, but basically if you add a tag to a thread, it means that when you click on the link you will find all the other threads with a tag of the same name. So if you clicked on the tag 'reorganisation' it would allow you to see all the other threads that were tagged with that same tag.

To add a tag, go to the bottom of the screen where on the right it says 'edit tags'. Click on that; you will then be able to add a tag. Normally a thread can have up to 25 tags.

Doesn't take long: and to borrow a phrase from another, it's 'tagtastic'. :D

OK?

Mark / Hobbit
 
Of course. We can always remove them, should we need to.

Mark / Hobbit
 
Ugh...!

Sorry, but logging in this morning was quite the shock. Fantasy merged with Horror?!? :confused: Author subforums eliminated?!? :confused:

Gotta say, I'm not a fan of the changes... at all.
 
Things that I hate to see

1. People who do not wat to discuss books and authors.- I never get this how someone will post something about a book another will post about thier post and the original poster instead of anaylyzing the text or discussing likes/dislikes wil say something to the affect of: well this is my MoFo opinion and its just book, and i read what i like, and you need to chill and blah blah blah. It's a discussion forum not a lets praise this book online forum so like minded people can praise it with us simultaenously. I'm not saying attack someone for thier views on a book. I'm saying both sides discuss and contribute to the greater conversation. All of literature after all is an ongoing conversation and even bystanders sometimes can influence the direction this conversation flows in the future. I fail to see how people unable to handle someone criticizing their favorite authors/books and put forth a logical thought out defense that amounts to more than "Go F yourself hater" can make it in the real world.

2. People who attack people who attempt to make serious and or long post.
I guess I may be unique in that I dont have Samuel Jackson standing behind me with a knife to my head going "Read MoFo read. Read the whole post our im going blow your MoFoing brains out. If i see someone making A I love X book posts or some type of posts i dont like I just scroll down. Takes less than fives seconds btw...guess I'm pretty good at it.

3. Carebears-People who think that because someone makes a post attacking the ideas or assumptions of a book they are automatically evil or trying to hurt the feelings of fans of the book. This angers me so much I can only say it again if you dont want to discuss dont come to a discussion forum. I'm not saying personal attacks against someones percieved tastes or style but thought out opinions and analyzes of particular books. Also I for one love animosity between fanboys as long as thier making good points and not being childish. If you see a post........or a review that offends you there should be one of these in the corner of your screen


X

All it takes is once click.

What I love to see....I love to login in and see a post where poster X makes staement A,B C, etc then below KatG, werthead or someone else Radone maybe?someone else? (there are other people that do this just cant remember them all) literally point by point qoute by qoute rips their arguments to shred, not with opinions and slander but with thought out statements, examples and facts.
The day posters like those stop posting here will be a sad day for me.

In this way not only do they contribute to the discussion POSSIBLY replacing error with something more correct but they may also POSSIBLY contribute to the original posters and all subsequent posters better understanding of a book. Only when our own preconcieved biases, opinions and tastes are challegened do we really grow. People sometimes need to tuck their toes in some and not take things personal. Sometimes it seems as if people think that because this is fantasy that there are no serious discussions to be had of craft, literary undertones, themes, an author's execution and so forth. No I'm not criticizing "the OMG I only read for fun bro" types I'm just saying....it's a discussion forum.

No I'm not trying to be elitist or say that everyone must enjoy wolfe,butler,mieville and so forth. I am saying that no matter what I'm doing today, 1-2 years from now if I'm still doing it I hope to be doing it with alot more wisdom and understanding. So if I read only D&D novels thats cool. But 1 and 2 years down the road I hope to have a better understanding about say for example, the appeal of shared world writing, the themes the authors try to convey, the possible meanings behind the main characters arcs, the real world inspirations for the authors cultures and so on.

Basically I think the level of discussion sometime degenerates into a 3rd grade english class. Where everyone reads a book then everyone shares thier ideas feelings and no matter what you say, even if youre way out in left field the teacher smiles and hands you a treat and goes to the next person. Thats cool and all if youre in to that sort of thing.........but i much prefer college level english classes where those left field statements will either be backed up by facts and examples or summarily ripped to logical shreds by the professor.
 
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So your saying for the most part we are a bunch of 3rd graders. Cool.:p

I'm glad you put those Possibilies in there cause just cause someone can articulate there arguement better doesn't mean there right or unbiased etc given that for the most part most of what we discuss here is subjective.
 
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I am aware of this fact but I also feel that it is better to be at least presented with a challeging dissenting view than to live forever with the surety of your own ideas. I think Bill Maher said something similar a few days ago on the daily show when discussing his new documentary about religion religoulous. It struck me as something both simple and profound. How deeply misconstrued our own ideas and biases can be when we refuse to let ourselves nor anyone else challenege our accepted opinions.

No bro not calling anyone a 3rd grader btw.

As for the subjective part all of literature is subjective and every book is a myth. This doesnt seem much of an impediment for the truckload of literary criticism that gets published. Heres how you get around that. Me and you read the novel SFFWORLD.

I then right a post stating that I thought SFFWORLD was A,B and C.
You come in after me and say you thought the book was B, D, and F.

Both of us present our views as logically as possible with specific examples and instances. Time passes. We refine our arguments agreeing on some points refutting on others once again using as little conjecture and opinion as possible. Time passes. More people join into the dialogue other critiquers add insight. Newcomers coming into our discussion our inevitably presented with both sides or all sides of the argument until quite naturally one of us is in the majority of opinions presenting a more accurate picture than the other. Inside the space of the literary conversation the winner usually goes on to interract on and influence the future discussion to a greater degree tan the trumped opinion. THIS DOES MAKE THE OTHER ONE WRONG. It simply means that(inside the space of the literary conversation) they hold the minority opinion and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. This does not prevent anyone from forming their own opinions, it simply presents both sides. No one can make you feel or believe something you dont want to.

The latter stage of the process where someone or something is seen as more right or better is inevitable btw. I think most people on these forums understand that we are dealing with a subjective topic, I do not understand how this in any way precludes discussion though.
 
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Things I don't like to see...

...are a bunch of unnecessary and unpleasant changes being made to a forum that was, in my opinion, nearly perfect.

I am kicking myself for not checking this thread earlier, and giving my two cents. I logged on yesterday and was shocked (and, I must say, somewhat appalled) at the new organizational layout. This is worse than the whole new facebook thing! For several reasons:

1) I totally disagree with the Fantasy/Horror merge. Everyone knows that Fantasy gets merged with Sci Fi, if anything. I guess there may be some overlap between Fantasy and Horror (e.g. the presence of monsters???) but there is not nearly as much overlap as between Fantasy and Sci Fi. Look in any book store, or video store; Horror has it's own section, while Fantasy and Sci Fi are always combined. I've never seen Fantasy merged with Horror anywhere else, and though I may be wrong, I don't know of many fantasy readers who read enough horror to warrant combining the two sections. Furthermore, isn't Fantasy the most popular topic on this site? If anything, Fantasy at least should still have it's own forum!!! I feel quite strongly about this.

2) Elimination of author sub forums? Personally I think it's a terrible idea, especially if you don't want repeat threads. Do you think people are gonna use the search function, or scroll through pages and pages of Fantasy/Horror threads to see if their particular thought about Erikson or Martin has already been posted? No, I expect the elimination of author sub forums to lead to 2 possible outcomes: 1 - a huge drop in the amount of author-related postings, or 2 - a huge increase in repeat threads (thus, ironically, adding to the DISorganization of the forums).

3) I just need to repeat #1: Fantasy should not be merged with Horror!

The only change I'm okay with is the "Other Media" merging. That's not a bad idea. But I think the Fantasy/Horror merge and the elimination of the author sub forums is the wrong way to go. :(

Once again, I thought this forum was great. It's kind of sad to see this thread, with 8 pages of complaints about things that, in my opinion, are just part of what happens on internet forums. Overall this forum is excellent, and is one of the best forums I know (in terms of clean language, and no personal attacks). "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
 
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I agree with the author forums bit, but Horror/Fantasy? Unless the Horror is purely about a serial killer or a psychopath or something, horror usually has a supernatural aspect which makes it firmly Fantasy. SF and Horror very rarely have overlap (elements of Peter F. Hamilton and Alastair Reynolds aside, and arguably The Stand, which could be seen as an overlap of all three), and Horror and Fantasy do a lot. A lot of King's work and most of Barker's straddle the two genres. Certainly if I wanted to start a thread on Weaveworld, I wouldn't know to put it under Horror or Fantasy, whilst now that question has been cleared up.
 
Thank you for the compliment, Afrobro. I will now proceed to rip it to shreds. :)

Just kidding, but I'm one of the carebears, and have frequently been accused of being a kindergarten teacher or playground monitor. I prefer a discussion where people listen to each other about disagreements to animosity between fanboys. While I occasionally get sarcastic or exasperated -- and am okay with that being pointed out most times-- mostly I try to be respectful.

This is basically what you're saying too, but some of the people you are complaining about feel that they have to defend these books just to be able to talk at all about them. For instance, as soon as someone mentions Goodkind in a favorable light, it's pretty certain that they'll be attacked for it, not necessarily in a personal, rule-breaking way, but in an unpleasant way that doesn't encourage them to stick around. Not everybody wants to scrap.

So it will be interesting to see how it works with the author forums, about the most contentious bestsellers, being integrated here, and whether that leads to better discussions or more problems. But if someone is being defensive, I'd counsel patience, as much as you can manage. (She said after rounding on folk for critiquing character names in a book.)
 
Evil Agent said:
1) I totally disagree with the Fantasy/Horror merge. Everyone knows that Fantasy gets merged with Sci Fi, if anything. I guess there may be some overlap between Fantasy and Horror (e.g. the presence of monsters???) but there is not nearly as much overlap as between Fantasy and Sci Fi. Look in any book store, or video store; Horror has it's own section, while Fantasy and Sci Fi are always combined. I've never seen Fantasy merged with Horror anywhere else, and though I may be wrong, I don't know of many fantasy readers who read enough horror to warrant combining the two sections. Furthermore, isn't Fantasy the most popular topic on this site? If anything, Fantasy at least should still have it's own forum!!! I feel quite strongly about this.
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The majority of SF forum members absolutely do not want Fantasy merged with them. They already aren't too happy with fantasy as it is and don't want it swamping out Science Fiction discussions. There are a lot of SF fans who hate fantasy and they see it as fundamentally different from SF.

Horror doesn't have that problem as many horror novels are also fantasy. We've had a great deal of overlap with many horror titles regularly discussed in fantasy, about many authors who do both fantasy and fantasy horror. The Horror forum was getting overlooked -- many members didn't realize we had one, and so it seemed a natural fit to put them together. As for bookstores, Horror is a new category market (before it was in general fiction.) Thus it is separate, being new, but put right next to SF and Fantasy, which in many bookstores are now separated.

Theoretically, adding Horror to Fantasy will only make the Fantasy forum more popular. But you are not required to read Horror threads or participate in them in any way.

2) Elimination of author sub forums? Personally I think it's a terrible idea, especially if you don't want repeat threads. Do you think people are gonna use the search function, or scroll through pages and pages of Fantasy/Horror threads to see if their particular thought about Erikson or Martin has already been posted? No, I expect the elimination of author sub forums to lead to 2 possible outcomes: 1 - a huge drop in the amount of author-related postings, or 2 - a huge increase in repeat threads (thus, ironically, adding to the DISorganization of the forums).
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Well this is what we're going to find out. We've had four years of discussions on these author sub-forums and the problems they cause versus the benefits of using them. We have a lot of people who refused to go into them and wanted to talk about these authors in the Fantasy forum and put up threads even when we asked them not to. So again, we're trying it out this way. If it doesn't work, we'll change it back. But all the threads are perfectly accessible and there's no reason that you can't continue the conversations about these authors you were having. They might get more interesting by having more people join the party.

The only other change we made is to try and improve the Recommendation Thread set-up. Since we need to do this for SF too, feedback on that would be appreciated. If, as time progresses, you feel the changes cause problems and you still hate them, let us know.
 
Like Kat said, in a nutshell, a lot of these changes were in response to things we've been seeing members say about our forums both here and elsewhere.
 
Fair enough. But I still think it's a shame. I don't think I'll have the patience to search for certain topics and threads regarding specific authors. I suspect I'll spend less time posting on here, which is unfortunate.
 
done is done. while i think the merge between horror and fantasy is good, i don't like it that the author subforums are gone. if anything, i thought it would have been good to create even more dedicated subforums for authors, also for the less known ones. that way, you just know where to go if you have a question about a series/author.

now i fear even more similar threads will be created.
 
i'm spending a lot of time on reddit, where the tags are my best friends. i don't think we will miss the authors subforums if we get used to name the threads correctly : with the full name of the author [more important than the name of the book] and add some tags to threads from time to time. I'm already having an easier time with the search function here than last year, when I usually got a few pages of unrelated threads when i put in an author name.
 
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I do not understand how this in any way precludes discussion though.

No one said it did:)
 
Look in any book store, or video store; Horror has it's own section, while Fantasy and Sci Fi are always combined. I've never seen Fantasy merged with Horror anywhere else, and though I may be wrong,
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In the UK, at least, SF/Fantasy and Horror are indeed two separate sections and have been for many years. I've never seen a bookstore separate out SF from Fantasy. If the bookstore is small, the three of them sometimes share a space.

I know that Waterstones now are reporting that Horror sales have leapt up rapidly in the last few years and are giving more and more space to it (annoyingly, at the expense of SF&F in my two local stores).

Some of my American friends report that there was a huge Horror boom in the 1980s (presumably inspired by the success of Stephen King) but it died off after that and some stores got rid of Horror as a separate section and amalagamated it either with General or with SF&F.
 
In my big old superstore, they have a SF section, a Fantasy section, a tie-in, franchise SFF section and a small horror section, which is new. Altogether, it takes up about one quarter of the adult fiction section, possibly more.

What used to happen in horror in the U.S. is that publishers would have horror imprints sometimes, which were usually run/coordinated by the SFF editors, but the horror was sold in general fiction. Occasionally, they'd try to have a horror section or at least displays, but it didn't stick. The horror fan audience tended only to buy the top five bestselling authors or so and wouldn't reliably buy new and mid-list authors, like they do in SFF. (This is also why it took until the sixties to have a Fantasy book category market.) SFF would put out some horror themselves, but most horror was considered a sub-category of general fiction.

But the last round of interest in horror movies, an overlap of authors, a lot of new fans, and the increased growth in fantasy fiction, which includes all sub-categories, etc., made them decide to consolidate horror with dark fantasy titles and create an adjunct market to SFF. There are still a lot of horror titles in general fiction, but this time, it looks like horror is able to sustain itself as it's doing pretty well. Since most horror -- though not all -- is fantasy as well, and with the overlap of dark fantasy, it's a pretty natural fit for us in the forums, though horror is still its own man, with distinct subject matter and styles.

What I'm seeing here is a general sense of anxiety that the forum may be swamped by too many threads and you won't be able to find stuff that interests you -- that the Fantasy forum will grow too big. That may be an issue, but I'm not sure I really see it happening so far. The forum authors get talked about so often in Fantasy, that bringing in their author forums seems to be really more about consolidating threads than multiplying them. The horror author threads don't seem to be cluttering up the place, just adding some discussions that could have just as easily taken place in Fantasy alone.

But we will keep monitoring things and we do want to hear people's concerns and also what they find to be working for them as well.
 
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