Pathetic.org is a poetry circle where members can post their poetry and receive direct feedback from other members. It is a relatively small community of roughly 1,200 members and has a catalog of approximately 32,000 poems. It aims to be a resource for authors and readers alike, and is completely non-commercial. Features of the site include a daily poem mailing and opportunities for poets to learn, develop, and grow in their writing abilities.
Pathetic.org was started in 1998 by Gavin M. Roy and grew out of a poetry circle called the Pathetic Poets Society at California State University, Fullerton.
The pathetic.org service runs open source software, including Gentoo Linux, Apache, PHP, and PostgreSQL. Roy intends to open source the PHP software that runs the site, which is currently at version 7.0.
Pathetic.org is free to join, but membership is screened by a membership committee which evaluates, among other things, the quality of a sample submitted poem. Because the focus of the site is on creating a poetry circle online, the emphasis is not on the quantity of members, but rather the quality of members.
