[Aaron Novick]

Cameron, that is correct—before your first poem you need a mod/admin to verify that you've done 15 substantive critiques. I think Roger misread you as suggesting that everyone always needs to do so, which is of course not true.

Re: the topic at hand, my sense (having had my adolescence during the golden years of online discussion forums) is that the internet has simply moved away from discussion forums in general. They see less activity across the board. All the forums of my youth are shells of their former selves if they exist at all, and even the Sphere is less active than it was even four years ago when I joined, let alone in its heyday.

[W T Clark]

Matt and Aaron,
Thanks for the confirmation!

Aaron,
Yes, I've heard about the movement away from forums. But it seems strange to me. The Internet is growing more widely used by the year so one would expect that there would be more members joining more forums, as the numbers of poets continue to increase (if not their readership).

Eratosphere seems reasonably busy though, in that I'm not contradicting you, just wondering how busy it was back in the day. Pffa is much more quieter. For instance, it's very rare for me to be the only active member on the sphere, while on pffa not so much. Still, I'm very happy both are running!

[Aaron Novick]

The sphere is not inactive now, but if you browse older threads in GT, you'll see a wider range of discussion, from a wider range of voices, than you see now.

Yes, the internet is becoming more and more central to our lives, but it is also becoming more centralized around websites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Forums are not the dominant online social outlet now, the way they were when I was first starting to socialize online (2004 or so). Young poets looking for online poetry communities, for instance, are probably plugging in to poetry twitter, not seeking out places like the Sphere or PFFA.

[W T Clark]

Aaron, Yes you are probably right. I must be the anomaly then.

[Kevin Rainbow]

So, I was just wondering if there were any workshops with a similar quality of critique to pffa and Eratosphere

Approx 4.57 billion people use the internet, so obviously there must be at least hundreds of sites like this out there.

Eratosphere, PFFA....

Some of them might be hard to find.

[W T Clark]

You may be right. Do tell me if you find any!

[Julie Steiner]

So you're saying you want to date other people?

[Jayne Osborn]

Originally Posted by Julie Steiner

So you're saying you want to date other people?

Cameron,

"Open relationships" can be very dodgy. Better to stay faithful to the one you love!

Jayne

[John Riley]

The activity on poetry forums has decreased considerably over the last decade. The Sphere was once much more active and I understand it was even more active in the years before I joined in 2007. The early part of the century seems to be considered its golden years. The Gazebo ran out of gas. Participation dropped when Facebook and Twitter and other time consuming black holes of creativity became more popular. It is easier to start a FB group than it is to build and maintain a website. The moderator at Gazebo, who most of us know, moved on to other things. It was never the same after that.

I wonder about poetry boards. When you read a work and think about it and take it seriously and offer your best efforts and then someone swoops in and says you've "workchopped" it and the poem is wonderful and don't change a thing and then everyone loves each other, except the jerk who can't see the poem was perfect from the get-go and made the mistake of offering a critque. When that becomes prevalent a poetry board is useless.

Best

[W T Clark]

We all must learn to share.