Where have all the regulars gone?

[MamaProfCrash]

I have noticed the slow down here for a while. Mainly I think that the newness of e-readers is wearing off and as they become more mainstream people do not need to go to bulletin boards to do as much research and learn how to use their devices. I also think that the main focus is one device, the Kindle.

I am posting more and more at Mobile Reads. It is simply easier to discuss more sensitive topics, like DRM removal, ISP blockers, and the like. They have strict rules about what you can say but there is plenty of room to have the discussion. Toss in a larger number of posters because the site is set up to discuss e-readers in general and attracts people with all sorts of devices increases the number of posters.

I have no idea how more authors have affected the site. There have only been a few who have randomly popped up in threads to post one line and then pitch their books. For the most part, I have found the authors to be willing to participate in many conversations and not try and use every post to sell something.

[KBoards.com]

[Chad Winters]

To clarify, I'm really not accusing anyone of being absolutist with their rhetoric. We're all savvy enough to recognize that there are offenders and those who draw within the lines. People come to the boards for different reasons, and if an individual's reason is solely to talk about being an author, you're probably better off if they do stay in the Cafe.

I guess I need to stop clicking on unread posts option because I don't see the Board divided up, I just see all the new posts and the majority are in the Cafe, so it seems like it has taken over

[HappyGuy]

Part of the problem is that, after awhile, you get tired of seeing the same questions over and over and over. Not putting down the newbies, but us oldies have seen it many times and it get rather boring. And look at the Not Quite Kindle - all you see is one word post or change one word ... in a word ... BORING! I've been a member since 2008 and I'm just not noticing much new. Even the Fire forum is beginning to repeat.

But I still hang out here for a few minutes at least, most days.  By the way, is *anyone* writing something other than romance and/or vampires?

[CraigInOregon]

I would think that this much hasn't changed:

Authors who stay on-point wherever they're posting are probably as welcome as anyone else.

When I want to talk about author stuff, I post in the Writer's Cafe.

When I want to talk about Glee, I go to that thread... and I don't mention my books, I just talk about whether I liked or disliked that week's episode, or other GLEE-related stuff.

And so forth...

I doubt the signatures bother most reasonable people, so long as when an author is in, say, the Android thread, he or she talks about Android stuff and not their latest novel.

Just my guess.

I don't think KB has gone the way of a certain retailer's community boards in terms of hostility to authors... yet, anyway... so long as authors stay on point. Which is a GOOD thing to do anyway.

[hsuthard]

I guess I need to stop clicking on unread posts option because I don't see the Board divided up, I just see all the new posts and the majority are in the Cafe, so it seems like it has taken over

Same here. I don't mind or care really about the author stuff, I'm just a tad annoyed I can no longer effectively click on "Unread Posts Since Last Visit" anymore.  ;-)

[Leslie]

I'm still here, still reading my Kindle...

L

[telracs]

i'm still here, trying to get people into chat....

[Vegas_Asian]

Its midterms and I have been in a house without WiFi.

I still see a lot of the regular post. Noticed a slight decrease in updates of threads but out happens especially with the improving weather

Sent from my HTC Inspire via Tapatalk

[Vegas_Asian]

Scarlet I would totally be chatting with you if I had Internet on my computer now.

Sent from my HTC Inspire via Tapatalk

[Betsy the Quilter]

I've been here for 256 days now...

 

Betsy

[Chad Winters]

I've been here for 256 days now...

 

Betsy

I thought you'd been here a lot longer than that!
(not that you're old or anything.....)

I wonder if I can see my join date....

[Meemo]

There has definitely been a change. I think my biggest dissapointment is that even though I enjoy many of the authors...there has been a clearly expressed opinion by many of them that they feel KB exist to serve indie authors. It definitely was not this way at the beginning when it was all about the the wonder of the Kindle and ebooks.

But now that Kindles and ebooks are commonplace it may be natural not too have as much to discuss about them. I do however feel the reader to author ratio here is approaching 1:1 and I find returning to check posts less compelling every day.

This.  And this...

I remember I used to be able to click on Show Unread Posts daily and view the latest posts that way, but now if I do that I see mostly Writers Cafe posts and such that as a non writer I'm not interested in. Now I have to check my favorite sub boards individually, which is not as nice.

It's not that I don't like authors - if I didn't I wouldn't have a Kindle. But I do wish I could somehow "filter" the areas I'm not interested in.  Going through 10-15 pages of "unread posts since last visit" just isn't appealing.  

Nookboards was a bit of a different story (I used to post there, still check it occasionally) - the original owner sold it, and the new owner made some changes that made the board less appealing, and the regular Nook owners pretty much deserted it for the most part.  Now probably 90% of the posts there are from authors - and any new folks asking actual Nook-related questions are hard-pressed to get answers from more that one or two folks.  

[Chad Winters]

I thought you'd been here a lot longer than that!
(not that you're old or anything.....)

I wonder if I can see my join date....

ouch....I found it 10/28/2008
I think that was still when Harvey was MIA (and didn't even OWN a Kindle!!) and no one was actually running the place. Leslie (I think it was her) was dragging people off the "Forum That Shall Not Be Named" before they were eaten alive, but couldn't fix anything here.

Those were the days.....  

[Betsy the Quilter]

I thought you'd been here a lot longer than that!
(not that you're old or anything.....)

I wonder if I can see my join date....

I Joined October 26, 2008.  I was the 72nd person to join.  But I've been online on KindleBoards for just over 256 days....

Betsy

[Bigal-sa]

I Joined October 26, 2008.  I was the 72nd person to join.  But I've been online on KindleBoards for just over 256 days....

Betsy

I haven't even been on for that many hours

[CraigInOregon]

I Joined October 26, 2008.  I was the 72nd person to join.  But I've been online on KindleBoards for just over 256 days....

Betsy

Total time logged in: 35 days, 17 hours and 15 minutes.

Probably 2/3rds of that is in the Writers Cafe.

I've made some efforts to post elsewhere, though. I love the Glee thread, for example. And the Doctor Who thread.

And the Stephen King thread.

Plus I post reviews of books I've read once in a while.

[Ann in Arlington]

I admit I always get a bit of a chuckle about when people reminisce about the 'good old days'. It's like my dad using his childhood experience of carrying his little brother on his back through 2 feet of snow to get to school. . . meant to be a lesson of something, but I'm not sure we ever got it!

Places change.

The world changes.

Active members in message boards change. 

Honestly, I've signed on to various boards over the years, they were interesting for a while and then the discussions just seemed to repeat and repeat.  This is the only one I stuck with for more than 6 months.  Yes, there's still repetition, but there's also enough new -- hey people publish new books every day -- that I've not gotten bored with it.

As to the folks complaining that self-promotion seems rampant all over the boards, please do report posts you think are self-promotional. Frankly, I haven't seen it, though we do periodically have to steer new members to the right place for that sort of thing.  Promotional posts in the wrong place are dealt with pretty quickly once we know of them.

But, remember, people are allowed to have signatures -- there are size restrictions -- so if they are what bother you, you should turn signatures off. 

Within the body of a post, they should not be even mentioning their books/blogs/websites outside the bazaar -- this includes people who produce books, accessories, or Fire apps.  Promotion ONLY is allowed in designated areas.  We in the Mod Squad do try to read every post, but we're human. So let us know -- politely -- if you notice something that seems wrong.  We do check out every reported post.

As to navigating the board. . . I pretty much NEVER use the 'show new posts' links.  If I've been away for more than a couple of hours, the list is just too long to efficiently work through.  Instead, I pick a board and go to the oldest post with a new tag, read it and scroll 'previous' or 'next' from there.  On boards where I don't WANT to read every thread, I can scan thread titles and open any that look interesting in a new tab, and then mark the board as read.  Then I look at the tabbed threads and close the tab as I finish each one. 

This way I can ignore the silliness when I haven't got time to deal with it -- there's a LOT of silliness in NQK which is sometimes exactly what I want, and . . . .sometimes not.   And, as a moderator, it helps me keep better track of what forum I'm in so I know whether the self-promotional post I'm reading is allowed or not!

In the beginning I read every thread. . . . .don't do that any more. . .but I do still find most of the Corner threads interesting as well as those in LTK and Fire Talk.  And I do at least check out every thread in the Bazaar.  Have had a few books catch my eye that way.   I check out accessories threads periodically and pick and choose threads in NQK to read.  Which has all led to more than 212 days of time on the boards. 

[Betsy the Quilter]

To add on to Ann's comments, there IS a way to create a bookmark that shows the new posts in selected Forums....I'll see if I can find the thread that talks about it...

Betsy

[PG4003 (Patricia)]

I've also seen a change in Kindleboards, there just doesn't seem to be as active overall as it used to be.  But like others have said, Kindles have become so much more commonplace now and pretty easy to navigate and use.  I first found KB when I got my Kindle 2 a few years ago, and not nearly as many people had one as do now.  I really don't notice the author promotions because I don't ever go to those threads.  I have noticed that several people I used to correspond with a lot are no longer posting, but I think that has a lot to do with other social media, in particular Facebook.

[CraigInOregon]

Well, count me as one still loving my K3 (now known as the Kindle Keyboard).

I've had it for about a year and a half and still have plenty of memory left over to fill up with new content.

I know some people view our world as growing smaller after the introduction of the iPad, iPad2 and now the...well, they're calling it iPad now, not iPad3, but we all know it's iPad3, right?

It's a nice device. You can read books on it. And as the latest Amazon commercials point out, you can buy a Kindle Fire and two Kindle Touch readers and still spend less than the lowest-priced current-gen iPad.

It's a different device, a different market, and it's not a dedicated eReader. Comparing iPad and Kindle Fire is fair; comparing iPad and a regular Kindle isn't quite so fair, because iPad is backlit and built to do way more than read books on.

And I believe there's big audiences for both. And even enough folks left over to leave room for Nook/Nook Touch/Nook Color/Nook Tablet users galore.

The eRevolution's still gathering steam, folks.

Over at Jim Shooter's blog, they're talking about Cory Docotorow's outdated ideas of giving away eBooks for free to sell the physical print books, and how that might be a model for comics to succeed.

That was before eBooks proved they can create their own success stories without the help of print, like Amanda Hocking, John Locke, and several others.

All this stuff might seem old hat to those of us who've been around more than a year; but I tell you, the traditional print world still hasn't realized it's been gutted. It's standing there looking down at its midsection, just starting to realize that lightning-fast ninja called eBooks actually didn't miss... it's noticing the blood start to seep from the wound... but the top half hasn't slid off the bottom half just yet.

Which is a very gross, Frank Miller/Quentin Tarrantino way of saying that to us this eBook movement is old hat... but there's a lot of folks still to join us.

So I think a flood of new faces can be a good thing. Folks who are just now asking the basic questions we asked 18 months or more ago...

...when those new visitors stop showing up? Then maybe we've reached market saturation.

We're not there. Not yet.

I love my K3. I might someday move to a color eReader... if they make one that isn't backlit. That's my hoped-for product announcement for Fall 2012 from Amazon... the non-backlit Fire 2. For $149.

But if it takes more time to get there, I'm not worried. I'd be happy to upgrade someday to a Kindle Touch if my K3/Kindle Keyboard ever kicks the bucket.

Cuz personally, I don't wanna read books on a backlit Kindle. I like the idea of the Fire... but I want a screen without glare. Having color is secondary to avoiding glare.

[Thumper]

I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I'm regular or irregular...

[Chad Winters]

I'm sitting here trying to figure out if I'm regular or irregular...

even worse you can be "regularly" irregular or "irregularly" irregular

I didn't just make that up either
Heart rhythms are classified as regular, regularly irregular, or irregularly irregular.
Skipping every 3rd beat is regularly irregular for example

[Lambert]

Is there no room in this discussion for a category of "regular authors" who have all but abandoned any pretense of using Kindleboards as a promotional tool? I haven't been participating in the A Song of Ice and Fire reading group here for the last six months because I've been trying desperately to squeeze a couple bucks out of jason10mm.

But the point of this thread matches the general tone I've been picking up for a while now--that authors are more of a nuisance than a benefit here--and I've just removed that last vestige of promotion, my signature, because of it. Maybe my sales will slip a little, and maybe I'll put a simple few-word link in to my author page or something at some point, but my dad always told me to be part of the solution, not the problem. I'm here and have been here to be a person, and I'm not asking for money from any of you.

I hear you.

I don't do any promoting myself here except in the forum that it's allowed in.

Don't know why people just can't get along. I think most of my books aren't even of interest in this forum except maybe one, and it's more for Authors.

[Ann in Arlington]

I hear you.

I don't do any promoting myself here except in the forum that it's allowed in.

Don't know why people just can't get along. I think most of my books aren't even of interest in this forum except maybe one, and it's more for Authors.

And yet, it could be argued that your second sentence is, by definition, promotion.  Oh, you didn't mention any specific title, but the fact that you said you don't promote, makes it clear that you're an author.  

Jason's post, which you quoted, is the same sort of thing. . . . several sentences saying he's not going to promote -- which means he definitely draws attention to the fact that he's an author in a thread on a board outside the Book Bazaar.

I think those kinds of throw away comments really rub some people the wrong way.  Your overall post would have been just as good without that second sentence and it wouldn't have had even a whiff of promotion about it.  And Jason didn't need to announce that he was removing his signature links; he could have just done it.

Just an observation.

[Lambert]

And your last post would of been better without and sentences. I am reader as well. Bought many books I found on this board. Don't think I will be coming back now.

Some people are too rude here.

Bye.

Lambert

[KBoards.com]