I like that a lot. That would give us four and we wouldn't have to wait so long for the next open vote.

:thanks:

The only problem I see there is that we then have both December then January open.

I don't know how others would feel about that.

Edit: I tried doing every 3rd vs every 4th month open, while starting with January as open, and we still ended up with both Classics being closed.

Oh, heck, it'll all be changed again by January 2013!

(In any case, I think it would be more interesting to change the open/closed topics from year to year.)

It' will only change in 2013 if people decide they don't like how things go in 2012.

I don't mind which four months are open really (I'm even fine with it being both classics), but I do think it would be better if we went with either the first months of each group of three, the second months of each group of three, or the third months of each group of three, to keep some sort of regular schedule to it.

So those options are:

First month of each three (Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct) = Runner-up, Humour, Mystery, Horror
Second month of each three (Feb/May/Aug/Nov) = Romance, Fantasy, FreeForAll, Science Fiction
Third month of each three (Mar/Jun/Sep/Dec) = Thriller, Classic, NonFiction, Classic

If 2/3 of the months are hidden, then I don't see a problem with both classics months being hidden, though with only 1/3 open, I do think it would be a little odd for both classics months to be open. So the "third month" option is probably not ideal.

So that leaves first or second month as the better options, in my opinion. But I really don't care, I'm just throwing out some suggestions that may work well and be the simplest considering the circumstances.

I do think, though, that we should just leave this to Tom to decide. Give our opinions and whatnot then let him decide which four months to have open. Which months are open are not that important and there's other things to discuss.

We're already debating getting rid of the second classics category for 2013. I think it makes sense to decide on changes from year to year.

Yes, *if* we kept this scheme 2013 and beyond (and that's a big "if"), I would think we'd probably rotate the open months.

At least, that's what I'd suggested we'd do from year to year if we'd been doing simple alternating (i.e. one year open polls would've been on even months, the next year open polls would've been on odd months, etc.).

Tom is the one who initially brought it up.

Then you made suggestions based off of that and I made suggestions based off of your suggestions with two people, Val and Issybird, asking for January to be "Open".... It has been a perfectly logical conversation thus far.

You're right. I didn't think of that.

OK, does this look good, then?

January — RunnerUp*
February — Romance
March — Thriller/Suspense
April — Humour*
May — Fantasy
June — Classic
July — Mystery/Crime
August — FreeForAll*
September — NonFiction
October — Horror
November — Science Fiction
December — Classic*

*Voting during this month will be visible.

:tup::tup:

Tom, that way looks fine. Let's just leave it at that.

I do think those months will be a little awkward if we keep this 1/3 open scheme after 2012 and rotate months (there'd be no pattern to follow so we'll just have to choose another random four months), but nothing major. And has been pointed out by everyone, there's a good chance that it will all be changed for 2013 anyway. My suggestion was more for a long-term plan of if we were trying to find something that would work simply for years to come.

Yes, but he said he didn't want two open months of classics. He didn't say he didn't want two closed months, and closed months are now 2/3 of the months, so I don't think it would be that odd to have them both be closed.

That's fine. I never said the conversation wasn't logical. I was just adding the logic that having a regular schedule to it would make sense, especially if we keep this scheme going past 2012 and will rotate the open months.

It isn't that far of a leap to think that if he didn't want both classics open, then he didn't want them both closed either, which would mean having one open and one closed.

I came up with the best solution I could think of, which Issybird and VioletVal said they liked and Tom has now approved. Tom has also made January an "Open" month, as was requested by Issybird and VioletVal.

I mention this because at the end of your previous to last post you seemed concerned that we were discussing which months were open vs closed and I just didn't understand why, hence my saying it all seemed logical to me.

-----
As to the selections: I agree with you that the unevenness looks a little odd, but it seems to be a good compromise for all of us, and like you said, we can move on to other things now.

I have a better idea....

January — RunnerUp
February — Romance*
March — Thriller/Suspense
April — Humor
May — Fantasy
June — Classic*
July — Mystery/Crime
August — FreeForAll
September — NonFiction
October — Horror*
November — Science Fiction
December — Classic

*Voting during this month will be visible.

It sounds good, Nyssa.

Ah. I didn't mean for it to sound like I was wondering why we were discussing it at all, or giving different suggestions. I don't really care which specific categories are open or closed but I realise others do. (I did care a bit about the pattern of it though, which is why I posted)

I only mentioned letting Tom decide just to hopefully get everyone on board saying "Yes, we'll just let Tom decide." Luckily, he posted quickly after me but sometimes he takes awhile before responding to things we're discussing and I was hoping to get us all in agreement on something. :p

Awful... It means runner-up, humor, and freeforall get opened leaving weak months closed. The way I set things up, the weakest months get opened.