wat??
03-03-2009, 06:34 AM
"Disclaimer;
I have not been a member of these forums for very long so I may simply be unaware of a feature, or I may be missing something else which might address my own complaint. "
What I want to talk about is the Author List section of the literature network forums. It seems to me that this system is well...bad. I will attempt to explain myself below.
1: ) Lets say that my favourite author is Dostoevsky, and I view the Dostoevsky forum every day, this seems logical and should keep me up to date with all the Dostoevsky discussion featured in these forums right? Well no, not necessarily. Lets now assume that an author specific forum I would never look into or bother with, how about we use Shakespeare as an example features a thread entitled "Shakespeare influenced 19th century Russian literature", and in this thread a very large paragraph is devoted to Shakespeare's influence on Fyodor Dostoevsky; well I would very likely miss this entire thread and be robbed of an opportunity to contribute to a discussion partially relating to Dostoevsky.
If such a thread were posted in a general forum (if there was say, a forum for 19th century lit, or Russian lit) I would have been able to easily find the thread and contribute.
2: ) I think that restricting all discussion of an author to an forum exclusively pertaining to that author could be detrimental to other users in the forum who have never read that particular writer.
For example, if I am unfamiliar with Victor Hugo, but I see a thread discussing "Les Miserables" in a general forum, I could read this thread and realise that this book might be very interesting to me and so I might be inclined to pick it up, as opposed to actually searching out an author who I have never heard of in the Author List.
3. ) The author list does not feature enough authors, a lot of my favourites are missing such as Graham Greene and J.D Salinger. Now this would be fine if there was an author list as well as an array of general forums, but the only forum where a thread about lets say 'Franny and Zooey' could be posted is the 'General Literature' forum, which to me does not seem like a forum designed to discuss books singularly, but rather literature in general.
In my opinion the Author List forums should be removed entirely and more general forums should be created to fill the void. Implement this and a discussion about Ivan Turgenev would not have to limited to the extremely scant, unused, Ivan Turgenev author forum, but could be moved into a much larger forum, lets say Russian lit, or 19th century lit, where it could be discussed and enjoyed in a much more active environment.
I have not been a member of these forums for very long so I may simply be unaware of a feature, or I may be missing something else which might address my own complaint. "
What I want to talk about is the Author List section of the literature network forums. It seems to me that this system is well...bad. I will attempt to explain myself below.
1: ) Lets say that my favourite author is Dostoevsky, and I view the Dostoevsky forum every day, this seems logical and should keep me up to date with all the Dostoevsky discussion featured in these forums right? Well no, not necessarily. Lets now assume that an author specific forum I would never look into or bother with, how about we use Shakespeare as an example features a thread entitled "Shakespeare influenced 19th century Russian literature", and in this thread a very large paragraph is devoted to Shakespeare's influence on Fyodor Dostoevsky; well I would very likely miss this entire thread and be robbed of an opportunity to contribute to a discussion partially relating to Dostoevsky.
If such a thread were posted in a general forum (if there was say, a forum for 19th century lit, or Russian lit) I would have been able to easily find the thread and contribute.
2: ) I think that restricting all discussion of an author to an forum exclusively pertaining to that author could be detrimental to other users in the forum who have never read that particular writer.
For example, if I am unfamiliar with Victor Hugo, but I see a thread discussing "Les Miserables" in a general forum, I could read this thread and realise that this book might be very interesting to me and so I might be inclined to pick it up, as opposed to actually searching out an author who I have never heard of in the Author List.
3. ) The author list does not feature enough authors, a lot of my favourites are missing such as Graham Greene and J.D Salinger. Now this would be fine if there was an author list as well as an array of general forums, but the only forum where a thread about lets say 'Franny and Zooey' could be posted is the 'General Literature' forum, which to me does not seem like a forum designed to discuss books singularly, but rather literature in general.
In my opinion the Author List forums should be removed entirely and more general forums should be created to fill the void. Implement this and a discussion about Ivan Turgenev would not have to limited to the extremely scant, unused, Ivan Turgenev author forum, but could be moved into a much larger forum, lets say Russian lit, or 19th century lit, where it could be discussed and enjoyed in a much more active environment.