Baen's Bar was an online community (a set of forums run by Baen Books on their commercial website for fans and authors of their books). It was not unlike the SFF Chronicles. Jim Baen had it set up in 1999, and it flourished up until the middle of February 2021.
Unfortunately, no community of human beings has ever suffered a shortage of stupid members, and the Bar was no exception. A few of the forums were taken over by so-called "Conservatives" who ganged together to bully anyone they called "Liberal". The "Politics" and "Truth vs Pravda" (religion) and "Blazes" (flames) forums were especially bad.
An independent writer named Jason Sanford wrote what he called "an investigative report" (I call it a "hit-piece",) "exposing" the Bar's sins. He claimed that Baen Books had wilfully permitted the "Barflies" to seditiously encourage the start of a second American Civil War. (In reality, several of the more right-wing 'flies had actually advised everyone to prepare themselves for survival of such a civil war, but nobody actually advocated civil war.)
Sanford and a few dozen others, who knew nothing more about Baen Books than what they read in Sanborn's essay, began to put pressure on Baen's ISP to de-platform Baen Books because Baen Books was "inciting insurrection."
Now, Baen Books depend heavily on e-book sales over the internet, so de-platforming would likely mean Baen's going out of business. Toni Weisskopf, the publisher at Baen, freaked out at the prospect, so she shut down the Bar ("put it on hiatus", in her words) to avoid losing the company and its customers.
This was a very unfortunate development for us Barflies. There were far more forums that were quite benign, and not at all dominated by right-wing a**holes.
For example, many of the forums were dedicated to Baen's authors to facilitate communication between fans and the authors. With the possible exception of Tom Kratman's forum, none of the traffic in them them ever came anywhere close to sedition or treason. (Tom Kratman is a special case. He seems to have moved politically so far to the Right that he has ceased to recognize that anything like a Center ever existed, or that anyone on the Left qualifies as human. Be that as it may, I find most of Kratman's books to be quite unreadable, but some people actually like them. You're welcome to read them if you wish—your mileage may vary.)
There were also forums dedicated to "Space Tech", "Future Tech", "Baen Appetite" (cooking), "Books" (all books, not just Baen's), "Authors", "Classic Science Fiction", and other non-political content. As well there were other forums for discussion of Ring-of-Fire (1632)-related topics ("1632 Tech") and unsolicited manuscripts for the
Grantville Gazette, an e-magazine that specializes in 1632-universe stories and articles. "1632 Slush" was dedicated to posting prospective manuscripts, and "1632 Slush Comments" was dedicated to comments by Barflies—fans and authors—concerning the stories or articles in "1632 Slush" which served as a slush pile for the
Grantville Gazette e-zine.
By the way, I, myself, have been published as a result of posting in "1632 Slush." The last three issues of
Grantville Gazette (Numbers 91, 92, and 93) have contained a "fact" article I wrote, published serially in three parts, concerning the flags used by the United States of Europe, one the various countries in the 1632 universe.
Needless to say, Toni Weisskopf threw out the baby with the bathwater when she shut down Baen's Bar, but I don't really blame her. Instead I blame Jason Sanborn and his happy little crew of sock-puppets.
<Climbing down from soapbox>
I hope this cleared up your confusion.
Mike
