Forum Changes to Poetry Category, Your feedback welcome! Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hello everyone reading this tile!  

A while ago, James and I had a conversation regarding site navigation and forum layout. James has kindly mentioned this topic to me again this morning which I believe has great merit and will summarize here in the thread.  

New visitors to MM often times get overwhelmed by all the forum offerings (mostly in the Poetry area). I've just made one merge a few minutes ago for the less frequented forum "Garden of Eden" formerly for polished works - not for critique. I have taken all the posts in there and merged them into "Plato's Pearls of Wisdom" and slightly re-worded the forum description. Now, the new and improved forum shall be used as follows:

Plato's Pearls of Wisdom (Exhibition - NOT for Critique)
Posts in this forum are for exhibition and polished works only. Post here only when poet feels their work is polished or does not seek a critique. Thanks for adding tiles to our Mosaic! All forms of poetry are welcome in this forum.
The 1:3:2 rule applies here. See forum rules for more details.

I am also planning to have also merged Punner's Paradise (Comedic Themes), and The Fountain of Youth (Youthful Themes) into Angkor Wat Accolades (Seasonal Works) and re-worded it as 'Themed Works - Not for Critique'.

Now for the REAL challenge:  
We would like to CHANGE the format of Homer's Homilies (Poetry for GENTLE Critique) AND Socrates’ Synapse (Poetry for COMPLEX Critique).

Most of our writers already provide a complex or thorough critique to those posts in Homers. Questions have arisen with regard to Socrates. To quote James (Jox):

There are more poems than ever on MM and two or three posting forums may be justified - but I would suggest along different lines than at present. Maybe one could be form poems and another freeform? A third could be non-form rhyming and so on.

I am in agreement with James' idea in that I would like make a change to both forums and do away with a 'gentle' verses 'complex' critique division.

The idea is to change Homers to be a 'structured R & M (form) poetry' forum and Socrates to a 'non-structured (freeform) poetry' forum.

If our members agree, it will take me a while to move the posts accordingly between Homers and Socrates but all in all, I  like the sound   and beat   of this idea and I feel it would be an improvement to MM's forum board.

On a second note, I would also like to begin a forum for external competitions offered elsewhere on the Internet - perhaps within Incan Inversions?
Any suggestions and referals are most welcome!

Your feedback is appreciated all!  

Cheers!


~Cleo  

[Guest__*]

Dear Cleo and Jox,

I'm bothered by making posting rules based upon poetry-technical criteria.

I know this is laughable, but, rather like I speak English quite well from long practise, experience and innate "nous", thus with poetry.

As an example, here is a phrase from Jox's last post :

partial rhyme would still be considered FV if no metrical pattern exists otherwise...

Huh ?

I can guarantee that I will make mistakes, or that I and others will be so uncertain that some will not post much at all. Many poets write "from the heart", not from a text-book, and I and many others pick up some of these details of knowledge, form etc through crits on places like MM, ONCE WE HAVE DARED POST.

This is a plea for simplicity. At least easy/hard crit was simple ! And most plumped for easy.

Love
Alan