Amazon dumping customer forums

[kansaskyle]

I checked the Amazon Discounted Kindle books thread daily, and found quite a few free and bargain books. I know MR has a discount section, which I also check, and there was even some talk of people moving over here.

It looks like the folks that followed the discount thread on Amazon are trying to start something on Goodreads.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JoHunt

Agreed. Interesting history and inside information about films were posted on those forums - sad that it's all lost now.

Yeah, but it's also true that the forums were heavily "patrolled" by a cadre of very vicious Troo Believers; if someone didn't like show X, or film Y, they were instantly denounced as (insert pejorative term here), and I can well imagine that the so-called mods on the IMDB forums were VERY busy. (I once posted that I found a certain show horribly disappointing and tedious. I was roundly denounced as a misogynistic chauvinist pig who obviously was threatened by women and couldn't STAND to see "strong female characters." Hmmm....)

Forums are great; the only thing wrong with them is that they are populated by people.


Hitch

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Yes, but when Bezos eviscerated IMDB that was a loss.

dpreview isn't what it used to be, either.

[Alpha o]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Yeah, but it's also true that the forums were heavily "patrolled" by a cadre of very vicious Troo Believers; if someone didn't like show X, or film Y, they were instantly denounced as (insert pejorative term here), and I can well imagine that the so-called mods on the IMDB forums were VERY busy. (I once posted that I found a certain show horribly disappointing and tedious. I was roundly denounced as a misogynistic chauvinist pig who obviously was threatened by women and couldn't STAND to see "strong female characters." Hmmm....)

Forums are great; the only thing wrong with them is that they are populated by people.


Hitch

That is exactly the type of people who posted on the Kindle Forum. Worst fanbois I have ever seen. Came close to overthrowing Apple/Android and Canon/Nikon as nastiest opinions.

I did manage to copy some of the stupid posts (print screen) and send them to Amazon.

[Alpha o]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

dpreview isn't what it used to be, either.

No, it isn't. They did manage to control the Canon/Nikon crowd in the Open Forum though.

There are quite a few "pat me on the back - I'm good" types on there now.

[Dazrin]

This message was posted in the Kindle Help Community:

Kindle Help Communities Improvements
0 replies

By The Community Teamamazon, 22 hours 11 minutes ago Permalink Report abuse

We are always looking for new ways to make it easier for our customers to find answers to their Amazon product questions. Starting the morning of October 9th , Pacific Standard Time, we will be introducing an improved forum experience, with expanded discussion categories. With this update, customers will now have more choices, the opportunity to post rich content (like photos and videos), view and post from their mobile devices, and identify forum experts with new badges.

We look forward to your feedback on the new forums!

The new forum might be specific for Kindle questions rather than the more open forum they have now but it does sound like they have something planned for the future, if not quite as wide as there is now.

The reason I suspect it won't be as open is that the discussion linked earlier has this quote in it, supposedly the Amazon announcement banner:

The Amazon forums are retiring October 6, 2017.
Amazon would like to thank the members of this community for contributing to the discussion forums. As we grow and evolve, we encourage you to explore Goodreads Groups for books and Spark for other ways to engage with your interests.

[Barty]

Originally Posted by JoHunt

Agreed. Interesting history and inside information about films were posted on those forums - sad that it's all lost now.

Yes it's a shame. Though there are various places to discuss movies, imdb was unique in that it generated essentially a sub forum for every movie. If you had a question about a movie chances are there was an answer somewhere in one of the threads.

Of course you also had a lot of trolls and discussions sometimes veered into ugly arguments. I guess Amazon didn't feel like moderating all that stuff and decided to just shut the whole thing down.

[toddhicks209]

I learned nothing about book marketing from the Kindle forum.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by toddhicks209

I learned nothing about book marketing from the Kindle forum.

IME, the truth is, while other self-pubbed authors are willing to discuss marketing in generalized terms, or answer specific questions about which button to click, when creating an AMS ad, for this or that...those who find profitable marketing methods tend to keep those to themselves.

Every profitable or advantageous marketing trick, method, etc., over the last 9 years that self-pubs spoke about was subsequently tsunami'ed, by other self-pubbed authors. From early tricks to the later...I just think that finding any author that will openly and fully talk about what s/he does, to successfully market, is a Grail Quest--and just as likely to be found.

Each determined, professional author-publisher has to do his/her own testing, marketing, A/B tests on AMS, etc., and find the things that work best for him/her. Really...there's just no one-size-fits-all marketing, in any event--what works for romance writers definitely doesn't work for Men's adventure writers, etc., anyway.

Hitch

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Yes, but when Bezos eviscerated IMDB that was a loss.

I agree. People would post questions about why this or that happened in a movie and others would come up with ideas why it was done, and sometimes people associated with the movie in some way would even post. For example under Zathura a cousin of Jonah Bobo posted at least once.

[HarryT]

So, we're past 6th October. Have the forums gone?

[Nate the great]

The official day is next Friday. Everyone has seen the banner.
https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/...forums-friday/

[library addict]

Getting this message:

About Discussion Boards

Our Discussion Boards feature has been discontinued.

Amazon would like to thank the members of this community for contributing to the discussion forums. As we grow and evolve, we encourage you to explore Goodreads Groups for book discussions and Spark for other interests.

[Josieb1]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Their forums were a disaster to navigate, so shutting them down is no great loss.

They also had some horrible bullies, and as it wasn't moderated it was awful

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Josieb1

They also had some horrible bullies, and as it wasn't moderated it was awful

That's something I never stuck around to witness. It's a shame how some people have nothing better to do than to bully others.