Posted by Adam Quinan on March 13, 2024 at 17:15:13 user Adam.
In Reply to: What do we want Tarboard for? posted by Catherine Lamont on March 12, 2024 at 22:39:31:
As one of the admins for TarBoard, I am sometimes reluctant to comment until a few others have done so as I don't want to be seen as pushing a "party line". This and almost all of my comments are my personal opinion not those of All Things Ransome or TarBoard.
TarBoard is old technology having been in operation mostly unchanged in appearance since it was first started by Ian Edmondson-Noble back in 1996. You do have to check in to see what responses if any have been made to a post, However, it is possible to view all the posts in a tread and follow the discussion from start to finish.
Recently other fora, such as several Facebook groups, have come to the fore and have sucked away some of the discussions. Also many of the longer term members are not so active, either because they have said everything they can think of or for other reasons.
One long term literary email list I am a member of has also experienced this and responded by basically allowing members to post about pretty well anything as long as it doesn't cause discord. It is very successful at self policing and while much smaller than it was in its heyday is still quite active.
As for Catherine's comment about the state of her chin, I suspect she is correct that most of the current rare posters are male but beards are not mandatory. I don't think that the potential for a female perspective would inhibit discussion and our language does not usually need moderating despite the fact we can't tell who is dropping in unseen and unheard.
My concern is that fewer people seem to be dropping in and fewer still are making comments. That is probably why even an interesting topic nowadays does not get (m)any responses.
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