[EU] The fate of the Lit Review Forum?

http://boards.theforce.net/Literature_Review_Forum/b10458/

Personally, I find this forum as a valuable resource in finding why EU novels to read. Only staff members can post in the forum and it seems that it has not been updated in a long time. I think the last one to really create new threads in there was Errant Venture.

Recently in the Lit Forum Mastadge has been posting a new type of Lit Reviews where members write a review and then the overall score is tallied up.

I was just wondering what the fate of the Lit Review forum would be?

I suggest that those threads by Mastadge, be moved to the Lit Review Forum and all new ones can be posted there as well. That way all the reviews are together in the forum designed to showcase them. It would just be a bit more organized and a better resource for JCers.

That is just an idea. If you have a forum like the review one, you might as well send the reviews into it.

I was just curious over this matter.
-Seldon

 

Seldon...
"...Recently in the Lit Forum Mastadge has been posting a new type of Lit Reviews where members write a review and then the overall score is tallied up."

Your history is actually a bit in reverse. These threads by Mastadge in Lit. are not "recent," by any means and predate the Lit. Forum Review Thread by a long time.

The Lit. Review Forum to a large degree was born out of Mastadge's (and others' similar kinds of) threads.

The two are not mutually exclusive, and actually "do" and "exist" for very different reasons. When the Lit. Review Forum was set up, there was not any impetus to ban such "review" threads within the Lit. forum, they're still very much welcome. Why?

The Lit. forum gets the majority of its discussion from "current events," recent releases, etc. These are what brings most people to the forum to talk about. Spoilers, etc. So, its "review" type threads come from a sort of "gut" feeling. An impulse. Its new to people, and they're talking about it, and rating it, etc. And a rather important phenomenon is that the thread dies on its own accord when "fandom-at-large" has read it, discussed it, rated it, and has since moved on to the "next big release."

Which is pretty much the opposite of what you get with the Review Forum. Its content is in many cases several - or many, for that matter - years old. Many people have read, and re-read, and possibly even re-read multiple times. That's to say the sort of reviews you get there are measured responses. People have had some time to formulate their ratings. With the thread content for the Lit. Review Forum, you generally will not see threads for "recent" releases, until such time has passed that we won't be getting all of the impulse ratings. We do not want the Lit. Review Forum threads to "die" and fall into the nether-regions of the forum abyss where no one can find them. Sure, slow threads might be auto-locked, but people can continue to rate the works. And all it takes is a PM to unlock an auto-locked thread to continue discussion again.

There will always be a need and an interest for both kinds of discussion. Which is to say, there is definitely an interest and need for the threads Mastadge makes in Lit. for recently-released works, and there definitely is interest and need for a forum like the Lit. Review Forum.

 

I know they're both convenient for different reasons. For the JCLRS, you can see, like Genghis said, the reactions at time of release, while the LR forum contains mainly books that existed before JCLRS started being posted.

It's also easier to get different types of data from the two different styles. If you're looking for data to mention in another thread, I can either go to the poll thread or the LRS thread. Going to the poll, you see percentages but no average and no ratings like 6.55, but if I go to a LRS thread, I see an average and a wider range of ratings. They're useful for different things, so I think they should continue to exist.

The difference in age is also evident; if I want to compare Battle Surgeons in the LRS thread to Rogue Squadron in the LR forum for purposes of comparing non-main character novels, I know the people making the ratings on BS better than I do on RS, because I haven't been here that long, and can see bias more easily in the LRS threads.

^^run-on sentence and my $0.02.

 

I agree that the two different kinds of review threads meet two different goals. The ones in Lit are mainly just gut-reaction reviews, pretty much what you thought about the book after finishing it. The one in the review forum is for thought out, in-depth responses, books that have been out for a while, giving ample discussion in Lit to discuss said work and to think about what it means, the quality of it, etc.

As for the actual forum itself, I think its stagnat and needs a revival.

 

Personally, I don't see wht we ever needed a Lit Review Forum in the first place.

 

Reason 1: Easier to go there and find the threads than to dig through the Lit Forum.

Reason 2: Shows older books, and I know I've used this before as research. If someone I know is skeptical about the quality of say, Shadow Hunter or Cloak of Deception, I can refer them over to the forum and let them see why they should but the book. It's also good if you want stats on how well a book is liked; I started a thread on SotME a few months back in Lit, pretty much asking "why all the hate," and used some quotes from the forum.

Reason 3: Shows a wider spread of information more easily than the review threads. If you want to know about the popularity of a certain type of novel, you can flip through the LR forum a lot faster than the threads, and can see the spread of data. If you look at the thread, the only info available at a quick glance is the average rating and the number of ratings. Looking at the ones in LRF, you can see the number of votes, as well as how they're spread. and it's easy to calculate an average.

 

Smuggler-of-Mos-Espa...
"Personally, I don't see wht we ever needed a Lit Review Forum in the first place."

Hey, thanks for sharing your opinion, Smuggler-of-Mos-Espa. Given the staggering numbers of posts you've made in both the Lit. and Literature Review forums since you've been registered here, you certainly hold a great insider's perspective on the issue!

 

I wish the NJO Books and Clone Wars novels would be added to the Literature Forum!!

 

There are NJO and Clone War novels available in the review threads in the Literature forum. Check out Mastadge's first post in any one of the Lit. Review threads then follow the appropriate link for the book of your choice. Im pretty sure that there are links for about half of the NJO books, but I know that there are definitely links for all of the Clone War novels to date.

 

As a note, I've been planning on adding some user requests for some time, but between a promotion/new job, packing my apartment for moving, new TFN stuff and a new unhealthy addiction to The Sims 2 it's been getting back-burnered.

I was planning on some more comics and some early-NJO stuff. Details TBD.

 

Thanks.
My major concern with this thread was what will be happening to the Lit Review Forum and whether or not new things will be posted in there.

-Seldon

 

Look forward to it, dp4m.

 

See? This is why I have faith in the Lit mods. They actually...get this...address our situation!!!

 

Not to suck up or anything but I think Lit has probobly the best team of Mods on the boards.