The gods know that this is not normal for me, but I'm going to go out on a rarely frequented limb and say that I might possibly agree with Jon.
Firstly, I'll say that my general impression of the News & Commentary thread is that it is for the posting of:
- News - mostly this is obvious, like posts or external links about new product releases, government/industry moves related to copyright/DRM, incidents, the kind of stuff one finds on "news" websites, be they general or specific media. That is, the "Latest on e-books, e-paper, DRM and related technologies".
- Commentary - this I think is less obvious, but I think should generally be external "commentary" from some self-styled pundit or journalist or an interview with a spokesperson relevant to ebookery - that is, the kind of "opinion" stuff that we can go read and then continue to comment on. I think this is generally a quite worthy place for an extended user-created commentary (I don't wish to suggest users can't be "pundits"), but perhaps with the guiding hand of an editor (that is, moderators).
The way I see that particular section, it's almost like the "MobileRead Newspaper/Magazine" section of MobileRead - somewhere to go to catch up on news or read some well-thought and written opinion piece, with the option of then responding to it.
An "Ebooks General" section would be for all ebook-related stuff that is not related to specific software, formats, devices, news, commentary - you know, just general ebook stuff.
For instance, if I go down the front page of News & Commentary at the moment, I would pick the following items for an "Ebooks General" section:
Note that the above in no way opines
negatively on the above threads, pretty much
every one of which I am interested in. I just think that they're predominantly where they are because News & Commentary is the "Other" of ebook-related stuff (that is, not as per my personal view of the section). I see News & Commentary's role, to use my previous analogy, as the MR Newspaper/Magazine section (but with the benefit of the conversation not being one-way), and with some degree of editorial control present (sorry...here I am proposing
more work for moderators. I am conscious of that and its limitations
).
Note that, for me, the current
fullness of News & Commentary is of little inconvenience/frustration with the way I peruse the forums (which is usually through "New Posts/All New Posts"), though I can understand it would be for some. I just wanted to say that I tend to agree with Jon and wanted to explain why, to encourage a reasonable conversation even if it doesn't lead to change (and, besides, Jon might have different reasons to mine for his "Feedback").
I definitely thing
The Lounge is
not the right spot. It's quite specifically "Friendly banter and discussions
unrelated to e-books" (emphasis mine), and even a passing glance at its content would indicate that it'd be far easier to lose one's
ebook-related thread in there than in News & Commentary, and, to me, that'd be distinctly undesirable.
Just one man's opinion...don't take it to heart. I don't.
Cheers,
Marc