27 October 2025

Hi everyone,

I have a happy update for you! Two of our esteemed fellow members have offered their time to be PoetBay's new Editors! Visit our Editors' info page to read their presentation.

To cover my absence, Sameen has volunteered to take care of the admin tasks to keep PoetBay updated and Allen has volunteered to take care of the communications and any atmosphere-related matters on the site. We were in talks last week, I also worked throughout the week on improvements in the code of the Dashboard (physio program was on a break last week) to simplify the tasks, and I'm very happy to announce that everything is now all set up.

So this means PoetBay can stay online. I was very afraid that would not be possible. Thank you so much, Sameen! Thank you so much, Allen! Your help ensures PoetBay can carry on during my absence and that's a huge relief!

In light of the circumstances, we have something to ask of the PoetBay community... can you help our dear Sameen as concerns the Editors' Choice, please?

You could do this by nominating the posts you read as you browse the site that you feel are special and that you think should be featured on the home page. This would considerably cut down the time for Sameen as he wouldn't have to be the one to read ALL of the posts submitted on the site... that takes an enormous amount of time to do. So if you could help out in this way, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Send your nominations to his inbox or alternatively use the text applaud button to let him know the poems you liked the best. That way he could rely on the Top Ten applauds counts to select Editors' Choice, too.

If there's any way to improve this process, that'd be great. Suggestions welcome.

So there you have it, the community coming together as it's great at doing :) I feel like the most fortunate person on this planet right now. Thank you to all of you for making all of this possible *hugs*

Hope you are all well. I'll be back in a bit...

Isabelle

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15 October 2025

Hi everyone,

I'd like to fill you in on the situation as you have no doubt noticed that PoetBay hasn't been taken care of as usual in a prolonged while. I'm so very sorry this is happening, it's really not what I want.

The reason for this is due to my health.  That part of my life has been requiring more and more of my time on top of my full-time job and it’s been making it difficult to manage any free time.  I have shared with you through my personal posts about my degenerative condition (hEDS) which is affecting my mobility more and making day-to-day anything very difficult because of the pain it causes. 

This condition has recently led me to be registered into a specialized intensive treatment program of physio which I'm currently going through until the end of November to see if it can help improve it in some way.  There is no cure, but reinforcement of muscles might help provide better support to my hyperlax joints, is the idea.

This program is incredibly demanding, though : it intensifies my physical pains, takes a lot of energy out of me and requires a fair amount of time (9hrs-12hrs per week).  That's aside another health concern I've been dealing with for a few months before the physio program began in September, so my current energy level isn't exactly brimming or is my time very free.  Although I’m on a break from work, I'm dealing with a lot right now.

Consequently, I'm simply unable to keep up with the admin side of PoetBay (I'm the only one who does this and I’ve been struggling for months to keep it up) like updating the home page for :

    + the Editors' choice section

(Reading all the member posts and selecting 6 poems to feature on the home page

each 2nd Sunday at 18h EST (which is Monday 00h CET for PoetBay's time zone),

Adding the poem selections’ ids in the Texts & Books tab in the Editors' Dashboard to display the selections' links on the home page,

Posting the Editorial team's congratulatory comment on the selections,

Checking the boxes for sending Inbox message and email notification to the author of the selection,

Applauding the selections that way they appear in the applauds list of the new week starting)

    + the Editors' news section

(Posting the Classic poem every Sunday, sometimes PB news or notices (Editorial Team posts))
 

    + the Photos section

(Selecting 2 member pictures from Exhibitions gallery, I usually make the update once a month 'cause the choice is pretty limited - function not used really)

    + the Books section

(Selecting 2 member books from Books gallery, usually make the update once a month 'cause the choice is pretty limited - function not used really)

** These home page sections are managed through the Editors' Dashboard in Editorial Team's account by copying/pasting the relevant ids from the selections’ links (ex.: textid, picid, bookid) in the corresponding fields available on the Dashboard's web page.  Doesn't require any technical knowledge.

Other tasks :

+ Posting a Classic poem each Sunday at 18h EST (which is Monday 00h CET for PoetBay's time zone) so Editorial Team is the first to post something to start off PoetBay's week (which starts on Monday on our calendar) and avoid the list being empty of posts too long.

(Finding a classic poem which is in the European public domain (author deceased 70 years +), writeText and Publish)

(Our volunteer has graciously been doing this for me and the community for a long while now) ;

+ Reviewing member profile pictures

(Clicking Publish or Delete link in the Members’ pics tab in the Editors' Dashboard to accept or decline a profile picture according to our picture rules – these rules are available in that tab) ;

+ Answering member communications to Editorial Team (private messages in Inbox)

and notifying me if there is a problem of any kind so that I can take care of it. 

If anyone wants to take over the management of those admin tasks for the next few months, I would be very, very grateful.  I would dearly love to minimize the impact of my absence on the site's upkeep, if it can be helped.  Please contact me if you're interested.   Your help would mean a lot.

I feel awful about this... it's so not what I was hoping, but I'm going through a lot right now, dealing with more physical pain because of the program, being very much out of energy and needing a lot of rest, so I think I need to take some time to take care of my health.  My plan is to be back in a few months, probably around March… providing my health improves, returning to work goes well, etc.  If not, well, I'd rather not think in those terms just now.  But be assured that I'll inform you as soon as I know should that be the case.

Hope you are all well.  I'll be back in a bit...

Isabelle

PS:  On another note, many have asked why the number of readings for their posts encountered an exorbitant hike in numbers for a few weeks.  This can be explained by the new AI web crawlers some web companies (ex.:  OpenAI (chatGPT), Google, Amazon, Huawei, etc) put out on the WWW which generate an increased amount of ‘readings’ on posts, ‘cause in order to index the links of the content of websites, these web crawlers must ‘visit’ each link. 

Considering the insane numbers PoetBay saw during those couple weeks, it's looking like a few AI web crawlers had just discovered PoetBay and got busy crawling through and indexing our website’s contents during that period (20 years of content).  These new AI web crawlers are much faster in their executions and can perform many more commands in an instant in comparison to the traditional web crawlers the WWW originally used.  This inevitably affects website counters like we have on PoetBay and here caused extreme numbers like we saw for those few weeks.

A web crawler is an automated software program, also known as a bot or spider, that systematically browses the World Wide Web to discover and index web pages for search engines and other applications.