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 Jox,

You are very kind to say that I am concerned for others. Nope, if I have to figure through this :
If your poem has end rhymes and/or is of a formal poetic style then R & M is the forum..

If your poem has no rhyming end lines or metrical unit (like a quatrain or couplet) and various line lengths and stanza lengths, then it would be a FV post....

every time I want to post, I will be in confusion. Yes, I can sit down and figure it out, but that is hardly simple. It will be a barrier, and it will stop some newer people "daring" in case they get it wrong. Witness those who say they never venture into Socrates, they don't think they could do hard crit, or possibly, unspoken, they don't want hard crit themselves.

I think we are very fortunate on MM to have developed such a "creative" and "caring" crit style that people dare to be exposed to it. If we start expecting people to analyse what they are about to put up, including ME, that is an extra barrier to simplicity.

I would probably for safety simply throw everything into the FV one, in a sense, anything goes, there, so everything goes there !

I admire Lori, who DOES know the difference, and you, who has no problem, you only do FV. But if I look at the last 5 poems I wrote, I'd spend several minutes working out what they were, other than "the best words, in their best order" for effective communication.

Love
Alan