Reading 1001 discussion

Changes are coming. Participation has not been all we would like it to be. People are not reading BOTM. Many state they are behind. Doing 3 BOTM each month seems to not be working at this time.

We are going to change voting of BOTM and probably do only one book for awhile. Books will be chosen by votes and we will be using participation points instead of popular, weighted or random selections. I am in the process of putting together a spread sheet for participation points.

I am going to use the leader board for points but I will also go through reviews and give out participation points for those that have chose not to be in the year long points challenge.

People will get credit for all 1001 books read from the list.

Stay tune, more info to come

There will also be a contest to change out name from Shelfari 1001 group. So put on your creativity hat and be thinking.

And remember that you can get participation points from participating in our summer reading challenge!!

I recieved one question about what these changes might be. We will change the way voting is occurring. There will be participation points.
With only one BOTM we hope more people will participate in actually reading and discussing the books. I will be posting the BOTM differently this month as I am moving away from so many questions as they are not being used so will be trying to just facilitate discussions with some very basic questions. We admins will be making efforts to respond to responses.
There will be challenges such as the new summer reading challenge that Jen is launching and those will include participation points.

Thoughts I have for participation points include the following
1. 1 point for non BOTM.
2. The points for BOTM will be 1 point if read, 1 point for a review and 1 point if participating in discussion
3. Year long and quarterly reads will be as already defined but basically will be, reading, reviewing and particpation.
4. Challenges, reading and participation.
5. We are thinking that a person can use up to 5 participation points toward the book that they want to be BOTM. It will then be subtracted from their participation point. All members have at least 1 participation point that they can use by being a member of the group.
6. Because we will only have one BOTM, all previous BOTM will be removed from voting for 4 years from the time they were BOTM before they are elligible again and no book 700 pages or over can be a BOTM because they are in the quarterly and yearly book lists.


I am open to any suggestions from any member? I am trying to get ready for August. So we have July 15 to get this pulled together.

Here is the link to the various points possible.
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Quarterly reads read, reviewed, discussed are worth 10 points

Randomized list books read are work 2 points (please flag your reviews of your random reads so i can catch those points unless you keep a list on the annual challenge thread. In fact you would make my life easier if you started a thread and calculated your points then I could correct any errors I made.

Participation Point list. This is the link to the spreadsheet. If you don't find your name, please let me know and I will add you. I know that I made many mistakes. It was pretty difficult not to. I used the year long point challenge but there are people who participate who are not keeping track. I went back to January to try to add points. I did not do the Hercules challenge yet and need to check that out to see if I need to do anything. The year long challenge is also not included. JenP I do not have your participation pts correct, I know. So if I made a mistake, let me know. We have until July 15 to get this set up.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

So would the yearly challenge be done away with? Or are the participation points in addition to the yearly challenge? I ask because, although I never even get CLOSE to being the reader with the most points, it's still fun participating in the competitive portion of the challenge. It's actually my biggest motivation for reading in this group! (That's not to say I won't participate in this group if it's done away with. I just really like the competition.)

Actually the participation points would be the same as the annual challenge. To this point, no one really got to use their annual points for anything but bragging. Now you can use your points for voting. I will subtract from the spread sheet the points used for voting so technically you still could win bragging privileges at the end of year for total points earned.

Kristel wrote: "Actually the participation points would be the same as the annual challenge. To this point, no one really got to use their annual points for anything but bragging. Now you can use your points for v..."

Gotcha. =)

Becky wrote: "So would the yearly challenge be done away with? Or are the participation points in addition to the yearly challenge? I ask because, although I never even get CLOSE to being the reader with the mos..."

Yes, I don't see why we would need to get rid of it but the changes would ensure that you could cash in points for BOTM voting. But we could easily keep the yearly challenge thread up here. As Kristel mentioned, one of the major issues is that we are getting very little BOTM discussion with some months only 2-4 comments in each book.

We'll keep everyone informed. Our goal is to increase discussion and interaction between members while retaining the all the things you all love.

Here's a few ideas (totally take 'em or leave 'em) that I think would increase participation while also taking into consideration that these are harder reads and that people want to often read what they own or what they can readily obtain.

1. I would still go with three options each month (top two vote getters plus one random from the nominees - see #2). Having a choice is what makes me keep trying to read at least one. If I had to read just one, I don't know if I would do it.

2. Let people nominate from the entire list each month. These will be the books that you can vote from. The first nomination is free. People can nominate more than one book, but it will cost them 2 participation points per. As the group grows, if there are too many nominations, just up the price i.e. first book is 1 pt. next book is 3 pts.

3. I think answering the questions is challenging. My suggestion is you give a point for each question answered. I also think another possible option to try is to not use preformulated questions, but let members post questions and give them 2 points for doing that. I think that might lead to more interesting questions for discussion. Not sure, but could be worth a try.

4. I do really like the idea that once a book has been chosen, it is on hiatus for four years.

5. Of course I like participation points, lol . . .

Basically, I think if you want to up the participation, let the membership really bubble up what they want to read the most and let's choose by that as opposed to by alphabet/author.

And personally, I think the voting should be private . . .seeing previous votes let's individuals influence the vote too much and I do believe that seeing the administrator votes/preferences also unduly influences people's choices.

Ok, that may have been more opinion than you actually wanted! I do like this group though, and I think it has a lot going for it. I think there's potential for it to really thrive for sure . . .it's extremely well organized and a lot of work is put into it.

I haven't participated lately because the list of questions just fosters lists of answers, not a 'discussion' per se. Maybe there is a way to incorporate questions into a format that fosters interactive discussions on the books.

I love this group and will participate no matter what. I would like to see Globetrot come back. I like how we had 3 choices to choose from each month from a different country. I also like the challenges and the seasonal reads.

I like the three book option as well. With three books chosen I try to read at least one. I like to have at least a small choice from which to pick. I'm terribly bad at reading a particular book at a particular time.

I like the way we come up with the BOTMs. It's part of what I like about the group. Though I like the idea of using participation points to nominate from a section of the list or use up to x participation points in voting.

One way to make the discussion livelier might be to shorten the time during which a BOTM gives additional points. Only BOTM of the current and the previous month get 2 points and the.extra points for the discussion can only be earned in that particular month. Same for for the added point for reading all three BOTMs.

Sushicat wrote: ".I like the way we come up with the BOTMs. It's part of what I like about the group. ."

Actually, it probably is one of my favorite things too overall except that the voting is public . . .My suggestions above probably made it sound like I think the book selection process could be improved, but I'm really just trying to build on Kristel's ideas and direction. I do think the book selection process is fun and interesting as it stands.

I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of work to do and our folders are too full. We are trying to solve this problem.

I like the ideas so keep them coming.

Kristel wrote: "I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of work to do and our folders are too full. ..."

I'm so sorry, Kristel . . .where did you post your discussion plan? I don't see it (probably its right under my nose . . .)

Also, what do you mean when you say your folders are too full? Each BOTM has its own folder I think?

I looked into the setup of City of God. There is mention that questions proposed will generate points. I like that idea.

Anita wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of work to do and our folder..."

They cap folders at 100. With 3 BOTMs structured the way they are currently structured we basically run out of folders since we go through 36 each year just for BOTM. Add seasonal reads, annual read, challenges, games, voting, etc and we are at our limit after only 1.5 years.

I literally spent hours trying to delete and shift topics around this week and only got to a fraction of them. And honestly it's not sustainable. But this is a structural/organization issue that we can work around.

The larger issue is participation. I too like the way we vote and how we get a random book that enables more obscure books to get selected. The issue over the last 6 months is that we are only getting 2-4 people commenting on each book so even though people say the like that format, it's not driving any kind of discussion. Our thinking is that by reducing the BOTMs to one, we can have a more lively discussion with all of us concentrated on that particular book then use challenges and other ideas to give people options to explore other books that they want to read.

I think that the 3 books plan is ideal only when there are enough people joining in the discussion. Otherwise we end up with a small group of people each reading the book they want to read and very little back and forth. It's like having a book club with 6 members and only two people read the same book. Not much room for discussion and little point in them being BOTM.

Sashinka wrote: "I'm just sorry I don't participate as much as I'd like. I've not had much time for picking up books or discussing. I've actually been reading 1001 books that I'd missed from previous years but not ..."

yeah, if you have an infant at home you get a free pass. Don't feel bad. We all have times in our lives that are too busy for reading. Members drop in and out and that's usually fine.

And I think we all need photos of your son! My daughter had reflux too and the sleep deprivation was awful. Hope it resolves soon. I really was only able to start reading again when my daughter was 2.

Sushicat wrote: "One way to make the discussion livelier might be to shorten the time during which a BOTM gives additional points. Only BOTM of the current and the previous month get 2 points and the.extra points for the discussion can only be earned in that particular month. Same for for the added point for reading all three BOTMs."

That could be a good idea. I'm just not sure we have enough members who are reading any BOTM each month. But I do like that idea.

Dianne wrote: "I haven't participated lately because the list of questions just fosters lists of answers, not a 'discussion' per se. Maybe there is a way to incorporate questions into a format that fosters intera..."

Do you have any examples or ideas for how to make the questions more interactive. That's good feedback but was curious if you've seen examples of this so we can take a look

I'm hosting a discussion of Return of the Native in the group The Reader's Review now if you want to see how I set that up

Dianne wrote: "I'm hosting a discussion of Return of the Native in the group The Reader's Review now if you want to see how I set that up"

Yes, can you send me the link?

Sure!

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Dianne wrote: "Sure!

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/..."

Thanks!

Anita wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of work to do and our folder..."


See July 2017 BOTM, City of God - for exapmple. But this does not solve the folder problem. It is just my way of abbreviating the work of discussion questions. So not really all that helpful.

I checked out Dianne's group. She had about 7 or so people responding but it had a nice lively discussion back and forth. This takes a pretty active moderator who obviously read the book prior to posting the discussions. Not sure how long the group has existed or how decisions are made but definately a format that is not using as many folders as we use.

It's too bad Goodreads hasn't introduced nesting comments- I think that format really helped.
Re: the folders- can they be saved in our Dropbox as reference?
I also like the Litsy format for big books- it seems to keep interest.

I just lost a comment, so apologies if I am repeating myself! I think the change is a brilliant idea. We are missing the back and forth discussion that was so much easier in Shelfari. I have made the Labours of Hercules a priority this year because there is more participation. if I rely invest in the long reads I don't have time for much else!

Having a reading schedule and posting a new thread each week is really helpful, the discussion leader just needs to read that week's section before posting the next thread. I post questions but some people just post whatever they want, or pick one or two to respond to, the questions are just ideas to spur discussion. I love the people in this group and would be great to discuss 1001 with you all. By the way, I'm not a mod of readers review I just led the discussion because I nominated the book that month and it won - that takes pressure off the mods to lead every discussion.

We're having a similar approach over at LT for the M&S group reads. We have a schedule for daily reading and at the end of each day our moderator puts up a couple of questions. The group is not that big either, but the reading schedule ensures that we all read more or less at the same time. I guess Jen's Litsy format is comparable.

The key I think is reducing the timeline. I checked on my own reading and see that out of 13 list books this year I've read only 5 BOTMs and only 3 of them in the month they were meant for. This tends to get worse as the year goes on, as the choice of unread BOTM from the first half year still offers the same incentives as the new ones.

I have tried to read for the Herkulean tasks as well. And did read 4 out of those books. There is more pressure there to get the books read in time, since the opportunity for points is gone when the month is over. BTW - if there was only one book per tasks offered I would not have read as many even if they were the exact same books. I read O only because there was an alternative that sounded even worse...

I definitely have struggled to read the books on time too, even when I do read them, which isn't often enough. I just wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the questions and reading others' responses even though I'm not a consistent participant.

It makes sense for people like me who aren't great participants to have less weight in the voting.

Thanks for everything you do.

Tracy wrote: "It's too bad Goodreads hasn't introduced nesting comments- I think that format really helped.
Re: the folders- can they be saved in our Dropbox as reference?
I also like the Litsy format for big b..."

Really, really miss the nesting . . .

Anita wrote: "...Really, really miss the nesting . . ."

Me too. I find it so annoying to have to navigate different threads to get the whole conversation.

Maybe the answer to the folder limit would be to establish a separate group per year for the book discussions? Our moderator on LT establishes a new group for each book to get around the missing nesting. I think that's a bit much.

Jen wrote: "Anita wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of work to do ..."

It's good to know about this cap of 100 folders - - I had no idea. PBT is up to 68. Guess I better start thinking about what I'm going to do about that . . .

Anita wrote: "Jen wrote: "Anita wrote: "Kristel wrote: "I posted what I plan to make my new format for BOTM discussions just now. I will appreciate feed back. I hear people saying they want 3 BOTM. It's a lot of..."
In settings it lets you put 200 folders but it actually capped at 100 and it's a giant pain to delete b/c the folders delete but then leave the topics behind so then you have to either move the topics or delete them. One. by. one.

So, reading through comments...
We want 3 books each month..
Can we do a folder that is called BOTM(s) for July 2017 and then have 3 separate strings for each book? Such as here we have General and then several topics. We could have all questions listed in the topic intro?

I am thinking that we could get rid of the popular and weighted votes and do two books winning that gets most participation points
one book winning that gets randomly selected

I guess, one way we could handle book discussions, the person(s) who used the most participation points to get that book chosen will moderate the book discussion and the person(s) who voted for a randomly chosen book would moderate that book. That way if you gave 5 participation points for 120 Days of Sodom and it wins then you would read and lead the group discussion. (Does that make sense).

I also agree that we can make a change, if you don't read the book during the month it is the BOTM you lose one of the points but still can earn 2 points for reading and discussion.

I do not agree with private voting because of the number of books and I do not think admins influence the votes at all. We had made a decision that we wanted to try to use influence as members to get our "choice" to be a winner. We liked that level of competition.

I do like Litsy format for discussion but Litsy is a time consumer and so I am pretty sure some would never be willing to use it for discussions but it is still an option for group reads.

These are just my responses and half baked ideas. Still looking for your feedback. Thanks, and I posted the renaming contest.

Kristel wrote: "the person(s) who used the most participation points to get that book chosen will moderate the book discussion and the person(s) who voted for a randomly chosen book would moderate that book"

Unfortunately, not everybody is a good discussion leader. If I had to lead a discussion I would probably never nominate any books, regardless of how many points I have. It is my least favorite thing to do in the groups I moderate.

Can you delete past BOTM voting threads? Will that save you some folders. Seems like once the voting is over the thread could be deleted. But it does sound tedious as Jen mentioned one.by.one.

You could make one change per month and see what works? I am sure no matter what you decide it will be a process.

The challenges seem to drive participation so if there is a challenge going maybe decreasing BOTM won't be an issue? Just a thought.

o I have been thinking some more. Perhaps with using participation points, secret voting would be a good idea. We can't really use survey monkey but we could have votes sent to one of admins who would tally the votes and then announce winners. So open vs secret voting is open for futher discussion.

>37, I hear you Diane (the other Diane), I am not a good discussion leader but here I am anyway doing it. I think you could do what Jen and I did today and then just agree to stop back and respond if anyone has left a comment. Even if it is short and sweet. But that being said, I thought that leading/moderating discussions might be a issue so perhaps it could be anyone who used participation points for that book could be the moderator for that book. I think admins would still have to set up the folder.

>38. I think the voting threads have been kept for convenience so they could be reinstituted later but I think it would not save a lot of time and I think I am going to change how I post books for voting anyway. Anyone can click on the book to see what it is about so not sure why I am doing it when it is so very time consuming. I also will start going through the list and not including books over 700 pages and books that have been previous BOTM in past 4 years. We used to feel that was unfair as new people hadn't read them so that is open for discussion as well.

Kristel wrote: "So, reading through comments...
We want 3 books each month..
Can we do a folder that is called BOTM(s) for July 2017 and then have 3 separate strings for each book? Such as here we have General and..."

A few thoughts:

Personally (only speaking for myself), I'd be fine with all three books in one folder and using one message to list the discussion questions (if there were still going to be those).

On the private versus public voting. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. I will point out that while administrators are not TRYING to influence the vote in any way, you are leaders and therefore what you choose impacts how others feel about a given book. This is pretty much natural human behavior, but I see it at PBT all the time . . .which doesn't necessarily mean the voting needs to be private, but I think you may be underestimating the influence of administrators. To me, private voting allows people to express their truest intentions. It also builds suspense because you have no idea what ultimately will win. Public voting is more fun to watch during the process. It allows savvy people to use strategy to increase the likelihood that a choice they are willing to read will be selected, if not their favorite. I will say I'm rarely putting the top three books I want to read for my votes - - I'm looking and seeing that there are only 2-3 real contenders, and I'm trying to vote to eliminate the ones I would rather not read and push the others higher. Sometimes I will put my true choice as #3 and hope it might get chosen randomly. At any rate, I don't have a strong preference . . .I would mildly prefer private voting.

The deleting thing just sounds like the biggest pain. Sorry to hear about it as we (PBT) will have to face that as well.

Basically willing to try anything you ultimately come up with and to help as I can. The only thing I really feel would be a mistake is going down to only one book a month . . .

Kristel wrote: "Perhaps with using participation points, secret voting would be a good idea. We can't really use survey monkey but we could have votes sent to one of admins who would tally the votes and then announce winners. So open vs secret voting is open for futher discussion."

The polling feature can be made both anonymous as to who is voting and kept secret until the end of the poll.

Kristel wrote: "Changes are coming. Participation has not been all we would like it to be. People are not reading BOTM. Many state they are behind. Doing 3 BOTM each month seems to not be working at this time.

We..."

Kristel wrote: "Changes are coming. Participation has not been all we would like it to be. People are not reading BOTM. Many state they are behind. Doing 3 BOTM each month seems to not be working at this time.

We..."

A quick note about voting. I've seen other groups that setup voting so that you vote with a single click from a list of 5 or 6 books and then get a chart of the current standings which identifies the book you voted for. This ease of voting certainly encourages participation in voting. Also a nice feature is to include Goodreads book links of the books listed.

Are you thinking of doing something like this?

No I am not, that would not work for participation points and my bias is that I think people like to vote with no intentions of actually participating and we are trying to increase participation.

I've seen those graphs and I like them but I admit when I have voted (at the other 1001), I never actually read the book.

I already set up books so that they go back to links in GR. So will continue to do that. What I had done prior was list where the author was from. I liked that because it helped for those trying to do my international reading. So that might get lost.

Sorry I have not been around much this week I am having real problems with my back and physio on top of that I get married in September and I am now at the stage where I am panicking about what needs doing.

With regard to BOTM I like the idea of 1 book because I am struggling to keep up but what we could do is instigate a group Randomised Read each month so literally I would generate a random book that would give everyone a second choice on what to read that month without the need for voting.

Kristel wrote: "No I am not, that would not work for participation points and my bias is that I think people like to vote with no intentions of actually participating and we are trying to increase participation.
..."

Hi Kristel, you can still use goodreads polls and just weight the votes based on participation if you'd like. Also, just let people know not to vote unless they plan on reading that month.

Dianne I am not sure how that would work because each person will have up to 5 participation points to use. They could use all 5 on one book or vote for 5 books using 1 point each.

Book wrote: "Sorry I have not been around much this week I am having real problems with my back and physio on top of that I get married in September and I am now at the stage where I am panicking about what nee..."

Congrats on your upcoming nuptials! I like the idea of a general randomized read.

Ah gotcha. they could indicate what they want to do in the comments under the poll with the other votes (besides the first one actually cast) but it would be up to the mods to tally, the poll itself wouldn't be accurate.

Manda wrote: "Manda wrote: "I like the idea of challenges, the road trip across USA is a great idea...."

I'd be happy and would love to plan out another future road trip through the counties of the UK...."

I'm also hosting this simultaneously on my personal blog and the plan was to do Road trip USA this year and backpacking through Europe next summer. I was thinking to do both games here if we could fit them in. If you'd like to help with that next year for the 1001 version, I'd love that. It would be fun to put together with you.

Backpack through Europe sounds great!

Anita wrote: "Here's a few ideas (totally take 'em or leave 'em) that I think would increase participation while also taking into consideration that these are harder reads and that people want to often read what..."

I am intrigued by several of your ideas - nominating from the list with participation points might be a way to make use of points, without giving excessive voice to people who read faster. I hope we can have some more discussion on that idea.

I like the idea of a hiatus, but if we start nominating from the list as a whole, then to me four years feels too long (it's one cycle as we do it now), but maybe two or three years?

And I really like your idea of awarding participation points for generating questions. Perhaps they could be weighted, i.e., one PP for posting a question, and then additional PPs based on how many responses (excluding the question originator's responses) the question generates. Coming up with questions is my least favorite task as an administrator, so this is a "two thumbs up" idea as far as I'm concerned. (I would say three, but that raises anatomical questions.)