Susan - I believe (90% sure) that one of our members had a dialogue with Timothy Green, the Editor of Rattle, and Tim indicated that he had no problem with publishing poems which had been workshopped at the Sphere because, among other reasons, they were only up for a short period. I'll try to find it later, but possibly somebody else recalls this - or will indicate that I mis-remember.

(I've never been published in Rattle either. I've been blaming it on the Gods, but if you are right, at least I'll have a better excuse. But I don't think you are.

Just wishing to express strong agreement with Roger's #18.

"But I do feel that when a site dedicated to poetry overflows with this kind of convoluted double-somersault-with-a-reverse-twist approach to making a simple point, it doesn't encourage participation by poets."

Well there you go. My prose may explain everything. Tell me, how many poets do you reckon you've personally marched off this workshop? I would say over the years it has to number in the dozens.

Personally? Name one or two. Name a single good poet I've personally chased off or discouraged. Have I been involved in a general sense of frustration when a new member is (a) clearly an amateur, and (b) lashes back critters - yup! Have I identified a few trolls? Yup? Have I (with others) approached beginners in a few cases and suggested alternate sites where they would feel more at home - sure! And if some of use didn't do that, the Sphere would be a far less demanding and useful place to the level of poets it aims at.

In case you're interested, Norm. I think almost everybody would agree that the Sphere was at its best when Alan Sullivan - the Editor from Hell - was running the Deep End. If there was a way to restore that mind set, I would be delighted.

As far as my occasional comments on your prose are concerned - why not? Are we to only criticize overdone and overworked poetry, but ignore prose? But you write to call attention to yourself, Norm. Those sentences and constructions don't happen casually. So I paid attention. Unfortunately, I'm not crazy about your style. I think it interferes with the points you're making.

Your trouble with my prose style is well-advertised Michael and not without its merits I'm sure. So I'm not crouching in a fetal position and I welcome the push-back. As I was remarking to someone the other day, you're an abysmal patronizer and I happen to like that about you. Alas names don't come to mind mainly because you chased them off too quickly.

Somewhere in the mix of accessibility, outreach, uncompromising standards, password protection and perhaps more sympathetic poetry editors, there's a secret sauce recipe. I don't claim to know what it is. I do believe if editors were thinking more strategically they would realize a workshop of this type can only improve the quality of the field. Clearly that's in their best interests.

The password protection for at least one poetry forum makes sense. It is not a point I’d have thought of, but if that makes some people more interested in posting good or poems with good potential, hell yeah, let’s do it.

Besides that, I think it sucks energy from the place when members use it mainly or almost exclusively as a forum for self-promotion. Nothing wrong with self-promotion, but if the people getting that advantage from the forums don’t also contribute something more substantial, things break things down to the big E: Ego. And Ego is basically dull, no matter whose it is.

I also think that too many people on the poetry and translation boards don’t give back for the crits they receive. It’s not uncommon to find people receiving all kinds of feedback for their work and offering hardly anything back.

Both these things break up the flow. The give-and-take, which is all the place really has to go on.

That's was me. And that was about the gist of it. Susan, if you like I can PM you a copy of the email response I got from him.

This is an interesting thread -- one that comes up every year or two, but interesting nonetheless. I can't deny some slight amusement over the fact that this was posted ten hours ago, as I write this, and has now had 27 responses and 430 views. Empirical though that evidence may be, I think a lot of people are still here, but they just don't post as much as they used to.

All of the options are in Alex's hands, of course. Bearing that in mind, I'm not personally averse to seeing TDE become password-protected. If that helps to drum up postership and readership, I'm all for it. I don't quite see the connection between lack of posters the way things are and increased posters with a password-protected portal, however.

I did try / have tried / am trying to boost TDE readership, but I think it's out of my hands, really. Posts there over the past year have usually received a lot of good feedback, and there don't seem to be many poem-posters unhappy with the tenor of responses. There just needs to be more people posting there. My predecessor tried posting his own work on a regular basis to drum up activity, but that didn't work. I've tried to reiterate the (possibly ostensible) difference between TDE and Metrical, but that hasn't worked. I've appealed to former member / current friends of mine to post there, but that hasn't worked. Most of what I've done as a mod has gone on in forums other than the one assigned to me, which is unfortunate.

Long story short: I don't think the 'Sphere is dying, or even rapidly shrinking, but there probably should be something done to revitalize TDE and other forums. I'll be damned if I know what that something is.

Anyone seen Holly recently?

For what it's worth, the "running off" allegations have been around for as long as I've been here...which is not as long as many others, of course, but is still a considerable chunk of time. Here's the thing: the members who are most often accused of "running people off" have been here for a very long time. They've been here through the 'Sphere's high times and its low times. They've been constants, is what I'm getting at, meaning that I don't think the "running off" theory has much weight, or else it would have been a major issue long before now (and I'm not convinced that's the case).