Members' or users' poetry?

[keats]

What about anything to do with writing workshops, collaborations, or learning in general be confined to the members area. If non financial posters want to post and comment then fine. Want to learn from some of our best written poets then become a member. Just another thought.

[Maureen K Clifford]

and an excellent one Neal - probably solved the supposed problem in one with that comment IMO

Cheers

Maureen

[Terry]

Sounds like it's time for another glass of red, wish you were all here I'd offer you one.

Cheers Terry

[Peely]

G'day All

To add my thoughts to the debate, I don't feel that there is a need to have two poetry sections for users and members. Whatever is decided here, I think that these sections should be open to all registered users to comment on.

At the moment, the workshop section seems to be more a writing challenge than a place to put up a poem for constructive comment. Perhaps this section could be replaced by two sections: one specifically for work-shopping or critiquing of poems for those that would like a constructive comment (and perhaps also as a place for better writers to post tips on writing, not necessarily attached to a poem); the other as a writing challenge to write to a set fortnightly theme or group of themes.

I would agree that there needs to be some benefits for those who are members of the ABPA and if for example the workshop area was set up as one that was genuinely for critiquing of poems, it should be for members only. For writers that are at a more advanced stage that are not necessarily needing a critique feature, adding other options like collaborations or writing challenges might be the way to go.

Whether or not you allow regular users the ability to read but not post in any of these sections is up for debate. Personally, I don't think there would be any worry with letting non-members reading collaborative or challenge works. But to give them the advantage of being able to learn from the comments in a critiquing section might not be the go.

Perhaps the forum needs to be opened up so that guests can read some of the content (in the two main poetry sections that exist now as an example) to allow the site to once again be an internet resource for schools for study purposes since that is not currently an option now.

Regards


John Peel