"GENRE SOUP". I like that.
Given that one of the characteristics (and in my opinion, one of the great attractions) of indie writers is their reluctance to be stuffed neatly into the publishing industry's genre pigeonholes, we'll probably be seeing a lot of that one.
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I suppose it's because we are afraid the spammers will pollute it, just like the other forums, thereby driving potential users away, turning it into a selling ghetto, and ultimately rendering it ineffective.
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Spammers will be spammers no matter what. Adding another board won't really change that. If anything, it might make the mods' lives easier by luring them all to the same place, so they can be more readily spotted and disposed of. From what I've seen, though, MR seems to be remarkably free of spam (except for those persistent video editing software guys) so I really don't see that being an issue.
As far as a "selling ghetto" ... ideally, it
will be a board full of nothing but posts promoting books. We have those things in hardspace too, you know. We don't call them "ghettos", though; we call them "bookstores".
Remember what defines the MobileRead members as a group:
we read a lot of books. Possibly too many books. We avoid bookstores (online or brick-and-mortar) the same way crack addicts avoid crack dealers. For us, a board full of people offering to sell us even more books is a Good Thing. Well, our families, employers, and bankers may not think it's so good, but we do.
On another note, let's not forget about the proposed split in the Deals forum. I think that will be another major help for the users. For example, I anticipate that I'd start with a quick glance at Deals/Stores (to check for further O'Reilly deals), followed by a more thorough read of Deals/Books (well, once my TBR list is read down to a manageable level) and skipping Deals/Devices entirely (no need for a new one until my faithful 505 goes to the great charger in the sky). Other people might be looking for a new reading device and following that board closely, or less concerned about individual books than a store-wide sale so they can stock up for the summer, or any number of other combinations.
As it is now it's already a pain to find things on that board, and I think we can only anticipate it getting busier in the future. Ebooks are becoming more popular, resulting in more competition and (hopefully) more deals being offered, and MR members, whose population is increasing, will undoubtedly become more adept at finding and posting the deals. I'll admit to being a slacker, and rarely checking beyond the first page of most of our sections, so anything that increases first-page residence time is a good thing for me. I doubt if I'm alone in that particular form of slacking.