New subforum for the lit forum?

fadedsailor932 said:..they stay on the main PDF. Take television as an example. You have one main PDF covering general television topics, plus Series, Unseen, soap opera, and reality TV.

Hmm, I suppose it’s both comparable and not quite... In principle, yes—we have one primary forum acting as a sort of catch-all, supplemented by more niche subforums. But that division is both thematic and technical, in a way. Here, what we actually categorize is based on nationality. It isn't quite the same, though; for instance, the Film section has no subforums at all, Music doesn't split domestic from international hits, and History lacks a distinction between local and global events...

But more on that later...

Lisa Hernandez3 said:Beyond that, it’s worth noting that the topics you mentioned aren't strictly about literature, but rather book-related subjects. This includes things like e-books, e-readers, newsstand paperbacks, non-fiction, or even scientific texts. If your concern is specifically about making purely literary topics more visible compared to general book topics, that could be fixed by creating a dedicated literature subforum—perhaps combining American and international works, or separating them—alongside a slight renaming of the main subforum.

(Based on the start of this thread, I gathered that you're more interested in specialized discussions regarding American language and literature.)

So, that would be the gist of it. For the needs of a non-specialized forum like ours, I find a division between strictly literary topics and those that are less so—perhaps even a chronological split between contemporary and classic literature—to be much more intuitive than dividing everything by nationality.

rapidnomad7 said:As the title implies, I have an "idea" for a new sub-forum within the literature section. I am certain that by the time I reached the word "literature," I had already lost half of you. I suspect I’ll lose the other half because this post exceeds two sentences in length—but since I am not discussing matters of grave importance, I shall, in my infinite generosity, forgive you all.

Pretentious and condescending intros just make people stop reading halfway through. 🧐

I actually like the idea, though. It would be great to kick off some threads about American literature (definitely focusing on more recent works 🙈), 🙂 provided we avoid excessive intellectualizing and academic nonsense, please. 🙂 I understand the temptation to slip into professional jargon, but if you avoid those traps, you'll end up with a solid sub-forum—or at least some decent threads within the main section. 🙏

Come on, upvote this so I can actually learn something about American literature. 🙏

vividtiger922 said:So, that's pretty much the gist of it. For what we're doing here—running a general interest forum—it just makes more sense to split things up by literary vs. non-literary topics. I even think grouping them by era, like classic versus contemporary, works better than just splitting everything into American and foreign works.

...that's my point 🤷 We have the main Literature PDF (doesn't matter what it's called). That file covers all the lit stuff—theoretical debates, reader engagement, you name it. Now, here's the "issue" with how we categorize it. To me, dividing it by domestic versus international literature feels way more intuitive than sorting it by old versus new. If we go the "classic literature" route, that specific section ends up becoming too niche—just look at the current balance between the "classics" and "contemporary" sections on the Literature board right now. Again, this isn't some hyper-specialized academic forum. The goal isn't to be overly technical; it's about making sure the whole thing is easy to navigate.

We seem to have lost our way a bit. The original concept was simply to set American literature apart from everything else, but we eventually pivoted toward this second option where both domestic and foreign works are separated from the main subforum.

Well, we just need to settle one final point (before we run into a situation involving Mark Twain or Radovan Ivšić 😍) — are we defining American literature as works written in the English language, or specifically as the literature produced by American authors?

👍

Love the idea. It would be awesome to add some American poetry and prose to the literature subforum. Slobodan Prosperov, Kombol, and Solar would be proud 😁

vividtiger922 said:There. That’s basically it. For a general-interest forum like this, I think splitting things into strictly literary versus more casual topics makes way more sense. Even adding a timeline—separating modern stuff from the classics—is better than just dividing everything by foreign vs. American authors.

👍

Agreed. It would be much cleaner and more interesting if we split subforums into older and newer American literature, maybe even adding some sub-classifications within those categories.