The Deep End
 

I knew Alan and thought him a good, if not great, editor. Alan really never worked for a living, and he could devote a lot of time--maybe too much time--to his critiques. As for his misogyny, there does seem to be anecdotal evidence for it.

The Deep End needs an adversarial Admin who operates like a competent magazine editor. He/she can do three things:

1. Say absolutely no. (Form rejection)
2. Say no, unequivocally, and offer some advice. (Form rejection with request to see more)
3. Say yes, equivocally, and offer some advice. (Form rejection with note and editorial suggestions)
4. Say absolutely yes. (Note and contract)
5. Never submit his or her own work to TDE.

It might be best if said Admin were anonymous. I doubt, though, that there will be volunteers. Anyone who volunteers should do it by PM to the current Admin.

It may have served a useful function once; it serves none now. The rare poems that do get posted there are not any better than the average poem on the met board, and the critiques offered there are not any more detailed or critical than those offered on met. Just get rid of it.

Or conversely we can keep it but have the color scheme rose-tinted, black-and-white, or sepia-hued, and it can only be accessed via dial-up using MS-DOS. Actually, just get rid of it.

Yes, it's hard to see how TDE could be made to work, barring something like Sam's suggestion, which seems a) unlikely to attract a volunteer and b) likely to end up causing bad feeling and controversy somewhere along the line.

If the critique were more in depth in TDE, I'd be inclined to post there. As it is, the critique isn't, and there's often less of it. Again, it's hard to see how the critique level could be policed, and if it could, who'd want that job?

The suggestion that's been made to make it private doesn't seem to address the issue of why it's not working. If it were hidden, it would then attract people who were concerned about posting publicly, that's true. But I can't see how that would affect the quality of the poems or the critique. It wouldn't be "The Deep End", but "The Dark End", which is a whole other thing.

I think being tough for the sake of being tough is a pretty ridiculous pattern of behavior, and, imo, pretty culturally centered. Anyone here post on Alsop? The "shark tank." Absolute silliness. Plus the website didn't bump up poems that were commented on. I think the real risks here or anywhere are 1) just being too timid to be honest, and the instinct to keep your friends and 2) getting used to a particular voice, whether you like it or not, you get comfortable with who you're always around~ not quite like telling inside jokes, but close.

I agree that we don't need a Deep End if the idea behind it is that we are going to be more brutally honest about what we don't like than we might be in the main metrical board. The idea that anyone is holding back negative criticism on the main metrical board out of some unspoken code of kindness doesn't strike me as accurate, but if it is accurate, then that's all the more reason to get rid of the Deep End. I wouldn't want the existence of the Deep End to give anyone the impression that the main metric board is where we are expected to pull our critical punches.

But it would definitely be nice to have a non-public board, whether it's "deep" or not.

I've floated the idea (publicly and privately) about just burying / archiving TDE for once and for all, but some folks have had good reasons for wanting it to remain. I personally don't think it hurts to keep it, but if it's not getting repurposed, it's basically a mausoleum...but one without plaques for the bodies, and no real sign of ghosts.

A thread like this comes up regularly, and for good reason, but I suspect that TDE isn't going away anytime soon.

Eratosphere was founded two decades ago! It predates Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, the iPhone, etc. It is almost as old as Google and Amazon. It is ancient. I think it should always have a Met Board and a Non-Met board, because it’s the only place on the internet to focus on metrical poetry, but otherwise it should change with the times. And I don’t think there is much to change—or at least I don’t have any ideas, maybe others do, because it serves its purpose and Alex does a good job. But the Deep End is a relic of when this site had a different demographic, and it doesn’t need to be there. If many people want a forum that is not accessible via Google-bots then we should have one. We can call it the Deep Web End.

Roger, I can definitely see why you'd want this, particularly given that you write poems for children where magazines are ultra-strict about public posting prior to publication. Julie has also said that she'd post more here if there were somewhere private to post it.

I wonder what the consequences would be, though, of adding such a forum. Anyone who wants to publish incurs some slight risk (however small) by posting publicly. So, if there were a choice between posting in a public forum or a private forum, how many people would choose to post publicly?

So if we had Met and Dark Met, say, I think Met would likely go pretty quiet, pretty quickly.

In which case, maybe making all the critical forums private is a way forward. The argument I've seen made against this option is that then we wouldn't attract as many new members, as potential new members wouldn't be able to look around before joining.

That said, maybe if all our critical forums were private, we'd actually end up attracting more people. I do get the sense that many people are put off of by the idea of posting publicly.

Yeah, Roger and Bob are right. I do think a very private area is necessary. Dunno how to go about that. Really, there are issues. But, that's right.