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Becca is still modding, deleting, and banning. 

And it looks like she’s an Administrator now, too!

Really? Wow. I guess she inherited Betsy's cattle prod.

I only pop in there sporadically, maybe read a thread or two then get out.

writeway She banned someone who came on and asked why their KDP account was deleted. Apparently right after a different account asked the same thing. It was implied by posters that they were the same person. So I guess that's why. *shrugs*

It's mostly newbies who don't know any better who stumble across the site. And then a few oldbies who still like it there. They still have more posters than we have! But if you compare now to the good old days I can see how the ghost town analogy applies.

AW is about as empty as Kboards. Supposedly they are back but for how long? This is the second time they've had a big outage where they were out months. I am sure many have moved on. I mean, FIVE months they were gone.  

Mark my words, I wouldn't be shocked if both Kboards and AW is gone in a year or less. At least the people running AW give a crap. A blind person can tell Vyderscope couldn't care less about Kboards.

Yep, just the same people talking to each other. Anyone who was interesting at all has left.

 Yeah, they were so happy when Hugh showed up because it was the first sign of life they've seen over there in ages. Now he's gone again. LOL! 

Sadly, it appears so.

Facebook and Reddit seem to be where it’s at these days. I’m not a fan of Facebook groups. Reddit is just okay. I’m on one Discord and don’t really care for it either. I definitely prefer good old-fashioned forums over all those.

I'm in one private groups.io that had to switch over from yahoo. It's neat that you can post to it via email. I never log into the actual site.

Way, way back in the 90s, you had all the usenet groups. You can find archives of them in Google groups. I like to browse the old Babylon 5 threads from when the show was on the air. I didn't really start using the internet until around 2009-ish. I was on there earlier, but I didn't really know what to do with the internet until then, so I missed out on the good ole days.

But the wayback machine is a fun way to read old forums, too. A lot of old ones still exist, and they get a little bit of interaction, but forums are too insular. There are newer forum software that provide more of a social media experience, with notifications you can get on your phone, but it's still a space for just one thing.

While with FB, you can chat with real life friends, keep up with family members, watch videos, laugh at cute memes, get fake news, and also be part of thousands of mini forums. So I get how it's more convenient for people.

But I still like the layout of old-fashioned forums.

A lot of the conservatives went to WriterSanctum I noticed, so I think Timothy's board was serving a sort of niche interest there. I don't think I ever noticed a political board. The posts I read were all in the bad posts prison section.

I think I remember some drama with one of the mods early on. It's probably hard to keep mods because it can be a lot of work, especially if your forum has a ton of rules. I'm glad we're small enough that mods aren't necessary.

Writer Sanctum does have a ridiculous number of forums. But that's what peeps said they wanted when he was creating it. And he did try very hard to give everyone what they wanted.

I like having the main forum where most of the convos go, and then having all the self-promo stuff elsewhere, cos those really clog the threads if left in main.

And sometimes having a few private, niche subs can be nice. But if you specialize too much then it gets really overwhelming and you never know where to go. I know on kboards, "writer's cafe" was pretty much the only part of those boards I ever visited. I was barely aware of the rest of the forum.

I agree that WritersSanctum has way too many boards. WAY too many and most of them haven't had new replies in months. Tim tried to please everyone with all those forums but he should've been more objective and remembered it's his board and you can't have the customers cooking in the kitchen. I'm all for admins letting posters have their opinions and give feedback but posters shouldn't be dictating how someone creates their forum. It never works when you try to please everyone.

The only threads I check out when I go there are the Quill and Feather Pub, Marketing Loft, and Secret Writer's Business. I only go into the What is Amazon Doing Now thread when Amazon has done something stupid, which is every month it seems. I used to check out the Black Lagoon but no one hardly posts there anymore. That's another thing that ran folks away, people weren't comfortable with folks being able to doxx and talk about people right there on the forums. Posters got mad at Kboards for not allowing it so once again, trying to give everyone what they wanted, Timothy allowed the no-holds-barred posting then said some authors started threatening him with lawsuits because of stuff people were saying. It's a slippery slope and admins need to realize they can be held accountable for what happens on their forums. I'm sure Timothy understands now why Kboards didn't allow it.

Also, if admins are going to allow posters to dog out other authors (and I agree, scammers deserve it) they need to be prepared for the wrath of these authors and their groupies. You can never be sure of who is in your group especially when people post under anonymous names so you might have those same authors sitting in your group and you're talking about them. People also forget that sometimes people in these groups will go and tell the authors that are being talked about what's going on. The indie author world is a close group and most indies travel in the same circles so they are in a lot of different places together. The same authors on these forums will be in social media groups together, which means they are most likely in the same groups with the people they talk about on WS. Tim got pushback more than once for allowing those posts. I remember that one of the guys from 20Booksto50K got on Tim after he allowed a not-so-flattering post about the guy on WS. Turned out Timothy had been banned from the group so it looked like he was just allowing people to talk about this man because he personally had an issue with him. That's not cool as an admin. But, allowing others to bash people on your forum is too much of a risk but Tim seemed so desperate to get folks to join the forum that he'd do anything.

Yep, some in WS did some doxxing but Timothy shut it down when news of what was happening got to the authors it affected. Also, many others there said they didn't feel comfortable there with how people could openly "bad mouth" others as some put it. Again, I am all for scammers and thieves being called out but the issue started when some there labeled people scammers without any proof or real knowledge but saying stuff like, "This author released four books this month. Obviously a scammer." Then they'd pile on and then others would defend the accused scammer claiming it was wrong for people to assume. That's true. I posted in there a few times when someone had the nerve to say anyone who releases fast must be scamming because it's suspicious. Really? I write fast because I outline and park my butt in a chair for days and write until I'm done. It's not rocket science. Also, when you write fast, you accumulate a pipeline. So you can have many books written but not yet published. They pile up so that's how people can release multiple books in a month. It's common sense. Just because someone releases five or six books a month, does not mean they WROTE them all recently. Goodness. This is what jealous people (who write slow) wanna believe. All this stems from folks being jealous of others' productivity. In that same thread, others said the same thing I did. The woman who called fast writers suspicious is still there posting and she posted a lot on Kboards back in the day too so she is well-known to folks from Kboards. 

My point though is that it got very dodgy at one point. While Timothy tried to have rules for the Black Lagoon and told people not to post stuff without proof, many didn't listen so it became a barrage of folks accusing people who might be innocent of being scammers, using ghostwriters, etc. You can't do that. You can't just look at an author and decide they are scamming just because they might write fast or sell well. So for a while WS turned into a lynch mob and it seemed to run a lot of folks away. sometimes I was just shocked at how far Timothy let people go. I was like, "Dude, do you realize you can get sued for allowing this?" I guess he wised up because he ended up closing many of those threads and is a lot more heavy-handed.

Again, I'm not accusing Tim of doing wrong things but he let it go on until it got out of hand and at times encouraged it. If it had been my forum, I wouldn't let you post anything in there without proof. It's like he thought just because it was a private forum it was safe. Please. Nothing is private on the Internet and many of those posters went back and told the same authors people were doxing and accusing. I know one of those authors came back threatening Tim with lawsuits. I suspect others did behind the scenes as well. 

The only thing I remember was one post where Tim said that he'd been threatened with a lawsuit. This was at a time when there were a lot of lawsuits flying around.

I missed the doxxing posts. I really only read forums when I'm bored and procrastinating. When I'm actually working I don't visit at all, so I tend to miss a lot of stuff. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Administrating a forum is definitely not easy, you need the right temperament, and have to be okay with half the board hating you at some point or another. If you have a large and active board because people are naturally warlike and are always fighting. And whenever you ask for opinions, half the people will be happy with your choice and half won't be. You can't please everyone.

A forum is like a book. You should have a vision of what you want to see and experience, and then work on implementing that. If you're lucky your vision will appeal to some other folks who are witty and informative and who will brighten up the place. And everyone who isn't happy can go join a Facebook group, or whatever. No hard feelings.

And I agree that proof is important. If you're only guessing, you need to say that clearly, and explain your thought process. Opinions are fine, even wrong ones. But you can't call someone a scammer as fact without a lot of proof to back you up.

Also, I think sharing personal experiences are fine. Clearly state that it's your experience, that you aren't speaking for anyone else. And people can choose to believe you or not. But proof is always great - even if it's an experience story.