I think Kboards is broken now...

Yeah, it is sad what Kboards has become and I am betting Harvey (RIP) would not like what has happened to his vision. I blame the new owners along with the mods. In fact, I blame the mods more because they've been there the longest. The fact is, the mods ran Kboards like dictators and they were the reason many valuable people left and never returned. They showed favoritism to some while allowing others to be blatantly abused. Stuff like taking up for scammers like Rebecca Hamilton to the point where I wondered if she was paying them! This is why I always lurked on there and never posted, because though I loved Kboards back in the day, I always had an uneasy feeling and wasn't comfortable posting after seeing how some were treated. I remember how some were allowed to be nasty, instigate and start flame wars but then others would be held to a different standard. Then the "mean girl" mods talk about folks behind their backs (sure we know this happens everywhere) but some of the things they said about posters were disgusting. And I was really disappointed because even though the mods weren't great, I had "some" level of respect for them but not anymore. I think Becca, Annie, and Beth (or whatever her name was) is to blame for the ghost town and mess Kboards has become. They ran it into the ground. Another thing that hurt Kboards is the changing landscape. Writing forums are not the "in" thing anymore. People rarely visit forums now because Facebook has a group for anything you need. The only writing forums still real active are those on Reddit and they aren't as busy as they used to be. Once FB groups evolved, it was curtains for many writing forums. Just ask Absolute Write. They are still off-line but even before they were, they ran off folks for years and it's a ghost town there too. Just like Kboards, AW can blame themselves for letting mods have too much power and treating people like crap just like Kboards.

Another thing that hurt both AW and Kboards is they no longer are the most knowledgeable places on the Internet for writers. No. AW faded once folks starting going indie more and more and didn't need a board so heavily geared toward trade publishing. Kboard suffered the same fate. No longer are they the premium spot for indie info. Back in the day, Kboards was THE place to be for all indies and to know anything about being indie. Now there are millions of FB groups for indies, split by what they write, etc. So they can go into groups pertaining to their genre. Also, KBoards hurt itself when it treated erotica authors like second-class citizens and many of them went to Dirty Discord and Reddit, taking a lot of the steamy romance writers with them.

I lurk on WritersSanctum but as hard as it tries to capture Kboard's glory, it doesn't for me. It's not the same except for looks. None of the posters I loved to see on KBoards are there including the bigger authors. Rosalind used to post there but I haven't seen here there in a while. At one point Amanda was there but she got ran off because some of the authors got nasty and turned on her in a thread so she hasn't been there since. But, underneath the surface, you still got some of these same bad Kboards folks there who think they know everything and wanna fight every time someone has an opinion different from theirs. I posted a few times on there though but they do sometimes have contentious threads so I went back to lurk mode. The atmosphere is much better than Kboards right now but WS is still empty as hell and never took off like I am sure Timothy hoped it would. After the KBoards implosion, many of those authors went to FB groups and didn't migrate to WS. Some didn't like how it was run. They didn't like how authors (not just scammers) were sometimes dragged in the mud in the Black Lagoon section by name. I don't care if the forum is private, you need to still be careful as an admin (of your own board, not just running a forum on someone else's site) of what you allow people to say on your board because you can get sued.  WS definitely has it's issues too and one thing that kept people away is having that politics board. Timothy ended up closing it but he should've known that would be ugly. Some of the discussions in there were downright disgusting, racist, etc. This is why Kboards didn't let you talk about certain things and with good reason. If you want to alienate everyone, talk about politics. 

It is sad when you think of Kboards and what it used to be. Now newbies have never even heard of it. They go straight to FB. No one ever sends people to Kboards anymore and why would they? Most of the people that made that board worthwhile have been gone and now you just got a bunch of weird posts with the same ten people commenting. And mostly it's the old heads no one liked who were the grouchy curmudgeons who ran everyone away with their cynical, know-it-all attitudes. Now they are just sitting around yapping about nothing like old farts who meet at the same cafe everyday for a bagel and coffee as they try to hang on to the glory days of Kboards. LOL! Meanwhile life is leaving them and that board behind. Reminds me of the people who were still going to B&N and Borders for the "atmopshere" but didn't wanna accept the fact that physical bookstores were dying and they'd be the only ones still going there. LOL! The Kboards posts these days are beyond meaningless. I can't believe this is the same board that when someone posted a topic, there would be hundreds of posts within fifteen minutes. That's how popular and important Kboards was. Standards and interest is gone. Even Becca doesn't go there unless someone probably sends her a private message, dragging her out of her cave. That is, IF she even comes there much because last month was the first time I'd seen Becca in months and the other two mods left.

Sad truth is that the board was going downhill when Harvey was still living and his family ran it. I don't think their hearts were in it and maybe they just ran it to fulfill his wishes. You can tell when someone cares about something compared to someone who doesn't and Harvey cared about Kboards. He was the heart behind it and once he passed, it was never the same and getting worse. These new folks don't care about Kboards because they didn't create it.

I have a feeling Kboards won't be around much longer. I really won't be surprised if it shuts down for good. AW as well. It's still offline!

They've really gone downhill. Why are so many folks reviving old posts over there? Is it confusing for some because of the new layout but it's gotten normal to see folks posting on threads that are over 4-5 years old. Goodness.

You could be right about Vydorscope and if they are doing that, that's pathetic. Meanwhile, AW is STILL offline. 

 Something is definitely wrong with AW. This seems worse than the last time they were knocked offline. They at first said they'd be back in March, well it's now MAY and they have been offline since January. They aren't even updating their FB page anymore, probably because they have no idea if or when they will be back.

I'm crying so many tears right now...NOT.

Losing that hateful site is the best thing that could happen to the Internet. 

FB groups seem to be the most active hubs, anymore. Although, the writing subreddits, still see quite a bit of action, as well. I think most people have been trained to pay attention to social media, and so it's easy to forget about traditional forums.

I think that's why so many of the old forums are switching over to ghastly new software, intended to look more like social media.

I hate discord. I made one to check it out, but it's worse than twitter. It's all constantly moving, and it's really hard to keep up. If you're looking for live, instant communication, and don't care about what went before, then it's fine. But it's terrible if all you want to do is lurk for information.

I haven't read a lot on the self-publishing sub. I do vaguely recall being annoyed as I scrolled past certain questions, but it seems active, at least. Erotica Authors is the one I read the most. I'm mostly on there for star wars stuff. Saltierthancrait is my favorite. But I'm subbed to sooo many because it seems you can find almost anything on there. I found a sub for real life private investigators to ask each other questions! The legal questions sub is great for reading about weird problems people have. The esoteric and weird the sub, the better.

The worldbuilding and science fiction subs are all pretty great, too.

Most of the romance writers are in the erotic sub, although one of the eroticauthors mods recently tried reviving the romance sub. I'm not sure how successful they were.

I used to be really into IMDb, and reddit became my replacement.

The other day I read an AMA from 8 years ago from a guy who used to pretend to be psychic. It was super fun.