[Lois Elaine Heckman]

As I understand it, the no index tag inserted when posting a new poem only works on that first page of the thread. If someone quotes the poem, or parts of it, on another page after that, a search can reveal it, unless the first post on that page, or the post with the quote, also has the no index tag. Can anyone confirm this?

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Lois Elaine Heckman

As I understand it, the no index tag inserted when posting a new poem only works on that first page of the thread. If someone quotes the poem, or parts of it, on another page after that, a search can reveal it, unless the first post on that page, or the post with the quote, also has the no index tag. Can anyone confirm this?

I can confirm that quoted bits will allow the poem to appear in search results. I tried a search yesterday for one of my own poems, searching for a line. The poem at the top of the thread did not appear, but a post farther down in the thread, quoting the line, did.

I can't confirm that "noindex" coding in the quoting post would hide things, but it seems it should.

[Roger Slater]

That's news to me. I was under the impression, apparently mistaken, that the no-index tag worked on all subsequent posts in the same thread.

At any rate, I'm quite sure that I have seen many, many poems that were workshopped here at Eratosphere appear in many, many journals whose policy is not to take previously published poems.

I would not suggest trying to deceive an editor whose guidelines make clear that they regard posting to a workshop as "publication," but most guidelines that prohibit prior publication do not make clear that they hold this less-than-obvious view, and indeed, many journals do not regard posting to a workshop as prior publication. So it seems to me that in those cases it's fair to resolve the ambiguity in your own favor, but also take steps (like using no-follow tags) to minimize the chance that anyone who is not a regular at Eratosphere might stumble upon your poem here instead of reading it first in the magazine in question.

[John Whitworth]

Some editors are lovely people. Others are POWER-CRAZED MADMEN. Others are much like you and me.

[ross hamilton hill]

Eratosphere
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eratosphere is the largest online workshop for formal poetry …..founded in 1999 by Alexander Pepple as a workshop complement to Able Muse. Eratosphere moderators have included some of the best known formal poets, including Marilyn Taylor -- The Poet Laureate of Wisconsin, A. M. Juster, A. E. Stallings, R. S. Gwynn, and several others. The Distinguished Guest forum has hosted and continues to host presentations, and discussions with renowned writers and poets such as Richard Wilbur -- a former US Poet Laureate and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the late Anthony Hecht, Timothy Steele, Charles Martin, X. J. Kennedy and others, and these discussions are permanently archived and accessible online. Thus, Eratosphere has become a useful research medium in academic and other circles to interactively gauge modern poetic trends and beliefs, being quoted as a reference for instance in Professor Susan Santovasi of Yale University on political poetry [1], besides being included in the listing of writing resources of several universities.

I'm sure many will know this but it was surpise to me, I recently got strange responses from ezines I submitted to, saying, 'no but send us more' or giving a glowing, detailed response but then saying 'no thanks'. Never before had a reject that wasn't just a form letter. Now if I decide to submit I'll stick to poems I havn't posted here.
ah, the price of fame..
cheers
Ross

[Lois Elaine Heckman]

I found this in our FAQ:

How do I prevent Google and other search engines from listing my posts?

There are some members who need to protect their threads from Google indexing, especially if they intend to submit workshopped poems to venues with overly rigid non-publication rules that fail to recognize that the Eratosphere-workshopped poems are not archived, and are pruned regularly on a monthly basis.

For our workshop forums -- Met, Non-Met, Deep End and Translation -- you don't need to do anything extra as protection is now automatic in these forums.

Should you also need to protect a specific thread in a non-workshop forum, a new BbCode, Noindex, has been introduced to prevent Google and other search engines from indexing and making available in their search results any thread where this code is deployed. Here are the steps you need to achieve this protection for your thread in a non-workshop forum.

When starting the new thread you need to protect from Google indexing, add the following code as the first thing in the first post for that thread:

*

Note that no value is required between the tags. Simply enter it exactly as indicated above as the first thing in your thread.
Note, however, that tests have shown that this protection code only works on the first thread-page. Thus, if your thread is popular and begins to span multiple pages and you want the extra pages protected as well, send a PM to the poster of the first reply in each of the subsequent pages with a request to edit his or her post and add the protection code as the first thing in that reply. Alternatively, you may also contact the forum moderator with this request. Again, note that you don't need to do anything for workshop forums as listed earlier -- these protection instructions apply only to threads in non-workshop forums that you feel the need to protect from Google indexing.

If there's a thread that has lost its protection after the board was converted to the new system, this can be re-instated by editing the first post in that thread and adding the new protection code to it, and if it's a long thread with multiple pages, the first reply in the additional pages also need this treatment as explained earlier. With this coded edited in, Google will drop the thread from its index the next time it refreshes its listings for the Sphere, usually in a matter of weeks.

* [%noindex][/noindex%] without the percentage marks, which I added here, in order to make the code visible in this post. If it is written correctly, it cannot be seen.

[Michael Cantor]

I think this is a big fuss over nothing. I've published in about fifty different venues - print and internet combines - almost everything I've published has been workshopped on the Sphere - and nobody has ever come back to me and complained about the Sphere. And I generally use the same title (unless I decide to change it as part of the usual rewrite process) for workshop and publication. The only people who seem to bend themselves in pretzels over this are some of our Spherians. And I haven't heard anybody - except for the New Statesman Competition, and I'm not even sure if that's in effect or just talked about by somebody who doesn't understand the Sphere - cite any actual instances of having work turned down because it was workshopped here. Relax!

[Ann Drysdale]

I've been on the verge of trying to reply to this because I'd never really understood these code-things and was intrigued, though not unduly concerned. I believed that Alex had taken care of it in the workshop forums, from the bottoms of which, in the fullness of time, the workshopped work drips like juice from an over-ripe plum onto the fertile soil of forgettery.

Now, since we are not allowed to post any of our own work in the "other" forums, surely there can be no problem, and the giving of funny titles to work-in-progress to confound the wicked Beelzebots just troubles the cheerful innocents among us for no good reason. Innit?

The only reason to protect anything in these forums might be when quoting the work of someone else which is effectively in copyright, but that's a different issue.

Michael, the New Statesman issue was very real, brought up by the journal and solved by the combined efforts of the member with whom they raised it and Alex who fixed it.

And John, remember - some Editors are Sphere members! Be Very Afraid!

[ross hamilton hill]

the Wiki article I quoted is recent.
All codes can be overidden by a better code, all poems can be searched by a search engine, they'd be apps available.
If you were a ezine publisher you would want your poems to be unpublished in any medium, it's your show, you'd want it all original. Wouldn't good ezine editors put all poems through an indexing/ keyword app to screen out poems previously published on the net, it's simple to do, changing the title makes no difference. A search engine searches all keywords and finds a probability match.
on the other hand ezine editors might like poems already popular on a forum if they were unsure of their own abilities…I like forums, don't read ezines, I like the friendship here.

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Michael Cantor

I think this is a big fuss over nothing ... Relax!

I'm with Michael on this one. It's a teapot tempest, and has no meaning in the real world. Full disclosure: every prize I've ever won has been from a poem originally workshopped here. Every poem I've workshopped here has been published. Not a single editor or judge has ever complained. Quite the contrary. Same goes for my fiction, although that's on another site. The rules people put up on their sites are meaningless, and not just in this case. I wish I had enough fingers and toes to count the number of sites that say "we like free verse, we never publish metered and rhymed poetry," sites on which we find our work with surprising regularity...

As for editors being our friends? Well, sometimes that's true. But for anyone who thinks that's a good general rule, I've got a bridge to sell you in Arizona...

Best,

Bill