Literary The MR Literary Club • Welcome, Information & General Discussion

[Bookpossum]

Sorry sun surfer: I'm not sure I am clear on this so would like to restate it if I may:

1. On rotating months, the nominator gets to decide which book wins if there is a tie.

2. On months where we select within a category (Time Period, Regions), the first to reach the winning number is the winner in the case of a tie.

3. In the case of a tie between two or more books in a category month, there will be a run-off vote to establish the winner. If that also results in a tie, the first to reach the winning number is the winner, as in item 2.

Does that cover it correctly?

Any other thoughts from the team?

[sun surfer]

Close. In rotating months there would be run-offs first too while a run-off tie there would trigger the nominator breaking the tie. Otherwise all sounds right.

[Bookpossum]

Sounds good to me.

[sun surfer]

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:

[Bookpossum]

Thanks sun surfer. I'll kick off the discussion to say I would be happy with up to three Region months, i.e. one every four months, and also to finish up the two Time Periods left, so one every six months for them. So I would see it looking something like this:

July: Region - one voted as normal
August: ?
September: ?
October: Time Period
November: Region - one voted as normal
December: ?
January: ?
February: ?
March: Region - nominations from last five regions
April: Time Period
May: ?
June: ?

The ? months would then have the various other categories slotted in as appropriate, once we decided what they are. But of course others may feel that this would be an overload of one or two categories at the expense of others.

[sun surfer]

Thanks Bookpossum for the fast response, and yes that's a good example of what it could look like with five.

[sun surfer]

Alright, next I’ll present an idea for how to arrange next year’s categories considering this will be the last with Region and Time Period in their current forms and so some may (or may not) want more of those. It has a few different steps to it, and if we use it then this would be considered a ‘special’ year and we’d return to a more normal schedule the following year.

Rotating Nominations Break

First is the idea of finishing out our current Rotating Nominations cycle and then taking a break from it until the end of the year, with the expectation that we would restart a new Rotating cycle back up the following year. This will give us more months to work with other categories for this year in particular, and so if we want more Region or Time Period months then there’s more room for them.

However, for this to be effective we would need to know ahead of time how many months are freed up and so we’d need to fill up the rest of the Rotating months in the cycle, well, now. Bookpossum had already thought of the possibility of asking for volunteers ahead of time even when everything is running normally. I took that idea and applied it here; the way I envision it working for this year would be, during this month of June, to go ahead and have everyone who still wants to volunteer for a month in this Rotating cycle to do so (ahead of time). Three members are already ineligible for the rest of this cycle because they’ve already volunteered- fantasyfan, bfisher and Bookpossum. Everyone else is still eligible.

We would, during June, take it one month at a time beginning with a volunteer for August, then for October and so on. We’d ask for a volunteer and give so many days (for instance five) for someone to volunteer for the future month. Once someone volunteers, we move on to the next future Rotating month and ask for a volunteer and again give the same amount of time. We continue this until no one volunteers for a future month, or until we fill up all the possible Rotating months for next year. If we get to a month where no one volunteers, then we will stop asking for volunteers and consider that month and the other subsequent future Rotating months in the year ‘freed up’ to use for other categories. Because we’ll be planning in advance and won’t need a ‘buffer’ month in between cycles, we therefore won’t have a Retrospective month at the end of this Rotating cycle should we use this plan. Otherwise, Rotating months will run the same and for those future filled months we will ask for that month’s volunteer to share their list on the first as usual. If we happen to fill up all six possible Rotating months for the next year, then nothing will change from the norm except for filling the months with volunteers ahead of time.

The hope here is that by doing it this way we will end up with at least a few extra months free this year to use for other categories. However, we always love to have as many Rotating volunteers as possible so should the year be filled up with six volunteers then that is also great.

Categories Nominations

Next we would have categories nominations. It would be similar to last year except for one big thing. If we had members nominate two categories each for a later possible vote, then we’d have to pick a specific amount of months to fill by the vote, which doesn’t fit with the objective of this special year (being to add in extra Region and Time Period months if wanted to empty months). So, a better idea for this year would be to allow each member to nominate one category.

This category would automatically become a category for next year, no vote needed. Once the nomination period is over, all nominated categories would be given months on next year’s schedule. Then, all the remaining months, however many there are, would be filled with Time Period and Region categories.

This would allow each member to ensure their favourite category makes it to next year while also (hopefully) giving us room for extra Time Period and Region before they are gone. There will (obviously) be a few caveats here. The nominated categories should be normal ones we’ve used before. Though we love everyone interested participating in the club, since these categories would move on to becoming a month automatically, we’d have to ask that only those who have participated in at least a few months recently nominate categories for this special year. And finally, should someone want even more Region or Time Period this year than the leftover empty months would give, they are allowed to nominate either one as their category nomination (or they can simply not nominate a category leaving one more empty month to fill, which would be the same difference).

Here is one example of how things could go: If four people volunteer for Rotating months, that would fill up August, October, December and February but leave the normal Rotating months of April and June freed up for other categories. If four people then nominate other categories for next year, that would fill up four more months, giving us eight filled months so far. Then we’d have four months left over which would be filled with two Region and two Time Period months.

I’d say that is a median example of what may happen. We could end up with more Region and Time Period months, or less. We could even end up with none, if enough people volunteer for Rotating months and nominate other categories. The range of possibilities is anywhere from nine Region and Time Period months (as there are nine options left total within the two categories- seven regions and two time periods) to none at all. It will depend on how many more people volunteer for Rotating months this cycle and how many people nominate categories that aren’t Region or Time Period. So this would really be a good way for us to decide as a group how much room to give to Time Period and Region for their final outings.

Conclusion

So, what do all of you think?

We would need to start soon to allow enough time to finish up by the end of this month.

[Bookpossum]

As no-one has made any comment yet, I wonder if we could simplify this by deciding on having, say, four spots in the coming year for rotating nominations and leave the matter of pre-booking a spot to one side. If we end up with only three spots taken, we can always have a "free-for-all" sort of month, with everyone nominating one or two books but with no theme. As we know from the rotating nominations, it isn't necessary for there to be a theme in order to have a good choice of books.

So my suggestion is to have four rotating nomination months, one every three months, two Time Period months if people want to finish the last two periods off, and then split the other six months between Regions and the other categories.

The only clear way to sort this out is to vote on it. One way to do that would be to put down all the current categories and have people indicate which ones they want to retain and which they don't. But in this case the vote would be for how many months in the year you would like to see that category.

So we would list:

Rotating Nominations
Time Period
Region
Contemporary
etc

and I might vote as follows on those:

4 months Rotating Nominations
2 months Time Period
2 months Region
1 month Contemporary
1 month Non-Fiction
1 month Biography/Memoir
1 month Classics

or whatever the various categories are.

Sorting it out would be fun of course, but we have to start somewhere!

[Bookpossum]

Sorry, I had to dash off to have lunch, and realise I didn't clarify a couple of points.

I would see doing this in two stages:

1. Agree on the various categories, with people nominating one or more preferred categories, those categories to include Rotating Nominations. (I thought I should put that in just in case people don't want to do them any more.)

2. Vote on how many months you want to devote to which categories.

We then tally up the results and with a bit of luck will have a majority decision on at least some of them! But in the event of a tie, we do the usual run-off votes, and if that is also a tie, use the previously agreed method of the first item to reach the number of votes that becomes a tie, is the one that wins.

And of course if nobody minds one way or the other, sun surfer and I can argue it out between us!

[sun surfer]

Bookpossum, I’ve been thinking over your proposals for about a week now while waiting to see if anyone else comments on our posts, and trying to work out how they could work well but I’m afraid I’m having difficulty seeing a simple way forward using them.

As no-one has made any comment yet, I wonder if we could simplify this by deciding on having, say, four spots in the coming year for rotating nominations and leave the matter of pre-booking a spot to one side. If we end up with only three spots taken, we can always have a "free-for-all" sort of month, with everyone nominating one or two books but with no theme. As we know from the rotating nominations, it isn't necessary for there to be a theme in order to have a good choice of books.

There are a few problems with doing it this way that makes this more complicated and less flexible rather than simplifying things.

If we set aside the question of pre-booking months then we’re already leaving more work - and debate - for later. We’d have to then decide if we’re pre-booking and if we are then still do it but at a later date. Already this is adding more steps and more work later.

If we do decide to pre-book a set number of months, then there’s the problem of if not enough people sign up. If we take the simplest solution, an Open month and/or starting over with a new cycle, then we’re defeating the purpose of opening the most months possible for Region and Time Period.

If we decide to do it as before, asking for volunteers as the month arises on a set number of months, then that ignores your desire to pre-book, which desire of yours was the reason I came up with the idea I did for the rotating months. Also the same problems would still be present of possibly having unnecessary Open or new cycle rotating months taking up months that could’ve been used for Region or Time Period.

The only risk with my idea versus yours is that we may get five or six people volunteering for Rotating thus taking up more months next year than with your proposal. However I don’t really consider that a risk becaues if it happens I’ll be very happy at the participation.

The only clear way to sort this out is to vote on it. One way to do that would be to put down all the current categories and have people indicate which ones they want to retain and which they don't. But in this case the vote would be for how many months in the year you would like to see that category.

I would see doing this in two stages:

1. Agree on the various categories, with people nominating one or more preferred categories, those categories to include Rotating Nominations. (I thought I should put that in just in case people don't want to do them any more.)

2. Vote on how many months you want to devote to which categories.

I think instead of clearing things up this obfuscates things. I understand the beginning of what you propose but do not understand how you propose adding the totals up to decide how many months everything gets. I’ve tried working it out myself and see no way to do this without it becoming very complicated and confusing for all involved. Can you clarify how determining months would be achieved under this proposal?

[Bookpossum]

Oh dear, you want a solution that works!!

It seems to me at this stage that our fellow Club members don't want to contribute ideas on how we go about setting next year's programme, but will go along with what we cook up. Is that right folks? We'll take silence as implying consent. So that would eliminate any need for voting.

I suggest that if no-one makes a comment in the next day or two, sun surfer and I should just go ahead and draw up the programme for the coming year.

[sun surfer]

All right, I agree it's time to decide on a course of action. I don't think there's any need for only you and I to decide everything including specific categories, Bookpossum, as there are other members who may want to participate in category nominations, but it does seem that others will be fine going along with whatever general outline we decide on.

I think we should go with my idea as it's simple and easy, gives everyone an opportunity to pick their favourite category for the next year, gives you what you want in pre-booking rotating months, and gives us all as many Region and Time Period months as possible for the last year they'll be available in their current form.

Besides Bookpossum who gave her opinion, I cannot guess what others think of multiple Region and Time Period months next year so I can only go on the popularity of those categories in the past. I'm OK with multiple Region and Time Period months, Bookpossum posted that she is OK with more than one of each, in the past these have been basically our two most popular categories, these two categories were originally designed to run multiple times a year, and, as Bookpossum mentioned, silence from other members can in this case be construed as consent, so with all that in mind I do think we should try to maximise the number of those categories for the upcoming year.

Since I'm not sure if anyone still might question if a lot of Region and Time Period months in one year might be a bit overwhelming, I'll go ahead and add this as well- though we might be coming back to these same categories multiple times in the upcoming year, each month would be a brand new experience since in these two categories we choose a specific region or time period to focus on. In that way it's like Rotating months which we are fine having six of per year; yes we have multiple iterations of Rotating per year but every Rotating month is very different and so it stays fresh and enjoyable despite coming round so often. It will be the same with Region and Time Period. Really, those two categories are many separate categories (e.g. Japan, The South Pacific, South America and so on) all crammed into one with a quick vote to pick the actual category when the month comes up. Even if all 12 months were filled with Region and Time Period, each month would really be a different category.

So with all that said, I think we should just use my plan as it's the simplest and easiest considering the special circumstance of this next year being the last for these two categories as they currently are. I laid it out in detail in my earlier post on it, but I can put the plan more succinctly to illustrate how simple it will be:

-We now pre-book rotating months on our regular bi-monthly set-up until no one else volunteers and then take a break from them until our next club year.

-We then have category nominations and allow one per person for anyone who's participated in the club at least semi-recently and these nominated categories automatically become categories for the upcoming year.

-We finally fill in all the remaining months with Region and Time Period and then we're done.


Bookpossum, as you are the one who asks for Rotating volunteers, would you like to take charge of now pre-booking the rotating months? It'd be great if you do it but I can if you'd rather or if you don't have the time over the next few weeks. I think we can start asap given July is approaching and we've had over a week since you and I first posted our thoughts. We can use the Rotating Nominations thread and have it stickied while this is going on. I envision whichever of us does it asking now for a volunteer for August 2017 and giving say four(?) days for someone to volunteer. Once someone does, we immediately pencil the volunteer in for that month and then ask for a volunteer for October right after and again give say four days. We continue in the same manner until no one volunteers before the time limit, and after that's completed I can start right away with the category nominations. Also, besides those who've already volunteered for Rotating this cycle, I think you or I should PM anybody who's participated in our club recently or semi-recently asap to alert them to the Rotating pre-booking so that they will not miss their chance to volunteer if they so wish, in case they've missed our discussion here.

[Bookpossum]

Yep, I'm happy to look after settling the Rotating Nominations and will do it on that thread. So for those who have already had a month in this cycle (fantasyfan, bfisher and me) ignore this item, but for any other participants, it would really help us if you are prepared to take a particular month.

I'll put up a post over there for you.

[sun surfer]

Thanks, Bookpossum!

[Bookworm_Girl]

Just speaking for myself, the posts were a bit long and complicated, especially since I was traveling, so I put them off until now when I had some extra time. Although I'm sure I speak for everyone in saying that we appreciate all of the thought that both of you put into taking care of the club details!

My preference is for variety like our normal months. I would miss some of our typical categories. I'm not that excited about finishing out all of the Region options at once.

I am planning to volunteer for one of the rotating months coming up. I was just waiting to allow others their chance since I went near the end of the last cycle.

I hope that helps! Thanks again for your coordination of the group!