Tips for Running a WaniKani Book Club

I guess it’s just the other way around? I.e. in the book club OPs there are some templates but if you copy them with the wrong browser looking at you Firefox, it will turn them into a quote and you get the extra > signs instead of just an editable post. There is a workaround (namely, to copy all but one lines) but I wanted to make sure that’s what MaraVos was talking about…

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Huh. The way I meant was to quote it, and then highlight only the text needed (without the quoted coding from the original post), copy that and then paste it somewhere new. But maybe even that doesn’t work on Firefox? What a weirdo browser if that is the case. O_O

Because I thought maybe MaraVos tried highlighting the actual post to copy the text (like I do below), since usually the formatting follows along when you do that, but it doesn’t for the template.

Here I highlighted a part of the proposal template from the BBC without using quotes or anything, just highlighting the post as shown in browser:

Insert Title Here

Summary

Insert summary here, taken from wherever - Wikipedia, Amazon, etc. Improve the description if you would like / feel it necessary.


The > formatting disappears which is great for copying to use the template, but not so great when copying to show it as a template. ^^

But until MaraVos educates us further, it is impossible to know what scenario is the trouble.

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That’s actually the key :wink: Because when I select only part of the template and copy it into an editor window, I get the desired outcome:

but if I copy the whole template in Firefox, I get this:

(i.e. the copied bit includes the quotes) which is the horror for turning this into a nomination post.

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Although… Hmmm…

Insert Title Here

Summary

Insert summary here, taken from wherever - Wikipedia, Amazon, etc. Improve the description if you would like / feel it necessary.

Pros and Cons

[poll type=regular public=true]
  • 1 - No effort at all
  • 2 - Minimal effort
  • 3 - Moderate effort
  • 4 - Substantial effort
  • 5 - So much effort my head might explode :exploding_head:
  • I don’t know
[/> [poll ]

Actually, some of the formatting disappear still, because the poll gets a weird extra >, and all the headings become headings and * becomes bullet points, so it still isn’t giving me all the formatting… What the actual …?

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Except I’m pretty sure MaraVos is talking about creating the home thread for the book club with JP only discussion, so MaraVos is trying to create a template, not use it.

Have you tried doing a plaintext paste via Ctrl+Shift+V?

I’m on a Mac, and it seems that plaintext paste (via Cmd+Opt+Shift+V) is not available in the forum edit windows :sob:

The trick is just to copy everything but one line, then the quotation markup is left out.

Huh, now I’m confused - you mean they are trying to copy a template from one book club to insert it into another one? But then the quotation will be fine anyways, no?

I guess we really need to wait until we get more information about their use case and what they tried…

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Works for me in Safari. (Will Safari for once be a benefit instead of a liability?!?!?!) :joy:

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Ah, so maybe Firefox :rage: is the culprit here once again :woman_shrugging:

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Yes, this is it exactly!

I’m trying to copy the template in order to put a template into the main thread post.

This seems promising! Unfortunately I have to go to work now, so I can’t do any further tests at the moment. I will give it a try and post my success or failure soon!

Thanks so much you guys!

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Gosh, I feel so stupid. The easiest way to copy a template from one of the main book clubs is just to hit edit on the post, of course! They are wikis after all. :woman_facepalming:

When I did that, I saw the formatting that got removed (when you try to copy it from highlighting and quotes). The code/symbol that stops commands from executing: \ (backwards slash) . It is the same thing that has to be done to do something like this: *le sigh at myself* (otherwise you get le sigh at myself)

Or my favorite emoji ¯\(ツ)/¯ (you have to double the backwards slash to make it show, otherwise you get ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

Honestly, my brain must have been Swiss cheese yesterday. :cheese:

Edit: Note to self: don’t try to do anything out of the ordinary that needs brain power on a day when brain is fried, you are likely to make yourself look like an idiot, at least in your own eyes.

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I have a small question not necessarily relating to running a book club but maybe suggesting a book… How do you determine if a book is intermediate or advanced? :thinking:
Does it depend on the genre e.g. If it is YA or something?

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I’m assuming you are talking about a “modern” (say, written from the 1970s onwards :sweat_smile:) book. In this case, with the Intermediate Club, the books are being read at a rather slow speed (around 15 pages per week). With this speed, it is rather not advisable to read books that are longer than ~300 pages (because it takes ages), that’s why we cap the length for books in the Intermediate Club to approximately that length. In the Advanced Club, we read “modern” books at a much higher speed (around 40-50 pages per week) so longer books are not such a big problem.
The genre does not have anything to do with where a book should go; it’s just up to the participants’ taste (at the time) whether a book succeeds in a poll.

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I just put up a template for home thread posts. I’ve been super busy so it might be a few more days before I get around to schedules and vocab sheets. As always feel free to post feedback.

Also I read all the comments regarding weekly polling options–thanks for the discussion! I have some thoughts but I’ll save them for when I put up the weekly thread template.

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I like the information, and I realize that the highlighted parts are supposed to just indicate the parts that are essentially the description (and thus are the parts that should be replaced when you utilize the template), but it just brought that image to mind. :rofl:

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:rofl: The highlights are mostly so that it’s very easy to catch if you’ve forgotten to update something when editing a template. I’ll admit the template itself is not particularly pretty though.

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The template works well, I think! It seems to have everything necessary, at a quick read, and it pretty much matches every home thread post I’ve seen (some people make little changes here and there, but as long as all basic info is there, those changes are perfectly fine, imo).

Perhaps someone who hasn’t already been in a few clubs and knows how the templates should look should weigh in as to how easy it is for a newcomer to use, though; it looks easy and usable to me, but that could be experience bias at this point, having seen the basic home thread of a book club many times over now.

I’m really just teasing with the highlights because it immediately called that old meme to mind and made me chuckle a bit. :wink:

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By the way, the mark stuff you used in the template apparently doesn’t always show up well. Also, the theory of “people will remove the templatey things if you make them obvious enough” failed on the first attempt. :joy: (Orange book club)

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I left some template-y things in place by design (“mark” looks like yellow highlighter for me). But it is easy to miss some things when I decided to keep some of the example stuff. Wasn’t careful enough. :joy:

No idea why all that text is so dark though? It looks normal (and not yellow) for me in that area.

Edit: Went into the post and checked, and all that area should have been yellow for me, but it wasn’t. :thinking:

The yellow I meant I left in place was below schedule and vocabulary so I wouldn’t forget I hadn’t added those…

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Yep, I noticed that you left some on purpose, but that one seemed accidental. Just thought it was funny.

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