i just became member of this forum and was looking at recent activity and such, it seems to be quite inactive, however i have hope i am mistaken, if i happen to be, could someone please cheer me up with the facts, and if not please confirm my fears?
I don’t really use this place as a writing forum any more, so I can’t comment on its health in that respect. But the Talking Shit section seems to be very active. Which is good cos I talk a lot of that stuff.
There's always a whole lot of guests. My guess is that people either dislike criticism or the secular nature of things - however justified cynicism to newcomers might be.
I think a lot of people sign up here and expect a quick fix. They want to immediately post their work and are put off when they find they're expected to contribute with critique and discusson.
I'm not very interested in sharing my work, but I do like seeing what other people are writing and reading about the amazing things they are thinking. People here tend to be articulate, to say the least. This.
I have posted 30 or so stories here since joining. I have received some really great help in fine tuning my writing and improving my messaging. There are some really great writers here from a very diverse spectrum of experiences and locations. From what I have read of your two posts, you are someone who wants to be a writer who has yet to really write anything. This puts you in a tough spot, nothing to share and nothing to really add to anyone else's work. My best guess that if you actually took some time and effort to read some of the posted stories here, made some comments on the work, simple stuff, you would find that your experience would be greatly different than it is today. There are no rewards were there is no effort in anything in life.
I don't really frequent the forum anymore. I visit occasionally when I'm bored, but don't tend to see anything of interest. I outgrew the forum. By and large, the forum is aimed at beginners, I feel. There're seasoned and experienced writers here, and a few who are genuinely querying, as can be seen in the rejection thread, but that's a minority I feel. It's a good forum. This was the first place that taught me anything about writing. Reading about all the different approaches and opinions and their justifications taught me a lot. Now I've formed my own opinions and am no longer looking for that level of advice, so I've moved on. There's a lot of value here for someone who's looking to learn.
According to the about section this place started in mid-2006. Was this forum ever 'alive' by any standard? A golden period of activity?
i dont post my work per se.... but I like the Progress Journal part. it keeps me accountable. I honestly hadnt completed anything novel wise until I joined. I finished a full length novel and a novella. i also like being able to pop in on here to ask questions every now and then during stages of my writing. but for the most part, I've become a silent observer
Don't think the forums are any more "dead" than they were a year ago or before, if you think they are right now. I appreciate the moderation, the general attitudes and the discussions here. Ironically, the opposite's the reason why I prefer this place. Of all the web-based surfaces where writers gather and communicate these forums have been the most "serious" in the proportion of published authors giving genuine advice vs young/amateur writers asking "how do I write?".
The forum seems active to me. Maybe not as much as some other forums, but given the subject matter, I think it's fine. A lot of us are here regularly.
I belong to a dance forum and a motorcycle forum that are each down to a few diehard members, many of the rest having been drained away by the F Word social media site. This forum is robust by comparison. I joined another writing forum that I usually avoid because it is overrun by people more interested in censorship and personal political agendas than writing. Folks here tend to state their opinions and move on without making a full frontal attack on those who hold differing opinions, a courtesy that I appreciate.
The real question is "How close is death to the forum?" Favorite iterations . . . 1) Neil Gaiman's Death. 2) Terry Pratchett's DEATH 3) Soul Eater -- Death the Kid.
Near the bottom of the main page, the OP can find a list of currently active users and logins in the last 24hrs. Which I think is both factual and reassuring in what it shows.
When did this happen? I'll be honest, part of me is surprised I didn't get the boot over the years. I don't post here much anymore. Still stick my head in, once and a while, but most of the time I'm haunting the published works stuff. It's just at one point I found I was spending more time on this forum than actually writing, and now I have actual writers' commitments, and a hundred other commitments, I don't have the time these days for being very active.
Haha, thanks. Been posting on and off over the past few days, haha, was 'back' again about a year ago, but stepped away again. I'm just going to be like that I think, from here on. Busy with work, life, writing stuff. That sort of thing.
nope. The traffic here is pretty much the same as other forums of it kind ( excepting absolute write which is larger) the other point is that some forums play games with their “ members online” section retaining people as live who in reality haven’t been online for hours… we don’t do that or any of the other games. We also only allow members one account whereas some places have numerous people with duplicates to help inflate the numbers. In terms of the original question I don’t think it’s dying… traffic is down from an absolute peak of an average of 300 members per day in the golden age of forums ten years ago but it’s been fairly steady around the 180 to 200 members a day for the last two to three years. Although of course there are peaks and troughs depending what else is going on in the world. we do of course have light traffic compared to forums that focus on gaming or those that are purely social or dating focussed because writing is a smaller niche.
it was in early 2020, i can’t say too much but he had basically decided that fucking with the mods was fun, and had accrued a mighty 12 behaviour warnings before the axe finally fell. I like a laugh and a joke as much as the next guy but there has to come a point where disrupting thread after thread just isn’t funny anymore.
Oh I agree this forum gives solid advice in general. Once upon a time this forum was gold to me. It helped me grow so much as a writer. I also met some of the best people on here. Two of them are my CPs and we chat daily and we've alpha-read each other's novels and they're now two of my closest friends. I hope to fly to Helsinki to meet one of them one day, and the other one's discussing coming to live in Prague, where I am, for a spell abroad. So I'm not dismissing this forum at all - it's a valuable asset, esp for finding good people. It's just the questions asked here are no longer interesting to me because I've grown beyond that level. I've found Twitter to be more valuable now because the writers there are simply further along the journey. The members on this forum, by and large, are still writing their novels. They've never queried. They're still building their confidence, learning how to take critique, learning what third person omniscient is, learning how to write realistic female characters lol. The lifeblood of this forum remains to be beginners, and I'm looking for teachers. I pop back in now and again because once upon a time this forum taught me a lot, and I want to give back a little.
