Troy

You all have heard me talk about the importance of the Black Book Ecosystem Strong, and why it is so important to us as a culture to maintain our agency when it comes to determining who an how our stories are told. #readingblack is one effort and the community conversations are another. THIS Sunday, March 22, 2020, 6 - 7:30 pm Eastern, I to invite you to participate our first community conversation, “Keeping the Black Book Ecosystem Strong: Black Books in the Age of the Corona Virus.” The conversation will take place online in the form of a video conference using Zoom and will be by Paul Coates (Black Classic Press in Baltimore), Kassahun Checole (African World Press in Trenton), James Fugate (Eso Won Books in Los Angeles), Shirikiana Germina (Sankofa Video and Books in DC), Cheryl and Wade Hudson (Just Us Books West Orange, NJ, and Troy Johnson (AALBC.com, Tampa). This will be the first of several conversations. You will need to register in advance it you are interested in joining us. https://zoom.us/meeting/register/v5AlcuqprTIrCWOmPSMLh5fwrZ6HBNLM_Q

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Wow! The big casino here (Tampa) is still open 24 hours a day. Dude, this is the situation for most of us already. Maybe Kareem has the right idea. Have y'all read Parable of the Sower?

@Pioneer1 I did not know you ran for office, now I have to look at you differently and understand why you've remained anonymous all these years. 😉 As far as the end of civilization, I've started a new conversation on the subject, cause I know you can't help hijacking this one @Chevdove I wish more scholars and writers posted here more regularly. The ones who post regularly to social should absolutely post here. Also, if you don't read email how do people contact and communicate with you? Letter, telephone, Instagram?

There is no scientific evidence that human civilizations have been here for millions of years. But I agree, Western civilization will absolutely collapse. We can debate the timeframe, but it will happen and we are seeing indications of it today.

Natural selection at work...

Then defintely everyone is probably smarter than me on something especially when it comes to the major sports, pop culture, fashion, contemporary music, automobiles, Instagram,...

Yeah start another conversation @Pioneer1. However, let me assure you rumors (or hopes) of the Rapture abound at the first sign of strife WWI, WWWII, Y2K, 911, 45's Presidency, ... let me know when you want me to stop...

This is the programming the "Discovery" Channel has stooped to showing. Sad.

Actually I agree with you. The reaction in NYC is far worse than 911. Dude they shut down schools, restaurants, churches, etc expecting everything to be done online, but the digital divide is real and many people will be left out in the cold. With hourly and gig workers losing income things will just get worse. Pray this situation does not last long.

Wisdom is more a function of experience, versus the accumulation of information. I think as far as the purpose of @Delano's question smart and intelligent are interchangeable.

Hi @Florenza Lee can you send me a bio and the ISBN13s of your books for your aalbc page: https://aalbc.com/authors/author.php?author_name=Florenza+Denise+Lee No, there is no ap for the forums but the mobile version works really well. Check it out. I usually post from my phone. I'm posting this from my phone. 😊 @Lori Elayne It actually requires a lot of work to get people to "stumble across" this site -- trust me, but I'm glad you found it. Yes you are brand spanking new! Welcome and thanks for posting. Hey @Pioneer1 just to be clear, it is not the lack of traffic that is hurting the site (you'd probably be surprised to learn what the most popular posts are here -- ill share a few in another post), it that small number of regular posters and the low ratio of members to posters. I'm sure there have spies here and even agent provocateurs, but I doubt the numbers are large enough to be significant and it can't explain the thousands of accounts I'm talking about. I did not mention that I have rejected most accounts that were registered. If I approved 8,000 accounts, I'm sure I rejected at least 10,000. @Marion Hill thanks for replying, but please do not wait for a conversation to participate in. I encourage you to start one yourself 🙂 Guest Clarification thanks for the thoughful message. Also do you have an account? Please post a link to your company's website. Also is your publishing company on our list https://aalbc.com/books/all-imprints.php? If not, please provide share information of at least one of one of your most popular or significant titles. Thanks! Also must say that the earlier poster Dave Covin is a publisher, hosts the Sacramento Black Book Festival, and is the author of one of AALBC's top selling books. Raisins in Milk

@Mel-Robert and @David Covin first thanks for sharing your thoughts. Mel-Robert, marketing is hard unless you have a boatload of money. I'd argue today it is probably hard than in the past. Forums and l=sites like AALBC can help at no cost or relatively low cost, but there are FAR fewer AALBCs that there were 10, 15 years ago. David, yes I imagine most regular posters would agree with your points. Sure there are some exceptions to your observations, but part of the problem is one too few participants and the forums could probably benefit from more active moderation. I've always maintained a hands off approach, primarily because I don't really have the time to actively moderate. Moderate means not just removing bad actors or posts, but leading the discussion.

@Maurice I just now reached out to forum member who have previously participated. Any results will be evident here.

I just reviewed information on the people who've registered accounts on this discussion forum over the past 10 years. I will call these folks "members." Members are different from "Guests," people who post here without creating an account. Over the past 10 years 8,050 members joined this forum. However, only 3,131 members revisited our discussion forum after creating an account, and only 608 posted here. The fact that only 8% of the people who create an account actually post, always confounded me. I think it may be that some visitors believe you have to create an account just to read the posts or maybe once they create an account and can't figure out how to post. In any case, despite asking, I have no idea why so few members post. As you might imagine, of the members who post, 10% of us are responsible for 90% of all posts. Most of the top posters have not participated in over a year. As a result, I've decided to reach out, via email, to all 608 members who have posted. Two hundred members has have requested that they not be emailed or the email address they signed up with is no longer valid. Thanks leaves 408 members you will get the email. If 10% of these member participated regularly we'd actually have a pretty vibrant forum, which I'm sure anyone reading this would like to see. Of course lurkers (people who read the forums but never participate), you are free to join as well 🙂 Also, all discussion forum members are entitled to enjoy a 10% off everything in the AALBC bookstore just use coupon code: thumperscorner when checking out. This is on top of free shipping for orders of $40 or more and no sales tax collection (save the state of Florida). This is a one-time use coupon.

Years ago I tried emailing all registered users. Maybe I try that again with links to some popular posts.

January 2020 marked the 10th year of this version of the AALBC discussion forums. in January 2010 I had to make two substantial changes to the discussion forums; I had to implement different software. The software I was previously using (Discus) made it impossible for me to deal with the spam posts the site was getting. Spammers could programmatically hit the site with 100 posts and I'd have to find each one manually, and delete them one by one. This software (Invision Community) is infinitely better dealing with spam. Invision is also fee based while Discus was free. I had to migrate from ThumersCorner.com to AALBC.com/tc. Google banned the entire thumerscorner.com domain from serving ads. There were posts on the forum that Google said were offensive. Google refused to provide me with a complete list of the offensive pages, which made it impossible for me to deal with issue. As a result, Google simply banned the entire domain for serving ads. At that point Goolge was effectively a monopoly and I lost all advertising revenue of the domain. Both changes led to a big drop in the number of participants. The most prominent hold over from the old domain was @Cynique indeed besides myself she was the longest tenured participant, permanently leaving in 2019. Of course 2010 witnessed the rise of social media and I'm sure that had an impact as well. As of 2020 the forum participation was never as high as it was during the peak pre-2010. We have more registered users but less participants. I have not figured out why so many people create accounts but never post. Back in 2002 I implemented Discus' software to address performance issues I had with the original discussion forum software I used which was provided by Microsoft. Over the years, I used a variety of Microsoft application and software to run this site and they ALL have failed me at some point. This most substantial problem has been Microsoft's unwillingness to upgrade their software. Microsoft's FrontPage was the worst -- that software killed many sites. Today I use Microsoft's Bing to power the AALBC search engine, so far so good but we will see how it does over the long haul -- it has been less than two years. During the Discus Software Era (2002 to 2010), far and away the most prolific poster was a Brother named @Thumper. His name was synonymous with these forums. in fact the URL of the forums today aalbc.com/tc is in honor of the old Thumpers Corner. During this period Thumper wrote hundreds of book reviews. readers loved reading his reviews. Authors loved them too, but sometimes they hated them, because Thumper never pulled punches he would trash a review as easily as he would praise one. There are authors will not speak to me to this day because of a review Thumper wrote -- one is (was) very famous. Don;t ask me what happened to Thumer I do not know. The forums were around at least as early as 1999. Unfortunately, I was unable to archive any conversations prior to 2002. Ths software was simply unuseable (thanks again Microsoft) and those conversations are lost forever. Of course there have been many other great contributors to this forum, over the years, and those posters are the people who have kept these forums alive. If people did not participate the forums would be completely worthless. Thanks to all of you! Facebook's sites completely dominate online discussion today, and as a result there are a faction of Black owned and operated platforms than there were 15 years ago. This is one the many great loses the WWW has suffered over the past two decades. Of course many young people will argue how great Instagram is, but they are unaware of a world before social media and have no clue what was lost and what could have been.

Maybe you were thinking about "Jill Scott" @Chevdove 🙂 I was speaking to a room. Full of people during Black history month about Carter G. Woodson when it dawned on me, by the reactions, that no one had heard of him. I asked the class of grad students in Library science, and one lone sista two of the only Black people (women) in the room had ever heard of him. It is interesting the people I assume others must know but don't. As I get older the general population knows little about the stuff I know and care about. Maybe this is why so little of pop culture interests me...

What's up man? The pandemic has different reacts depending upon where you live. NYC is shutting down. The college I teach has cancelled all instruction for a full week and will then resume all classes online. They have shut down Broadway theaters, museums, at events too numerous to count. Stores have no hand sanitizers, cleaning products, toilet tissue, water, etc. many people are wearing masks. My boy told me about a guy that sneezed without covering his mouth. He got cursed out and almost caught a beatdown. In Florida, some events have been cancelled but walking around in stores it is just a regular day unlike NYC where civil society is beginning to break down.

Sometimes I think I should ban links to Amazon. Sean do you have a website?

@Chevdove you were probably to young to remember tbe concert Wattstax. They made a documentary film in the 70s with same name. I saw the film in the theater and I recall wnjoying it a great deal. I own the DVD -- check it out

I really need a team of people to run this site. That is the next boundary the site must deal with. As smart, hardworking, and mission driven as I am, there is only so much I can do by myself. At any rate, I hope to have the rest of the site restored this evening 🙂

Again, no. Del, we are all ignorant in some area. I know more about web development than you do, but that does not mean I'm more intelligent than you.

Del you asked the following statement: The short answer is yes and, based upon your answer to my question, you agree. I measure intelligence by how quickly one assimmilates new information, but more importantly how they apply what they know to create something novel or generate new ideas.

Are you equating ignorance with a lack of intelligence? My sentence was a question. You usually focus on trying to devine intent rather than simply answering the question posed to you.