Not so very long ago, Serene raised the question of how to attract more people to The Book Forum's fora. I think a major asset would be more interactivity between the fora and the site itself.
I noticed how a few of the books in the IBDb have a link to a discussion on the forums, but not all of the books that have been discussed on the fora have a link on "their" page. For example, BotM like Forge of God and Life of Pi have a "Join the Discussion"-link on their page, whereas another BotM like The Goblet of Fire has a "Start a Discussion"-link. And other books, that haven't been made into BotM (e.g. About a Boy, The Order of the Phoenix) have that same "Start a Discussion"-link. Which brings me to a couple of points:
I personally think more people would feel inclined to join in on a conversation rather than to start one themselves (foolish perhaps, but then again: only human). In my opinion it'd be in the best interest of these fora (and of the site itself as well: the more forum-members, the more people using the site regularly, right?) to have as much books as possible link to the fora--even if they haven't been made BotM or don't have a review and/or summary up yet. That way people get some input of others as well, even if there's not a finished review out there yet, only thoughts of other people.
Which brings me to another point. Maybe the threads that discuss one particular book should be put together in one place, centralized as it were? Right now, some fiction books are discussed in the General Book Discussion, whereas some are discussed in the Fiction section, and others are discussed on the BotM part of the forum, which makes it a bit hard to locate a particular thread at times, or could lead to some cross-posting at some point as well (the search-tool is a great help in that department, but not everybody uses it I'm afraid.) I realise this approach would have both positive and negative points, but I think it would make browsing on the forum a bit more efficient than it is now.
I had another suggestion I wanted to make, but I seem to have forgotten all about that one, so I guess I'll save it for later.
One more thing I would like to point out: the link to the BotM forum that's on the mainpage (this one) doesn't work (404). I think you'll find that the one with the "s=&" works a bit better.
I noticed how a few of the books in the IBDb have a link to a discussion on the forums, but not all of the books that have been discussed on the fora have a link on "their" page. For example, BotM like Forge of God and Life of Pi have a "Join the Discussion"-link on their page, whereas another BotM like The Goblet of Fire has a "Start a Discussion"-link. And other books, that haven't been made into BotM (e.g. About a Boy, The Order of the Phoenix) have that same "Start a Discussion"-link. Which brings me to a couple of points:
I personally think more people would feel inclined to join in on a conversation rather than to start one themselves (foolish perhaps, but then again: only human). In my opinion it'd be in the best interest of these fora (and of the site itself as well: the more forum-members, the more people using the site regularly, right?) to have as much books as possible link to the fora--even if they haven't been made BotM or don't have a review and/or summary up yet. That way people get some input of others as well, even if there's not a finished review out there yet, only thoughts of other people.
Which brings me to another point. Maybe the threads that discuss one particular book should be put together in one place, centralized as it were? Right now, some fiction books are discussed in the General Book Discussion, whereas some are discussed in the Fiction section, and others are discussed on the BotM part of the forum, which makes it a bit hard to locate a particular thread at times, or could lead to some cross-posting at some point as well (the search-tool is a great help in that department, but not everybody uses it I'm afraid.) I realise this approach would have both positive and negative points, but I think it would make browsing on the forum a bit more efficient than it is now.
I had another suggestion I wanted to make, but I seem to have forgotten all about that one, so I guess I'll save it for later.
One more thing I would like to point out: the link to the BotM forum that's on the mainpage (this one) doesn't work (404). I think you'll find that the one with the "s=&" works a bit better.
