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.
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