I have mixed feelings about rules and goals in an artistic setting. On the one hand, art - is the freedom to create something totally new and good, which breaks all the previous bounds and rules. On the other hand, I’ve never felt comfortable in any group setting without some kind of mission statement and guidelines - why are we here, and what do we do here.

The “rules” and “statement of purpose” posted by Iconoclast are (I think) the heart and soul of a good literary board. Clearly anyone can add to them or generally discuss their worth and functionality, but I would greatly encourage everyone to at least read them, and ponder them.

I’ve found several kinds of boards on the internet. Kos, for example, is typically a lively discussion with lots of diverse opinion, sometimes tangential but always robust. Other boards limit discussion to what the moderator sees as applicable. And still other boards are virtually dead, with very little discussion and very few posts.

Surely everyone prefers board number one. So I ask - what’s to prevent Litmocracy from being a lively robust literary discussion? There are many categories in the Forum for comments. I might suggest something like one generalized category - “new post” - to let all those who come to the forum have a chance to go there first to read and critique or comment on the latest entry.

Not to preclude the Litmocracy voting schedule on the various categories of fiction, poetry, art, and et cetera. That is the basis of this site. But simply to encourage a more active participation, more feedback. And to prevent that slow death of - working so hard with inspiration and enthusiasm to write and post something, only to find that nobody read it or cared to comment. That’s a killer for literary board participants.

Perhaps Dave could fix it so that everything posted to one of the various categories, gets automatically re-posted to the Forum under “new post.” Just a thought, maybe someone has other ideas…or maybe not.

Stokey, I agree with you.
Only I don’t know if getting the posts to appear in the forum automatically would resolve the issue.
I find I have something to say about most pieces, but most often than not I won’t comment. Why? I think it’s because I don’t think myself ‘qualified’ to comment.

I realized that as a reader, I am more than qualified to offer my opinion - everyone is. That is the point, because a writer should welcome first and foremost the comments coming from those who read their stories, whatever they may be.

But as a writer, I do not feel I have much to contribute, because I have never followed the ‘rules’ of writing, and do not know them the way many other writers seem to. I do not adhere to rules in any artistic field, and therefore do no see how I could discuss them, let alone give any advice on them.

Now of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that I am a person who does not pretend to know about things I know nothing about. But your post has made me realize something: I should comment more, and give my reader’s opinion, and any tips or suggestions I may have about the writing in general regardless of whether I know the rules or not. Because in the end, it all comes down to your readers and your audience. Every comment is worthy of giving and of receiving.

So thank you for making me understand that it isn’t a question of which piece is posted and where, rather a question of who is willing and ready to offer their opinion.

I think that if every member of Litmocracy commited to at least one comment per piece, your ‘optimal’ forum would indeed be achieved.

There are no rules to writing. Or if there are, it is this one - did you like what you read, or did it move you or touch you somehow. There is no - this is how to do expositional writing, or anything else. Jeez Time Magazine reads like a two-bit rag because everyone has to conform to the Big Editor’s writing style preference - that sucks. The New York Times has a similar lack of any originality or any reason for me to read it. Furthermore, usually when people try to follow “rules” they’ve been taught, the reader picks up on these and finds them to be clumsy devices, instead of brilliant original prose.

Telling a story is telling a telling - if someone does it well, people will like it. If they don’t, there are reasons why - it dragged, or it shifted too suddenly, or it didn’t end right for me, or the subject matter wasn’t to my liking. These are all things that might be just the opposite for another reader - personal preference or taste.

My point is, the big thing about posting to a common board is - is anyone reading it? Or do I need to go find some other place where they will. And not just me, but anyone who goes through all the trouble of sharing their craft on a common board - hey, what’s the point if no one’s reading it?

As far as I can tell, the main problem to finding lively and high quality discussion is noise.  What I mean is that, for example, I just read the Daily Kos front page.  The article was decent, but the first three comments were of no value to me.  The site obviously does a very good job, and they apparently have a comment rating system that helps with the noise problem.

If you searched through all of Kos, you’d probably find that by spending all your time reading only those comments and articles that interest you (somehow magically knowing which ones to skip), instead of working 8 hours a day, then you’d just barely make it through all the reading each day.  It’s a very popular site.  I’m growing Litmocracy very slowly, but I’ve always assumed that it will eventually have that quality too.  But the voting technology replaces that “magically knowing” part… Anyway, that’s a little OT.

I wanted to make two points.  First, instead of getting all posts represented in the forums, a member has to use the FORUM tab when posting in order to get a “discuss” link (and a post in the forum).  By raising the bar this little bit, I favor and encourage those who show more effort - it makes it a tiny bit easier for those of us who use the FORUM tab to get feedback.  Second, Litmocracy isn’t very big and as it grows, the goal you mentioned will be achieved.  I think about 2/3 of new signups (3 - 5 per week, I think) are by word-of-mouth, which grows exponentially and indicates excellence .  I’m not too comfortable with our hosting company in terms of their ability to keep the website server up and running, but when I eventually find uptime to be less of a problem, I’ll probably spend a bit more on advertising and we’ll grow faster.

I think that’s the main thing we need here - more members.  You’ve seen the quality, now spread the word.

I have to say that I think there’s a fine balance of two good points here. 

First, having material go directly into categories without getting some preliminary views does mean that some good things will die ignored simply because there’s not enough traffic flowing through each of the categories.  If there were enough traffic, it stands to reason that while the percentage of people leaving feedback might be the same, the number of those people would increase.  However, placing something in a catchall preliminary area in the forum would mean the extra work of merging it and any accrued comments back into the proper place so that there wouldn’t be a conglomeration of everything in that preliminary area that would overload it and prevent it from having any good benefit, and I think ExpressionEngine just isn’t equipped to do that automatically.  While there are some softwares out that could do it, I think the end result might still be a bunch of the lazier sort of people merely scanning the preliminary area and moving on.  The idea is a good one, the pitfalls I see are with different ways of implementing it, but just because there are a few obstacles doesn’t mean we should give up on it.

Second, yes, an increase in the overall traffic would solve the problem.  However that’s not going to happen overnight, and I think in order to fight the idea of becoming a sleepy backwater site (recalling a recent comment by a new member) that it might be good to look at interim solutions.  Websites with small memberships do regularly experience lulls, and they are survivable.  But lulls on a site that relies on submissions are more damaging than on sites about some fixed subject.

For my own part, unfortunately I’ve been absent for some time, but life is what happens when you’re expecting something else.  I have actually recommended this site several times, but even word of mouth doesn’t always work.  I did receive a couple of feedback comments about the site in return, which I’ll pass on to Dave.

I still feel compelled to defend my position. First let me say - I love this site. Litmocracy is great and the site administrator does a fantastic job.

Secondly - I get tired of literary agents who are sorry they can’t use my books - it does take a bit of effort to produce them. So I started my own site, where I, as editor, can accept all submissions from me, as author. I even got one comment so far. And I know of a number of pretty good sites that can make that same boast.

Third - you expect more from the members at Litmocracy than at say…the hundreds of writing groups on Myspace or Yahoo or et cetera ad infinitum. If Litmocracy members take themselves seriously, then please - get into it. Don’t expect Dave or Iconoclast to have to read everything and make all the comments and critiques. I feel like really screaming - please: poop out a comment, or get off the pot.

I apologize to Dave if it sounds like I’m criticizing his site - I’m not. I’m just begging the membership - if you want this to be an exceptional place to post your writings to - than goshdangit, work at it a little bit.

You guys do an excellent job of making me think .  Thanks very much!

In pondering these issues - how to increase membership and participation - I find myself coming back to the basic reasons I built the site:
I want to show that pairwise voting actually produces results that are far better than other kinds of voting.
I want to use that fact to make some money, for myself as well as others who possess skills that justify it.
Ideally, the material (Video might work much better than writing) here will continue increasing in quality and thereby attracting new people for just that reason.

The way the site works now seems to address all these pretty well.  Topics like this one motivate me to put more time into making improvements, and as I implement them, that will help.  I also recognize that I’m a bit too patient - so I’m -shoot the right word is complacent- complacent about our growth rate.  Now let me address something else that’s been on my mind…

Some of you visit Litmocracy often, and I find that it’s down from time to time.  I ought to write some code to track downtime, but right now my only data is anecdotal - so send in your anecdotes about down time - just let me know how often you check out the site and how often you find that it’s down.

Since this is turning into a discussion about the site’s value, I’ll throw another idea in just ‘cause I’m too lazy to figure out a better place for it:  I was thinking that I should set up a “local” Litmocracy for my zipcode and invite people that live near me to participate.  It would be 92508.litmocracy.com - and if I get it working properly, it would be simple to set up others for other postal codes.  This gives the voting thing more value since local issues can then be brought up as important to “everyone on the site” - the local site.

Finally, if you like writing software - PHP and SQL and Javascript specifically - let me know because I’m ready to start paying people to write chunks of code for the site.

Well, I don’t know much about code.
And yes, I did notice downtime (I’m on the site on average a couple of times a day, and I say average because I do go a few of days without logging in sometimes).

But what I notice most of all is this: I currently have 3 posts sitting in the discussion forum. One of them has gotten a few replies, the other two one reply each. Now don’t go reading this thinking I am dissatisfied with these results, I am actually very happy with the comments and critiques I’ve gotten, and I value them.

What is interesting is to see how many views my posts have gotten (33-36-71). And to compare these views with the actual number of people who took the time to tell me what they thought.

As mentioned above, I am also guilty of this. I like to see what other people have to say, and I love to read the stories, but I don’t leave my comments often enough. Maybe all the site needs (or at least what it needs as well as more external publicity and code thigny) is more publicity within.

This forum post is a very good example of the kind of message we want to send to Litmocracy members. Dave, maybe a little note on top of the stories in the Workshop ( something like ‘don’t just read them, let the author know what you think!’ ) may go a long way. A little note about this in your next newsletter may help, as well

Just a thought.

I got here via word-of-mouth and am delighted. 
Just because I’m new, I guess I don’t really feel qualified to barge in and make a bunch of suggestions. 
I’ve read a lot of the stuff here and hardly commented on most of it at all, except to vote. 
Thinking about it, it’s interesting that one tends (I tend?) to think of more critical things to say than positive ones.  It’s like the news—if nothing bothers you, you just carry on happily, but anything annoying seems to inspire more comment. 
Maybe everybody should try to say what the strongest asset of the piece was, and then the weakest, and explain both.

High-Low is a great strategy for building respect and also rapport.  The author can then choose to pay more attention to the low if he or she feels like finding something to improve, or pay more attention to the high in order to get a boost.

I usually come to the conclusion that there is a case against any critical comment, and when you consider that case, you can come up with questions that allow the author to make a decision about it.  That very much eases the difficulty of providing feedback which is critical.

In order to remember to do this, I invite you all to post some words to encourage feedback.  I will take these quotes - heck, maybe I’ll make it an optional sign up field - yeah, that will be cool - and display random quotes at the top of workshop pages.