[sun surfer]

We’re nearing the end of our yearly cycle and will begin a new one in July, so the time for changes is once again upon us. If anyone has any suggestions, now is the time!

I have a few big ones to suggest we try:

*A new approach to voting - The bonus votes have gone well enough even though not everyone was a fan of them. However, they are a bit of a pain to keep up with, especially since they so rarely change anything. So, I’d like to do away with them.

In lieu of that, there is an approach that will still give each of us more power similarly to what bonus votes gave us, and also give us a new versatility in voting. Instead of having a regular poll, we will all vote by post. So, there will be no actual poll in the voting thread. Rather, each of us will need to make a post with our votes which will then be tallied.

This opens the door to more options in our voting and more control over our individual votes. However many official nominees we have in a month, that number minus one will be the amount of votes each of us have that we may cast. For instance, if there are five official nominees, each of us may cast four votes. If there are seven nominees, each of us may cast six votes.

As bonus votes basically allowed us to give two votes per nominee, the same will apply here. We can give up to two votes per nominee. So, out of our available votes, each of us may give a nominee zero, one or two votes. If you give a nominee two votes, then you will have less votes remaining to give to other nominees; e.g. if there are six nominees and you therefore receive five votes, if you give two votes to one nominee then you will only have three more left total to cast for any of the other five nominees.

You don’t have to cast all your votes in one post. You may use up some votes, then wait, then use more if you wish. In that regard this will be similar to how the nomination process has been. Similarly, you don’t have to use all of your possible votes if you don’t want to. You may use any amount you wish up to the limit.

For a group our size and with the closeness of many of our votes, this will hopefully result in a vote that gives each of us an easy and fair yet more nuanced say in which book wins.

*A new approach to nominating - The way we nominate books is an artifact remaining from me copying the general club format when I started this club, but it may not be the best way forward. Given our size and given the possibility of expanding voting to be a bit more like nominations were, perhaps it’s better to streamline the nominations themselves.

We will do away with supporting nominations altogether. Now, we may simply nominate a book and it will be an official nominee, with each of us allowed up to two nominations. This will make the nominations process much simpler. There is the possibility of someone nominating something that’s not literary but we will be able to sort that out in voting as we had been on rare instances in nominating. The same as before, if someone nominates something that’s definitely not part of the category then I may veto it (e.g. say a book from 2002 if the category is 19th century novels) but that will probably happen very rarely if at all.

This will make nominations easier for our small group while still retaining quality, and probably give us a larger selection to consider for the vote.

*Nominating and voting period timing - With nominations becoming simpler and voting becoming a bit more detailed, it will probably be better to switch the amount of days given to each. Before, we gave four to nominations and three to voting. Now we will give three to nominations and four to voting.

*The six non-rotating months’ categories are up for review - To refresh the process and to give us a chance to get used to the new process for nominating and voting, we’ll conduct the category selection the same as new monthly book selections. Each person may nominate up to two categories which will automatically go to the vote. Afterwards, the vote will be by post as outlined above and the top six vote-getters will be our new categories. Given the amount of time left before the new month, we’ll need to start this process in the next few days with a three-day nomination period followed by a four-day vote, so please keep that in mind so that you won’t miss any part of it.


So, what do all of you think? These changes would only be on a trial basis. As with bonus votes last year, we can try it for three months and then have an informal vote by post in this thread among members. If we don’t like it we’d scrap it, but if it works well we’d keep it. I do hope we try it out as I think not only will these changes be easier on me but may give results that better reflect our nuances.


Comments and reactions to any part of this post are welcome. After we get all this sorted out, we’ll be good for another year!