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sun surfer · 05-24-2017, 08:15 PM

I consider the tie-breaker issue resolved now and we’ll go with that.

The time is upon us to consider our upcoming year (July 2017-June 2018)!

Some of you might have certain things you’d like to discuss and I have a few things I’d like to discuss, but I’d like to begin with a specific topic, the two categories of Time Period and Region. We’ve had them each at least once per year since they were introduced during our very first year; in fact they’re the only two categories used every single year so far. In addition, the years we’ve had a categories vote, these two categories were the top voted every single year (some were as ties, but no category has ever got more votes in a year than either of these). Suffice it to say, these are two popular categories.

There are, however, a few difficulties with these categories.

First, they are more difficult to run. In addition to the normal work of running category nominations, each time one of these two come up, I must go back to the last time the category was used and copy over the instructions from that month. Then I must update those guidelines with any general changes since that time; for other categories, the guidelines basically stay the same despite the category so I simply copy month to month and a one-time change when the update in guidelines occur is sufficient while for Region or Time Period I must eyeball compare the last Region/Time Period guidelines sentence by sentence with the current guidelines to update. Then I must update the currently available options by removing the last used one and listing it in the exhausted options section of the month’s guidelines. Then I must reset/reformat the still available options to be ready for a new vote. Then I must hold a one-day vote to decide on the region/time period we’ll be using that month. Then I must be sure to come back around the same time the next day to declare the option that won, update the first post with the region/time period winner, and start the nominations.

Second, we are exhausting the Region options too slowly. The categories were originally conceived to run multiple times a year (and did at first), but the implementation of Rotating Nominations changed that as we went from twelve various categories per year to six (the other six then becoming Rotating). I really like our Rotating months but this was an unintentional side effect of having them; with only six categories to fill each year there wasn’t really room for more than one of each other category. We still have two time periods to go and seven regions to go. As they were conceived to run about twice per year, if they had we would’ve already been well into our second run-through of time periods by now and just about to finish up all our region options. However, as it currently stands, we’ve only just reached the halfway point of region options in the last Region month; at our current pace it would take us SEVEN more years to finish up our region options (until around 2023/2024)!

For comparison, that’s farther away in time from the present day than the very first month our club came into existence.

Third, and this is more cosmetic, but the Region month utilises a large colour-coded map I made that I was very happy with at the time and is useful, but it is large enough that it alters the margins of that page of the thread and is a bit low-quality and blurry.

Please don’t miscontrue my intentions here; I really like these categories! I enjoy us focusing on different regions or time periods, am proud of helping to come up with them and am glad they’ve proven so popular. However, they weren’t intended to go on for so long with no end or restart in sight and as the years have gone by I’ve become less keen on the extra work I have to do those months.

So, for all these reasons I think this upcoming year should be our last with the current iterations of these two categories. This will give us a chance to finish them out as much as we decide together that we’d like to. I think it’s my prerogative as the club runner to state that after this upcoming year I just don’t want to run these two categories in their current forms any more. One way or another, I want them to be considered ‘run through’ by the end of the upcoming year. This means that the year after (July 2018-June 2019) we could start them over in some newer simpler form or do without them, and we’d discuss that next year around this time.

The idea is to either finish our current Region and Time Period categories in this upcoming year ‘naturally’ by exhausting the remaining region/time period options one per month, or by having a ‘finale’ month for however many remaining options there are per category. A finale month would work by not having the normal ‘starter’ region/time period vote to determine a specific option to use for the month and instead would make all the remaining options equally available to nominate from for the month, as a sort of grand finale to the category. With two time periods and seven regions left, it would take us nine months to finish both up naturally, which would be possible in the upcoming year but I’m not sure desirable to the group using so many months for these two categories alone. However, with only two Time Period months during the next year we’d naturally finish that category up, and we could have a few regular Region months finished up with a Region finale month. It doesn’t have to be either only one Region month next year or else seven; it can be somewhere in between. For instance, if we had two Region months during the next year, we’d have one normal Region month with one region chosen and then the finale Region month with the remaining six regions all available to nominate from. Or, if we have three Region months during the next year, we’d have two normal Region months with one region chosen each time and then the finale Region month with the remaining five regions all available to nominate from. Also, to be clear, however many Region and Time Period months we do decide to use, they would be spread throughout the year and not one after another in a clump. And though unlikely because of their previous popularity, there is also the possibility the group may decide not to use Region and/or Time Period at all next year, but I want to be clear that even if that’s the case, we would still consider the categories as completed and their current run-throughs as finished and retired, so if they come back in another later year it’d be in some simpler form and starting over with all options in whatever the new form takes.

The topic for discussion now, then, is what all of you think about the possibility of more than one each of Region and Time Period in the upcoming year. I have an idea or two about how we may be able to have more of these two categories in the next year while still having room for other categories that has to do with possibly temporarily fewer Rotating months (for the upcoming year only) that I may put to the group to see if it’s of any interest, but before we get into anything else first I would like to see if more than one each of Time Period and Region in the next twelve months is something others of you would like to have considering that it will be our last year using them in their current form.

As always, any thoughts or questions on all of this are welcome, but specifically the question I’d like answered is:

-Whether giving a range or a specific number and considering all the above, around how many total months given to Region and Time Period for the upcoming year might you like to see (anywhere from zero months, if forgoing both categories completely next year, to nine months, if having two Time Period and seven Region to finish both up naturally, is possible)?

This isn’t any kind of vote and any opinions you post won’t be binding; I’m more trying to get the pulse on what others in the club think about this on first glance to help decide how to proceed with options offered.

For reference, our currently remaining time periods are:

- 1501-1800
- 1941-1960

Our currently remaining regions are:

- Sub Saharan Africa (e.g. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya...)
- Southeast Europe (e.g. Greece, Italy, Turkey...)
- Ireland & The U.K.
- The South Pacific (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji...)
- Japan
- The Korean Peninsula, Mongolia & China
- South Asia (e.g. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan...)

And to see them visually here's the region map:

Spoiler:

05-24-2017, 08:15 PM	#259
sun surfer languorous autodidact ✦ Posts: 4,235 Karma: 44667380 Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: smiling with the rising sun Device: onyx boox poke 2 colour, kindle voyage	I consider the tie-breaker issue resolved now and we’ll go with that. The time is upon us to consider our upcoming year (July 2017-June 2018)! Some of you might have certain things you’d like to discuss and I have a few things I’d like to discuss, but I’d like to begin with a specific topic, the two categories of Time Period and Region. We’ve had them each at least once per year since they were introduced during our very first year; in fact they’re the only two categories used every single year so far. In addition, the years we’ve had a categories vote, these two categories were the top voted every single year (some were as ties, but no category has ever got more votes in a year than either of these). Suffice it to say, these are two popular categories. There are, however, a few difficulties with these categories. First, they are more difficult to run. In addition to the normal work of running category nominations, each time one of these two come up, I must go back to the last time the category was used and copy over the instructions from that month. Then I must update those guidelines with any general changes since that time; for other categories, the guidelines basically stay the same despite the category so I simply copy month to month and a one-time change when the update in guidelines occur is sufficient while for Region or Time Period I must eyeball compare the last Region/Time Period guidelines sentence by sentence with the current guidelines to update. Then I must update the currently available options by removing the last used one and listing it in the exhausted options section of the month’s guidelines. Then I must reset/reformat the still available options to be ready for a new vote. Then I must hold a one-day vote to decide on the region/time period we’ll be using that month. Then I must be sure to come back around the same time the next day to declare the option that won, update the first post with the region/time period winner, and start the nominations. Second, we are exhausting the Region options too slowly. The categories were originally conceived to run multiple times a year (and did at first), but the implementation of Rotating Nominations changed that as we went from twelve various categories per year to six (the other six then becoming Rotating). I really like our Rotating months but this was an unintentional side effect of having them; with only six categories to fill each year there wasn’t really room for more than one of each other category. We still have two time periods to go and seven regions to go. As they were conceived to run about twice per year, if they had we would’ve already been well into our second run-through of time periods by now and just about to finish up all our region options. However, as it currently stands, we’ve only just reached the halfway point of region options in the last Region month; at our current pace it would take us SEVEN more years to finish up our region options (until around 2023/2024)! For comparison, that’s farther away in time from the present day than the very first month our club came into existence. Third, and this is more cosmetic, but the Region month utilises a large colour-coded map I made that I was very happy with at the time and is useful, but it is large enough that it alters the margins of that page of the thread and is a bit low-quality and blurry. Please don’t miscontrue my intentions here; I really like these categories! I enjoy us focusing on different regions or time periods, am proud of helping to come up with them and am glad they’ve proven so popular. However, they weren’t intended to go on for so long with no end or restart in sight and as the years have gone by I’ve become less keen on the extra work I have to do those months. So, for all these reasons I think this upcoming year should be our last with the current iterations of these two categories. This will give us a chance to finish them out as much as we decide together that we’d like to. I think it’s my prerogative as the club runner to state that after this upcoming year I just don’t want to run these two categories in their current forms any more. One way or another, I want them to be considered ‘run through’ by the end of the upcoming year. This means that the year after (July 2018-June 2019) we could start them over in some newer simpler form or do without them, and we’d discuss that next year around this time. The idea is to either finish our current Region and Time Period categories in this upcoming year ‘naturally’ by exhausting the remaining region/time period options one per month, or by having a ‘finale’ month for however many remaining options there are per category. A finale month would work by not having the normal ‘starter’ region/time period vote to determine a specific option to use for the month and instead would make all the remaining options equally available to nominate from for the month, as a sort of grand finale to the category. With two time periods and seven regions left, it would take us nine months to finish both up naturally, which would be possible in the upcoming year but I’m not sure desirable to the group using so many months for these two categories alone. However, with only two Time Period months during the next year we’d naturally finish that category up, and we could have a few regular Region months finished up with a Region finale month. It doesn’t have to be either only one Region month next year or else seven; it can be somewhere in between. For instance, if we had two Region months during the next year, we’d have one normal Region month with one region chosen and then the finale Region month with the remaining six regions all available to nominate from. Or, if we have three Region months during the next year, we’d have two normal Region months with one region chosen each time and then the finale Region month with the remaining five regions all available to nominate from. Also, to be clear, however many Region and Time Period months we do decide to use, they would be spread throughout the year and not one after another in a clump. And though unlikely because of their previous popularity, there is also the possibility the group may decide not to use Region and/or Time Period at all next year, but I want to be clear that even if that’s the case, we would still consider the categories as completed and their current run-throughs as finished and retired, so if they come back in another later year it’d be in some simpler form and starting over with all options in whatever the new form takes. The topic for discussion now, then, is what all of you think about the possibility of more than one each of Region and Time Period in the upcoming year. I have an idea or two about how we may be able to have more of these two categories in the next year while still having room for other categories that has to do with possibly temporarily fewer Rotating months (for the upcoming year only) that I may put to the group to see if it’s of any interest, but before we get into anything else first I would like to see if more than one each of Time Period and Region in the next twelve months is something others of you would like to have considering that it will be our last year using them in their current form. As always, any thoughts or questions on all of this are welcome, but specifically the question I’d like answered is: -Whether giving a range or a specific number and considering all the above, around how many total months given to Region and Time Period for the upcoming year might you like to see (anywhere from zero months, if forgoing both categories completely next year, to nine months, if having two Time Period and seven Region to finish both up naturally, is possible)? This isn’t any kind of vote and any opinions you post won’t be binding; I’m more trying to get the pulse on what others in the club think about this on first glance to help decide how to proceed with options offered. For reference, our currently remaining time periods are: - 1501-1800 - 1941-1960 Our currently remaining regions are: - Sub Saharan Africa (e.g. South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya...) - Southeast Europe (e.g. Greece, Italy, Turkey...) - Ireland & The U.K. - The South Pacific (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, Fiji...) - Japan - The Korean Peninsula, Mongolia & China - South Asia (e.g. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan...) And to see them visually here's the region map: Spoiler: