Terry brooks official forum closed

[Brian G Turner]

Terry Brook's official forum has been closed, stating that members preferred to stay on other sites, such as Facebook and Reddit:
http://terrybrooks.net/forum/

It's always a shame to see other forums close, especially when we have plenty of room on chronicles for discussions about Terry Brooks.

 

[J-Sun]

Well, it really is. I don't know anything about Terry Brooks or the forum but I prefer both the personal element and the posting board element. The less-than-handful of giant web 2.0 social networking corporations are really the enemy of this site and all other posting boards (personally-run or not) and all other personally-run sites (posting boards or not) as much as the Brooks forum. Gopher, Usenet, IRC, even email, and even the rest of the WWW (aside from posting boards) is not what it once was, when it was decentralized anarchy with everyone taking a text editor and an HTML cheat sheet to make a home page. (Of course, that itself wasn't what it once was, when it was research institutions, universities, and governmental organizations but that's another story.)

Anyway, as you seem to be hoping, hopefully the holdouts will find their way here and hopefully this site will continue to thrive. Just got to keep those anti-web-2.0 thrusters firing to stay out of the black hole.

 

[Grimward]

While I like Brooks' work, I was never on that forum either. It does make me more appreciative of The Chrons (not that I wasn't already) though, Brian, so thank you once again.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

It's terrible because Facebook and Reddit are not real places, just parasites on people's personal lives. They and Twitter are inimical to non propriety and non-exploitive sites and well establish private communication services.

 

[Wo7f]

Posted two months ago...

A new forum will be coming to Terry's website.

It will be small. It will only be devoted to Terry's work, with a General Discussion that will have some strict rules (no word games, etc.) and an Other Authors section.

I hope to install it in the next two months. It will be similar to Naomi Novik's new forum, which I just installed as well.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

I've run a forum (and Moderated it), also was a moderator on two forums. The moderation can be a thankless task and lot of work compared to setting it up.
@Wo7f
Best Wishes!

 

[Bob S]

The Terry Brooks forum had been declining for years, and had degenerated into a off-topic cess pool no new reader would want to join. reddit has a new Terry Brooks subreddit but it was dead from the start, sadly.

I doubt social media was a major factor in killing it.

What killed it was simply the old age of the Shannara series. The "new" Shannara books are all tired retreads which failed to keep readers interested. Said another way, the forum was alive and kicking back when books like Genesis and Ilse Witch brought new fresh stories for readers to discuss.

And much attention has shifted away from traditional fantasy like Shannara to Game of Thrones and gritty grim-dark stuff.

 

[Wo7f]

a off-topic cess pool no new reader would want to join

I disagree. I found most of the off topic conversations fun and sometimes intellectual. It was one of the reasons I joined. It was not just a stuffy book club, but filled with people who were real, kind, helpful, and heart warming. Perhaps some were a bit off the wall, but that's what I liked about it also. You were allowed to be yourself. It's one of the many reasons I joined Chronicles. It has that same warm feeling of community, with a few perks to boot. I'm so glad I found this place. Many of us Terry Brooks members were heart broken that the forum closed. I for one was totally shocked. I feel like our castle was stormed and those of us that survived are still trying to find a place to call home.