And I can see how it means that, but when it just says “I’m reading along” it is ambiguous in what it means and can have a time element. And in my mind I’ve always read it as “I’m reading along (with the club)” aka meaning at the time it was active.
It is incredibly hard to be brief and also have no ambiguity.
Personally, I see polls as the most useful (to me) while the club is active, because I can see which fellow readers are still reading along and it is an easy way to let people know I’ve fallen behind (if/when that happens). The late comers option is more because it would be nice to be able to click the poll, than actually feeling like it adds anything for my experience (beyond clickety-clicking a poll).
I very much agree with this. Which is why I don’t vote when I read later.
But what if we felt the need to, for some reason? Statistics can be fun, after all!
Oh, I know. Instead of closing the poll or providing extra options or all those complicated things, we keep the poll simple and open forever, but, at the end of each week we take a screenshot of the poll and upload it in the OP for posterity. Not worth the trouble either? Yeah, probably not.
In all fairness, I somewhat shoehorned the phrase into what would be a good argument for the sake of the discussion here
(but seriously, I rather think like that, so it’s only half-a-joke)
Yes. That’s why I like definitions. See above
I sometimes do
On the one hand, when I do the satisfaction poll (because the graph contains all the statistics at the moment when I assemble it, so the early threads’ stats are already quite historic, I guess.
And on the other hand, when I nominate a new book and I want to see how people got along with a similar book, or when I think about a schedule and want to see how people got along with a similar (or different) schedule. But that’s mostly to see the dropoff rates, not the individual distribution.
This looks like “posterity” means “satisfying a person’s need to post”
thank you for teaching me a new English word btw
So, what do we get out of this? People use the polls to mean at least three different things, I guess
For the record, there are so many clubs I decided to read or started reading after the club activity has official ended. Normally I would vote. – If it doesn’t want to voted, it should be closed.
As a latecomer, I do look historically at the book club, looking for those who have experience reading. (It’s not about my progress. It’s about finding friends and voting as a potential friend.) However, it’s usually difficult to pull those who have finished reading ages ago, back to the discussion.
Even being late, discussion is possible, just more difficult.
Now, it comes the matter of commenting in book clubs that ended ages ago. I heard that some people don’t like necro’ing a thread, but opening new one instead. What do you think?
I think that they should just necro the old thread, personally.
Makes it easier for others who might come along and read the book later because there are additional questions and answers being added to a thread that already has questions and answers in a (relatively) easily searched location.
It’s better for the person who is coming in and asking the question in the first place, because odds are quite high that somebody still has the thread set to following, so there will be somebody who has read the book and might be willing to pop in and answer the question (this is currently at work in the Volume 1 threads of Takagi-san, where I’ve been regularly answering questions for someone who joined the club significantly later). They aren’t relying on making a new topic and hoping that somebody who read the book (or is able to pull information from limited context) pops in and is able to answer the question.
Reduces thread redundancy. If a thread already exists for discussing something, why add another thread that discusses the same thing?
The only real benefit I can see to making a new thread is that more new people might click into it to answer if it’s not a pre-existing book club thread (which are often going to get ignored by those who aren’t part of the book club), but I dunno. Maybe I’m just too fussy, but seeing redundant threads drives me up a wall, personally.
Sounds like we’re in agreement then? The way you wrote it makes it seem like you’re trying to disagree with me, but I’m saying people can vote in polls after the schedule completed and you say you do exactly that. So we’re on the same page there.
I think you misunderstood me here. I’m not saying we never revisit past book clubs in any way. I’m saying that the polls do not need to reflect who read along with the original schedule. What matters is simply who read ever. All we need for that is to keep the participation polls open forever, which we do. What we don’t need is more options so people can specify if they read with the schedule or later, because that doesn’t matter.
Honestly, I’m confused why we’re even talking about things like closing the participation polls or whether to necro the topics. Nothing is broken here so I see no need to make changes. People can currently vote in polls after the book club schedule completed. This is fine. People can currently post in the book club threads later as well. This is also fine. Just because we now have a dedicated Book Club subcategory doesn’t mean we need to redecide every decision we’ve ever made. For what it’s worth, we specifically got the mods to increase the life of new Reading (now Book Club) topics from 1 year to 10 years specifically so that people could necro book club discussion threads years after the book club officially ended. This is much better because people who read with the schedule are likely to see those replies (if they are still active), while they are more likely to miss randomly created new topics.
How about, People are encouraged to vote in the polls months or years after the schedule completed.
Also, about falling behind or voting later – falling behind for a few weeks or months, and would vote; reaching out to the book years later, would make me guilty to vote at all.
There are always new people here, so we need a guideline for good judgement. Also, half of it appears like a guideline for participants, who are more often new.
Something for participants would need to be copied to every participable threads, I guess.
You should make it explicit.
After all, the reason I am replying to you is I don’t necessarily understand everything you wrote, nor the intention behind it.
Sounds like a you problem. I wouldn’t care if people voted or not.
Where are guidelines for new participants in this topic? The tips/FAQ in the OP are for running a book club. It has nothing to do with participants.
I’d recommend against making things overly complicated. The purpose of the book clubs first and foremost is for reading a book with others, discussing the book, and getting help when needed. Setting rules for how one must vote in book club polls is overkill and unnecessary. If we have sane poll options people will vote similarly most of the time, and it won’t matter if someone occasionally votes a different way. So rather than adding more options to cover every possibility or scolding people when they vote “wrong”, let’s just let them vote however they see fit and leave them be.
Sorry, it’s just a phrase used when you think someone is worrying unnecessarily (and other similar situations). In this case, basically I meant that you are feeling guilty when there’s no reason to, so rather than changing the process so you can feel less guilty, you should just stop worrying about it. Not constructive, I know. My bad.
In any case, while there may be other people like you in this regard, I ask again: why does it matter? If you (specifically you) read a book years after the book club schedule completes and don’t vote, who cares? If someone else in the same situation does vote, who cares? Neither approach impacts anything in any significant way, so I would rather just leave people alone to vote however they want.
Hi! Sorry, I have not been keeping up with the discussion, however I have a request. Could you include instructions on how to create a template for nominations? Actually, just formatting in general has been pretty difficult for me to figure out. I feel like the Post Formatting Guide should be able to help me, except that I can’t understand it … And having a hard time formatting things is actively hindering me from getting a book club started atm.
The bookclubs should have a template for nominations in their OP; at least the Intermediate and Advanced ones do, and I thought the Beginner one had a template as well. If not, that’s where they would belong imho…
I tried copying that, however when I do the code automatically runs (or something)? So it just looks like a slightly broken post, not a template … In case it’s not crystal clear already, I have basically no programming experience.
Try quoting the template and copy the text from the quote. That preserves the formatting to make it look like a quote block.
Basically you seem to have to put a > before each line. Like this:
This is me learning forum coding.
Thank you for the incentive MaraVos.
I assume this is the kind of way you want the template to show, no? At least this is how it shows in BBC.
What the above looks like in my text editor, without the quotation marks at the start and end of the lines
“> This is me learning forum coding.”
“> Thank you for the incentive MaraVos.”
“> I assume this is the kind of way you want the template to show, no? At least this is how it shows in BBC.”
I hope this is what you were asking about, otherwise I look like an (lovable?) idiot. As mentioned, the easiest way might be to quote the passage, copy the text/code and then cancel the reply (in the thread you are taking the template from).
I wouldn’t care if people voted or not.