Move or Elimination of Horror Gothic Forum?

[GothicLover]

I think the current sub-forum titles of Classic Gothics and General Gothic Romance Discussion are appropriate for this forum, but the addition of a Horror Gothic subforum is inappropriate and confusing. Judging from the small number of posts and replies in that sub-forum, most members unsurprisingly have little interest in these types of books. It's been my experience that romance lovers do not usually read horror novels.

I'd like to see the Horror Gothic subforum either removed or moved to the Off Topic section. What do others think?

(See my recent posts under "Classic Gothics: How do you define 'classic gothics'?")

There are many other forums online for readers of Horror Gothics, and I was hoping that this would be a unique online "home" for true lovers of gothic ROMANCES.

[MysteryMind]

I don't read horror Gothics, so I don't mind having it moved. However, for those who do, we can still keep it under "Off-topic" so they can discuss it there. If we don't have much interest, there will not be many posts, and they'll just get lost on this forum. I guess we'll just have to out-post them to turn this into a true forum for Gothic Romances. The final decision will rest on the Administrator. Should we poll it? The administrator may be influenced by that.

[GothicLover]

Polling might be a good idea, but I get the feeling that there are only a handful of regular posters on the whole forum. Maybe lurkers would respond to a poll. I don't know how to set up a poll, though. Can anyone offer guidance on this process? Can anyone initiate a poll?

[GothicLover]

Oops! Just saw that a poll has already been posted on this topic. Thanks, MysteryMind!

[GothAdmin]

When planning the forum, the original structure included sub-forums for the various Gothic sub-genres, including Horror Gothics, Whimsical Gothics,  Exotic Gothics etc.  Ultimately, we decided that too many sub-forums relating to small, almost invisible, sub-genres serves no purpose to an embryonic forum (fractionalising the forum at a later date, when we have a larger and broader readership, would be better.)  

The reason we elected to keep the "Horror Gothics" sub-forum in place is that we anticipated that if any sub-genre were to attract members it would be the popular Horror Gothic genre, and having a separate area to discuss books of this genre would keep it out of the areas where the essential rhythm of the discussion is focussed on the (pure) Gothic romance.

I agree with GothicLover's sentiment that the discussion should focus on the Gothic romance.  However, it seems inevitable that the forum will attract HG fans.  Proceeding empirically, we could remove the HG sub-forum and observe the impact.  If the HG posting begins to crowd other areas, we could reinstate it (perhaps as a sub-forum of the "Off Topic" discussion.)

Let's see how the poll goes and we'll act accordingly.

Here is the poll post:

http://www.gothicromanceforum.com/poll-h...-t-92.html

[GothicLover]

I consider what you are calling the "horror gothic" a subset or offshoot of horror novels, rather than a subset or offshoot of gothic romance novels. Gothic romance novels typically guarantee a happy ending. Horror gothics, like horror novels, do not. Therefore, I voted that the forum be moved to the Off Topic section, though I wouldn't mind if it went away entirely.