Commenting on the PoetBay crisis
This discussion goes on and on, since members find it worrying that their editors don't seem to care. They feel abandoned, like the pilgrims on Lord Jim's ship, and don't know where the ship is drifting. The situation is constantly exacerbated by new symptoms, like new members having difficulties joining, links not working, a complete absence of any up-dates, and so forth.
I just wrote this to Lastromantichero commenting on his latest contribution to the debate, which he has asked me to publish more openly:
"There might be another side to this problem. Compare poetbay with poeter.se. Poeter.se has about 300,000 poems and about 15,000 poets. It's a flood of poetry in which almost all the poets get lost - you only get to know a few of them, while the vast immensity of the overwhelming crowd remains anonymous strangers to you. Here we are not more than about 10% of that lot, it's like a chamber ensemble compared to a roaring symphony orchestra, and here it's much easier to get friends and to get to know them. It's crowd anonymity versus friendly intimacy. If poeter.se is like a metropolis of unsurveyable structure where individualism drowns in the asphalt jungle, Poetbay is like a village in the country, where we can still be human without getting lost. Just another slant on the situation - the major remaining problem is that we don't know what our editors are thinking, if they are thinking at all."
Maybe they are just too busy thinking of other things and just let Poetbay manage by itself, since its poets are so eager at it anyway, or maybe someone got hurt by some insistent quarrels that really were not much to worry about like any foolishness, or maybe they have personal problems - we don't know, and that's our only stable datum, I am afraid.
Which means, that all we can do under the circumstances is to continue floating and drifting, since at least we are all still on board.
Chris
Words by Christian Lanciai
Read 550 times
Written on 2007-12-14 at 10:37
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ken d williams |
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Rob Graber |
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lastromantichero |
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Elle |
