The closing of the Necromancy thread and its consequences...

[The Scorpion]

... have been a slight but persistent and noticeable annoyance for the Bolter & Chainsword community.

 

We should have a place to discuss old stories and rediscover hidden gems. Either that or be allowed to revive old topics via necromancy, because as things currently stand there is not much place to discuss anything but the most recent (or upcoming) releases.

 

Those are my two cents, but this thread is meant to beyond that.

 

This is a thread to agree, disagree, and hopefully come up with a decision concerning this topic.

[darkhorse0607]

I don't think it's that much of an issue honestly. When the other thread was closed, the mod said that if you want to discuss a book, regardless of the release date you can just make a new topic, so no one is actively preventing the discussion around older novels. Creating individual threads would honestly be more helpful for folks looking for reviews or discussion anyway given how big the old thread got. 

 

That all being said, if this is more about forum traffic than anything (it do be dead here), I just think that is more about the current state of BL than anything. If/when releases come, discussion normally picks up again until GW forgets to release anything. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

The Necromancy thread was a book club thread. It wasn't just 'hey remember this book? here is my review of this book', it did exactly what a book club does: span off all sorts of discussions about themes, links between other books, historically interesting trivia and just general thoughts and feelings. It was, in the immortal words of F. Gump, like a box of chocolates - you never knew what you were going to get. 

 

Creating individual threads is all well and good, but I find myself much more interested in that random, free-flowing discussion which moved along at a decent clip (if today or this week's reviews didn't interest you, there would be something else tomorrow or next week, or you might not personally be reading 40K right now, but it might trigger your interest in doing so, whereupon you would contribute primary grist for the discussion mill). A 'book club' thread feeds the community, the community feeds the thread, and it drives engagement with the forum as a whole because you turn up for Book Club but see something else you want to talk about/contribute to as well. It also - for a marvel - didn't degenerate into crudposting or waffle. 90% of comments there engaged in the subject matter, and the other 10% were totally inoffensive and provided the necessary social lubricant to keep things bopping along. 

 

I do agree that the discussion about BL feels a little flat right now, but that's rather the point of having these 'book club' threads: keeping people in the loop for when things do pick up. In my desperation, I've personally turned to Battletech, so help me. 

[The Scorpion]

52 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

Creating individual threads would honestly be more helpful for folks looking for reviews or discussion anyway given how big the old thread got. 

 

This makes a lot of sense, but how do we prevent the creation of redundant threads everytime someone finishes a near-forgotten book?

[darkhorse0607]

42 minutes ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

I do agree that the discussion about BL feels a little flat right now, but that's rather the point of having these 'book club' threads: keeping people in the loop for when things do pick up. In my desperation, I've personally turned to Battletech, so help me. 

 

I finally got started in The Expanse series, so Black Library not publishing anything has forced me to be productive and cross some things off my "one day" list.

 

I want to be clear, even with what I said, I do miss the Necromancy thread, I get the want/need for something like that. That being said, having gone back and re-read the reasoning behind the mods decision, I also get why it was closed. Having discussions that branch out from the main book is well and fine, but some people just don't know when to stop. Or manage to derail any discussion about a given author with the same complaints. You could argue the solution wouldve been to either give those folks a time out, or ban them and let the thread continue, but I am not a mod.

 

Additionally, I think one thing that would help traffic here is the mod team moving the threads about Black Library topics from the main News forum to, you know, the Black Library section. As is, the main discussion isn't even here, it is in a branch that will bury it and move on while the same group here persists. 

 

47 minutes ago, The Scorpion said:

 

This makes a lot of sense, but how do we prevent the creation of redundant threads everytime someone finishes a near-forgotten book?

 

Valid question. Again it would be up to the mods (dunno how many are active in here anyway but still). Until they say anything it could just be opening new threads as you go, someone can link in a comment to the older post.

 

That being said, given how few and far between book reviews/threads have been outside of the big ones (Ashes of the Imperium for example), I cant imagine there would be that many threads that arent duplicate of posts from years ago anyway.