New Leaf Welcome to the New Leaf Book Club

[CRussel]

OK, I was resisting this, until Dazrin hit me with actual MATH. I concede the point -- we're fine with three tickets only.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Catlady

That would be me, I'm pretty confident in saying. What's your guess as to why? My belief is simply that no one particularly likes the books I like. As I've said before, that's disappointing, but it's not frustrating. I believe my record would be even more abysmal but for some "pity" thirds for my nominations, just to add to the slate. Which seems kind of pointless; my ego isn't that fragile.

I haven't studied the details as Dazrin has, but I know you tend to nominate two books most months (I get the impression you're not a fan of books others are nominating), so I expect this means you have (very roughly) twice the nominations. As a result it would be expected that you have twice the not-fully-nominated (same proportion as everyone else). Then again, at the sort of numbers we're talking about, statistics have only limited reliability.

[pdurrant]

I'll throw in my two-pennyworth as an occasional participant.

I rarely notice when nominations open, or voting starts. Because they start in new threads that I'm not subscribed to. And no-one posts any notices to the book club threads (like this one) which I am subscribed to. I could only notice them if I (a) remembered when they were going to happen and (b) then remembered to manually check the Book Club forum.

If you want more participants in the book clubs, make use of a central book club thread to post announcements and links to the relevant new threads.

It might even be worth asking to use the MobileRead banner announcements system.


As for nominations: Since only one vote is possible in the voting stage, I'd recommend saying that people are limited to one nomination in the nominations threads, with two seconding votes. That's nice and simple.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by gmw

I haven't studied the details as Dazrin has, but I know you tend to nominate two books most months (I get the impression you're not a fan of books others are nominating), so I expect this means you have (very roughly) twice the nominations. As a result it would be expected that you have twice the not-fully-nominated (same proportion as everyone else). Then again, at the sort of numbers we're talking about, statistics have only limited reliability.

You made me go back and look.

Yes, Catlady has nearly twice the number of nominated works as anyone else (26 vs 16), 11 of which were not completed. Fortunately, every month except one at least one book made it to the vote, so she also has the 2nd most that have made it to the vote (the person with 16 has 0 that haven't made it.) She does not have the highest "not fully nominated" ratio though. The "winner" in that stat has 5 non-completed out of 6 total nominations. All others have 0 or 1.

So, number of nominations and possibly a "levelling" effort by people doing seconds/thirds in some cases. In most cases at least one book made it to the vote so maybe people were giving higher priority to people who didn't have any books in the vote yet. I don't remember specifically doing that but I could see myself doing so if I didn't have a particular preference for one of the books and was just seconding to get things to the vote.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'll throw in my two-pennyworth as an occasional participant.

As for nominations: Since only one vote is possible in the voting stage, I'd recommend saying that people are limited to one nomination in the nominations threads, with two seconding votes. That's nice and simple.

As a neophyte participant, I second this suggestion. one nomination and two seconding votes is nice and simple. A simple structure like that, coupled with wider publicity, might attract more newbies to check out the book clubs, too.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I'll throw in my two-pennyworth as an occasional participant.

I rarely notice when nominations open, or voting starts. Because they start in new threads that I'm not subscribed to. And no-one posts any notices to the book club threads (like this one) which I am subscribed to. I could only notice them if I (a) remembered when they were going to happen and (b) then remembered to manually check the Book Club forum.

If you want more participants in the book clubs, make use of a central book club thread to post announcements and links to the relevant new threads.

It might even be worth asking to use the MobileRead banner announcements system.

Great suggestions there. I subscribe to the forum as a whole to get notifications for new threads (in the control panel only, no email) rather than threads but I didn't even realize there was a new "banner announcement system" which would be really nice to be able to use.

Originally Posted by pdurrant

As for nominations: Since only one vote is possible in the voting stage, I'd recommend saying that people are limited to one nomination in the nominations threads, with two seconding votes. That's nice and simple.

As a clarification, you can vote for as many items as you want during voting, it is multiple choice. I know I normally vote for 3-4 at least in inital voting.

For nominations, in practice almost everyone only makes a single nomination in a month with a some people only seconding or making 2+ nominations (the average is 0.9 nominations per nominator), so I don't see any real need to limit the number of nominations to 1. It varies who is nominating each month. Only 3 regulars have nominated something every month they have participated.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

As a clarification, you can vote for as many items as you want during voting, it is multiple choice. I know I normally vote for 3-4 at least in inital voting.

Ah - I said I was an occasional participant. I'd forgotten that the voting was multiple choice.

I still think it would be better to limit people to one nomination, but maybe that's just because I like clear rules.

[Bookpossum]

Information about the NLBC appears each month on the Home page.

What is the banner announcements system? Given that none of us seems to know about it, if it is something other than the items which appear on the Home page, it can't be working yet.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Information about the NLBC appears each month on the Home page.

What is the banner announcements system? Given that none of us seems to know about it, if it is something other than the items which appear on the Home page, it can't be working yet.

I never see the home page. I always go to my User CP and see my list of subscribed threads with new messages. I suspect that many people read MobileRead like that.

Banner announcements appear at the top of every page between the headers and the content. They're not used very often, and perhaps the book club would be inappropriate. (Yes, I know I suggested it, but I was just speaking off the cuff.)

[Bookpossum]

Ah, thanks for that. I must admit I don't ever recall noticing one.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

For nominations, in practice almost everyone only makes a single nomination in a month with a some people only seconding or making 2+ nominations (the average is 0.9 nominations per nominator), so I don't see any real need to limit the number of nominations to 1. It varies who is nominating each month. Only 3 regulars have nominated something every month they have participated.

I also prefer the current system. Being able to make only one initial nomination would tend to promote more rubberstamping of nominations, so the nominations wouldn't be as effective as a first cull. The system now is also more flexible; if the nominations have died and someone doesn't care to or can't second another, there's always the option to get another title up (which also aids discovery, as we've talked about). And allowing only two seconds or thirds would take a nomination away from someone who didn't care to make a first nomination.

[pdurrant]

Alternatively, saying that people should make a nomination might get people more involved?

[issybird]

I do a fair amount of linkage from one thread to the next, but I could certainly link to the nomination and discussion threads in this thread, also. The timing on a link to the discussion thread is a little tricky; linking on the day it opens is too late for someone to read the book in a timely fashion. I assume that if someone's read the book they won't forget to show up for the discussion in any case.

I wonder how many navigate from (or even look at) the front page? As it is, I put the nomination thread on the front page and polls always appear on the front page by default. I suspect we all have blinders to an extent about the methods others use to read the forum.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Alternatively, saying that people should make a nomination might get people more involved?

It's explicit that participating in the nominations implies no commitment to the discussion should someone choose not to participate, in order to promote participation. But regulars and others may have their reasons for only wanting to support other nominations in a given month; I can think of several that seem legitimate to me and I'm sure there are more. I've also tried to make the process less onerous in terms of expected linkage (although people really should try to verify price and availability before posting, if a nomination is to be successful).

I hope I don't sound defensive! I'm just trying to respond to input, which is welcome.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by gmw

I haven't studied the details as Dazrin has, but I know you tend to nominate two books most months (I get the impression you're not a fan of books others are nominating), so I expect this means you have (very roughly) twice the nominations. As a result it would be expected that you have twice the not-fully-nominated (same proportion as everyone else). Then again, at the sort of numbers we're talking about, statistics have only limited reliability.

Most of the time, that is exactly the reason for a nomination.

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Yes, Catlady has nearly twice the number of nominated works as anyone else (26 vs 16), 11 of which were not completed. Fortunately, every month except one at least one book made it to the vote, so she also has the 2nd most that have made it to the vote (the person with 16 has 0 that haven't made it.) She does not have the highest "not fully nominated" ratio though. The "winner" in that stat has 5 non-completed out of 6 total nominations. All others have 0 or 1.

So, number of nominations and possibly a "levelling" effort by people doing seconds/thirds in some cases. In most cases at least one book made it to the vote so maybe people were giving higher priority to people who didn't have any books in the vote yet. I don't remember specifically doing that but I could see myself doing so if I didn't have a particular preference for one of the books and was just seconding to get things to the vote.

Well, that's interesting. I do think people are sometimes using their remaining tickets just to fully nominate something in which they have minimal interest and, as I already said, I don't see much point in that.

Re announcements, banners, subscribed threads, etc. I NEVER look at the home page. I almost never look at the User CP. I don't know how to subscribe to a thread--I see threads to which I'm somehow subscribed on the User CP page, but I don't know how they got there or why. I go directly to the forums page and check the various forums I like; on the specific pages, I skim the threads and see which ones are bolded, indicating unread posts, and read the ones in which I'm interested.