How should this messageboard be setup?

[Curufea]

What categories should there be?
What forums in each category?
Who should be allowed to post there?

[raven]

These are very good questions and I approve of them.

Oh alright...
Categories... Hm yes.

Forums: We could do like TTA Press and Nightshade do and setup (with their authorisation) messageboards for various Australian authors. Just an idea.

Who should be allowed? Initially let's let anyone do so, and change the system if it's being abused too much. Except, as discussed, we could have a private board for moderators only to read, for people who want to send us messages...

[Curufea]

I dunno - having specific authors seems to be a bit like favouritism to me - I don't think being prolific or a bestseller means they should have a chance to be reviewed more often as well.

Plus there's the maintenance issue to consider - the mods will have to keep adding authors and/or removing them.

Until spammers realise there is a forum here, we shouldn't expect much abuse (IMO)

[raven]

It's not so much for reviews as for actual communication with the authors. It's probably superfluous, but they're quite an interesting thing over at those boards I mentioned... But yeah, was just an idea...

[Curufea]

You mean author feedback for authors who don't have any other form of internet presence?
We could do that - as long as we have it clearly stated that we have no favouritism and any Australian author need just ask and we'll create a feedback discussion forum for them.

Would it be a good thing to encourage? What if there are author forums with many messages, and author forums with very little in them - would it be controvertial?

Another question is swearing-
I've set up filters for the most common words, should I set up filters for less often used words that could be offensive? The main idea of censorship here is to bake the board safe for underage browsers to read. Secondarily - to not accidentally offend adults with language use.

[raven]

I guess anyone who wants to comment (but we are talking to each other, or talking to ourself perhaps, as two independent outcroppings of the "UR-Peter"?) could check out:

http://www.ttapress.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi

http://www.nightshadebooks.com/cgi-bin/ ... discus.cgi

...both of which have forum sections for various authors - including authors who have websites of their own. They're a way to both discuss the authors' work and, if the author obliges, to actually converse with the author. Authors also sometimes post news about themselves, which might also go out on their own email lists and blogs/LJs, but it's a centralised place for such stuff I guess.

I don't think that there's any real competition between authors as far as how much attention they get goes and so on...
There needn't be a limit to how many authors are included either... And I think if we did it, it'd be great if we had a note saying "Any Australian author who wishes to be included in this forum need only contact us... Likewise any fan who feels an Australian author warrants discussion can suggest them too." Unless we want it strictly authorised only - not 100% sure with the two fora above how it's done.

[raven]

Have you permanently disabled HTML?
Or is it something with my browser here at work or something? I've flushed my cookies and cache but it's still telling me HTML is OFF even though I have it on in my preferences.
It also wants to have frell stupid wanking Smilies enabled. Damn messageboards!

I'd like to set one up on the FourPlay site at some stage - this kind seems good...

[Curufea]

Yeah, I've got HTML turned off for the board. It can be fairly easily abused to annoy others.

Should I have Smileys turned off?

[raven]

Some people may love smilies...
It's easy enough for me to disable them, so that's fine...

[Gillian]

Have a look at what people do on Absolute Writer Water Cooler. Better not to have smilies at all than to have the dancing bananas scrolling down 20 lines syndrome!

I really like the idea of any published Australian writer, no matter how minor, having a thing under their own name if they so desire or any fan of a writer having a place to talk about that writer's work. Nightshade is a good model - some writers do and some don't. Some are active and some names just sit, with nothing happening. It brings people back and it gets people reading and talking. What we're all about. Ask Alisa - but my vote is it is a great idea. Maybe though, link to Nightshade ie don't duplicate what is already being done well.

[Curufea]

Alisa is now also an Admin and can create/edit/remove forums. I recommend compiling a list of authors for her, as I don't know that many so can't really make appropriate forums.

[Guest]

Bloody hell, and so the forum spam starts...
(I may have missed other spam, I suppose...)

[Curufea]

It lasts a very short period of time. I estimate about a half hour before the user is banned and the post is deleted.

In all cases so far, these have been dedicated spammers, who's "job" it is to market as much as possible, and have never contributed positively to any discussion.