More Fora?

[Reinart der Fuchs]

Some suggestions have been made for fora.

Member Welcome Forum

Can science fiction have a separate thread from sword & sorcery/fantasy ( you know as well as I that a lot of Mikes older work is excellent sci-fi )?
Can there be a separate thread in the music category for Mikes material ( Deep Fix )etc.?
Can there be a thread for Current World Affairs ( so that news doesnt get intermingled with literature )?
Can there be a "questions to Mike M." thread,where we can all post questions in plain view of the group and Mike could view/answer once a month (at his convenience) in the open forum concept for all to see?
Can there be a thread devoted strictly to religion (for those interested)?
Can there be a thread devoted to only Mikes books ( for his work not to be diffused by other stories/authors )? I only read his material. Some might consider that sad, but I find that you must re-read previously read books to reaffirm the understanding of the last book you read.( am I chasing my tail here? )

Are there more? Let's develop a list of fora we'd like to see.

[Morgan Kane]

i am for :

- a member welcome forum

- a separate thread for science fiction

- a thread for Current World Affairs

i am against a thread devoted strictly to religion : resonned debate can be the place of such a debate if philosophical ... if not current news or activism ... .

forum dedicated to question to MM : Are not the Q & A and thje FAQ this ....

[David Mosley]

How about a forum dedicated to Polls? I know people can start Polls in forums already, but perhaps it would be good to have a specific place for them to stop forums getting swamped by them? (I know that presumes that people are going to start loads of Polls now they can have 20 choices, but Polls can have a way of making a forum look a bit messy, particularly if you have several polls all on similar topics.

On the matter of a Religion Forum, I'd say a distinction can be made between Religion and Philosophy, so I see no reason why 'Reasoned Debate' shouldn't have a 'Religious Discourse' sub-forum. It goes without saying that any such forum shouldn't become an arena for proselytising. I'd rather see it as a place for enquiries about aspects of Religion, i.e. what does x believe? Why do y practice this, that or the other? so that we might become better informed about each others faiths.

PS. I suggest that since we have a New Multiverse, Reinart create the Member Welcome forum and each of the current membership add one post introducing themselves (again) to any newcomers who arrive here. I know there's probably a thread in the Q&A somewhere where we've all done this already, but it seems lost in the mists of time. :)

[Doc]

On the matter of a Religion Forum, I'd say a distinction can be made between Religion and Philosophy, so I see no reason why 'Reasoned Debate' shouldn't have a 'Religious Discourse' sub-forum. It goes without saying that any such forum shouldn't become an arena for proselytising. I'd rather see it as a place for enquiries about aspects of Religion, i.e. what does x believe? Why do y practice this, that or the other? so that we might become better informed about each others faiths.

Yes, yes, yes!

There is certainly a place for these discussions, and we already have it in Reasoned Debate. I can think of several people who have discussed beliefs there, including their own. Most have done so in the spirit of sharing information. Of course the subject can be touchy, but so can just about anything else in that forum.

[L'Etranger]

I warmly endorse a Welcome Forum. We've discussed over and over that some of the old hands tend to flood threads with "insider" stuff to an extend that can frighten newbies away. We, that is the long time members, should make it as easy as possible to join and to participate. I am also thinking of the huge numbers of new people that will come after the Elric movies really get started being produced. That might even require extra sections like "If you came here via the Movie ..."

[David Mosley]

I'm just wondering whether there's any interest/point in having a French-language sub-forum here anywhere? I've seen this done elsewhere (at http://lotrtcg.worlds-apart.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=9 mainly), partly for French nationals but also for Quebeceans. I know we have a few French members here who may welcome a chance to have a break from contributing in English all the time, but at the same time I don't want to seem like I'm either being patronising or trying to ghettoize them.

There's also the issue of what happens when other non-English members want their own language forum? Is there a danger of fragmenting the community here into cliques if we did this?

Really it's not for me to say. French members should decide whether it's something that interests them, and then Reinart/Mike need to decide whether it's an avenue they want the Multiverse to go down.

Basically at this stage I'm just running the idea up the flagpole to see who salutes. :)

[Michael Moorcock]

I suspect many of our non-English speakers DO speak French, even if they're not French. So it would be perfectly possible, in my view, to include French postings. Not everyone will understand them (we could maybe publish a precis). But I'm not sure we'd benefit from a specific French thread (of course, it could happen, anyway, if people wanted one) and there would be a tendency for Anglophone readers who don't get a chance to hear about French (or for that matter Russian or German or Portugese or Latvian writers) to miss these writers. I'm a great believer in encouraging publishers to publish more translations so that we become familiar with a broader range of writers.

[vx69]

I don't think a french sub-forum or thread would be that interesting. Actually, as a frenchman, I don't really care about contributing in english... But be sure I'll post about french writers who deserve it !

[Reinart der Fuchs]

I have had the pleasure of communicating with our friends from around the world, espeically those from Europe, former Soviet nations and the regions of South America via email. They seem perfectly happy to read and write English as there has never been a complaint about the language nor a request for a change, though this may be because our non English reading guests cannot communicate their desire due to everything being in Englsih.

Creating cliques is a lower level issue compared to our inability to deliver something in a foreign language that will be satisfactory. I could suggest that any French/English (for example) reading/writing member who would care to moderate a French language forum could do so, though it remains questionable as to the relevance of it.

Personally, I very much enjoy when our Porteguese, Spanish, Russian, French and etc. reading/writing guests post messages in the Q&A in their native languages. It's a mutual misfortune that we have no Korean, Chinese or Japanese readers/writers posting in those languages, among the other languages of the world. I think it will take decades before this site could effectively host satisfactory multi-lingual sections. It would take orders of magnatudes of our current swarm to foster such a complex and valuable aspect to the site.

As we computer guys say to our project management counterparts: someday, but not today.

[Michael Moorcock]

I guess all we need are links to other language sites anyway. And they do exist. Preferably, we should encourage readers from other countries to link their sites to ours.

[vx69]

I'll do some search fro french sites...

[Morgan Kane]

On swordandsorcery, i gave links to the forums of FFJDR and, i believe of Portail JDR :

FFJDR : French federation of role playing games : http://forums.ffjdr.org/index.php?si...84041b33b2cd6d

Many things are talked about and there is a sector about the multivers .... http://forums.ffjdr.org/viewforum.ph...84041b33b2cd6d

Portail-Jdr : a forum more dedicated to role playing, collective writing and delirium : http://forum.portail-jdr.com/index.php

but with a sector dedicated to Hawkmoon ... http://forum.portail-jdr.com/viewforum.php?id=49

and, for the two, threads dedicated to Hawktoon !

[L'Etranger]

I would be happy to see something like an "Over Here" section where members from other countries could describe their Moorcockian communities, point to events or new publications, arrange local get-togethers, discuss MM translations or certain matters in their mother tongue if they get too complicated for them to handle in English etc.

Last year we had a couple of Spanish speaking visitors and we temporarily seized a corner of "MWM" as it was still called and posting all in Spanish. The "Esquina Española" ultimately withered for lack of numbers and volume, but it was fun nevertheless as long as it lasted, a sort of "Gibraltar reversed".
Etive tried something similar in the early days with a thread where people reported from where they were and such.
I would even offer to moderate, or co-moderate such a section for German and Spanish discussions, the latter at least until a natural speaker can take over.
Rita could be asked to do so for Portuguese, Seda for Turkish and maybe Morgan Kane or Modenkainen for French (unless a non forgotten friend returns), or Bakkhios. We have people with competence in Italian, Scandinavian languages and Polish and Russian I think etc.
remember,once the movie's out, we'll have to brace for a gigantic onslaught!

[Reinart der Fuchs]

From our converstation, I'd like to suggest the following fora and sub fora:

Moderator Discussion - (mods only) (Completed)

Welcome Centre - Where members introduce themselves (Completed)

Genre Discussion

• S&S - discussion of Sword and Sorcery
  
• SciFi - discussion of Science Fiction

Music (Completed)

• Rock & Roll - Our old favorite (Completed)
  
• Mike's Music - Discussion of The Deep Fix, The Bellyflops, Hawkwind, BOC and etc. (Completed)
  

Links - A fora dedicated to indexing links to sites we like or want to promote (Completed)

Tower of Babel - A forum for languages other than English. (Completed)

The above suggested names are negotiable. Please help me finalize this so I can create these fora as soon as possible.

[Honoured_Matre]

A welcome fora, is a good idea, usually gets like minded people off to a good start. It is amazing how you know someone is on the same wavelength, by giving a list of what you/they are into!

Please, i really dont think a religion forum, is this the place?Being new I dont know yet, but if you are like me, it has no place here?!

A science fiction Forum would be good, I am already on one of those and it has proved to be a useful resource, if only to make my reading list longer. How I feel now I have 30 books i NEED to read!

The music forum, great idea, why is the rock n roll fora a childs one?Alas, I am old enough to remember Hawkwind!