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

[Bookpossum]

Hello again. Further to this, it was necessary for me to put the announcement into a thread so Tom could pick it up. So I have created a thread called Literary Book Club, which you can ignore (unless you want a sneak preview of what is going up on the Home page). It is really just there as a convenient spot because I can't put it directly into the thread called Announcements - that seems to be for Moderators only.

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Hello again. Further to this, it was necessary for me to put the announcement into a thread so Tom could pick it up. So I have created a thread called Literary Club Announcements which you can ignore (unless you want a sneak preview of what is going up on the Home page). It is really just there as a convenient spot because I can't put it directly into the thread called Announcements - that seems to be for Moderators only.

Thank you, Bookpossum! Great ideas.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks - I thought it was worth a try, and sun surfer was happy for me to have a go at it. We may not gain anyone new, but you don't know unless you give it a go!

At the very least it will give us all (me included) a memory jogger - I was a bit slow coming in to nominate this month because I had lost track of the dates.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Hi everyone. This is just to let you know that sun surfer and I have been discussing how we might get a few more members for the club. With his agreement, I have now requested that we have a regular spot on the Home page, as the other Club has, and to start with, have sent a general "Do you know we exist?" sort of message, which Tom Sharpe is going to put up for us.

I'm then proposing to send him a message to appear on the first of the month to alert people that the nomination process is starting, and then a short notice around the eighth of the month when we have made a selection. I thought this could be useful for all of us, as well as to ensure that newer members know about us.

Do you have any other thoughts on how we might attract new members and/or try to get some previous members back with us again? All suggestions for increasing our membership will be welcome, and of course any other thoughts you may have on anything else to do with the Club.

Personally, I don't visit the home page very often (my bookmark is the forums top page) and I seldom view the announcements section.

Maybe occasionally post in the News/Discussion/Reading sections to get a few more eyes.

Good luck.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for that suggestion John. We might give that a try as well.

[sun surfer]

A few things for now-

Bookpossum has provided us with club pictures! We've actually been using some on our Goodreads page for awhile now, but we've updated those and added some to the first post of this thread which also contains things like the list of all our selections and links to all threads. Also, some of you may have already noticed that she's got our voting threads up on the Mobileread home page, which necessitates adding a small picture to the first posts. WTSharpe, who is doing the putting up on the home page for us, added a nice one that you may have seen the last few months but now will be using one of Bookpossum’s that ties into our pics elsewhere.

I say, we are looking snazzy. Thanks Bookpossum! To gander at the pics yourselves, follow these links:

-The MR Literary Club on Goodreads (and if you're on Goodreads but not a member of our club yet, join us!)

-First post of this thread

-Sample of the pic WTSharpe was using originally on voting threads (thanks Tom! )

-Sample of the pic now used on voting threads

[Bookpossum]

Thanks sun surfer - it was fun doing them, even though the street sculpture of Minerva on the Goodreads page gave us a few headaches before we got her to co-operate!

[bfisher]

Great pictures, Bookpossum.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks bfisher. (Sorry not to respond sooner - I have been away again for a couple of days.)

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

Just a question about this result. If we aren't having a run-off vote, should it not be the first one to receive the four votes, which would make the winner 1501-1800?

ETA. Oh, I see - it was the first one of these two categories which was nominated, by bfisher.

Actually, it was resolved in favour of the first listed which, since they're listed oldest to newest, is the oldest. But I like your accidental idea of how to solve a tie for time periods and regions. We used to use a poll so it wasn't possible to accurately prove the order of the votes, so the best I could come up with for a tie-breaker was first listed. For time periods it made sense because the older periods were proving less popular so assuming a tie it sounded good to give it to the older of the tied. For regions, I actually changed the ordering each time in a pre-set way on a four-cycle rotation. Off the top of my head and simplified, one order began on a normal map on the left and went right, the other order the opposite of that so right to left, the third order started in the middle of the map and went right all the way around while the fourth order started in the middle of the map and went left all the around. So if there was a region tie, it was resolved by the random chance of the order being used that time.

Now that we don't use polls though and simply vote in the thread, it is possible to do as you say and resolve ties by the first voted for. This will mesh well because it's the same as the way we resolve book selection ties in non-rotating months (minus the intermediary of the run-off) and I can stop worrying about figuring out which region list order to use each time, so I think we should do this from now on if no one has any objections. Of course, this also depends on me remembering to change the guidelines in the appropriate months to reflect it!

[Bookpossum]

Yes, I think that makes sense. I hadn't realised I was solving a problem by accident! And yes, it makes sense to use it for the Regions also.

The other option, as I was initially assuming, is that the first one to get to the number (in the Time Period case, 4) would be the one to win.

What does everyone else think?

[Bookpossum]

A further thought on this: I think my second option above, i.e. the first item (be it book, time period or region) to reach the number that is the tie with another, is probably the fairer option, and could be applied to all of our categories.

If we go with the first item nominated/voted for, then that could weight the voting towards the people in the same or similar time zone as sun surfer, because there are necessarily going to be quite a number of hours between when the thread goes up to when members in various other countries get to see the thread and start participating.

However if we go with the first item to achieve the number of votes that ties it with a second item, that spreads things out over the three or four day voting period, and is therefore fairer to everyone.

I suggest that if people think this makes sense, we use it in all cases. For example, in the Rotating months, some individuals might put books up in alphabetical order by author (which is what I do), or in order of date of publication, or just randomly. So in this case also, the first book to achieve the number of votes which then ties with another book, would be the one to win, rather than the first book on the list with the requisite number of votes being the winner.

If we could agree on this or some other system, we could probably then dispense with the need for a run-off vote altogether.

[sun surfer]

First to get all its votes sounds fine. I'd originally used first nominated because it's very easy for anyone to discern, since book nominations are listed in order of when they're nominated. However, rotating months are different; a tie there is broken by that month's nominator.

[Bookpossum]

Ah, I had forgotten that bit about the nominator breaking the tie.

[sun surfer]

My suggestion would be first-to-its-vote-totals tie-breaking (except for rotating months) while keeping the run-offs as before.

The reason is because I can foresee some possible conflicts with no run-offs together with this tie-breaker and I prefer to structure things to be simple and clear and present the least likelihood of any future conflict. A tie could occur from votes within the same post and if the poster doesn't think to list them by preference in the post then we could have a tie-breaker-by-accident or, worse, the poster could actually prefer the second listed but the first listed would win. This could especially be the case if the poster gave one vote to the tied option listed first in the post (and therefore the winner) and two to the second. There are other problematic scenarios too.

With no run-offs, the chances of something like that happening are much higher than with run-offs. Not only is it rarer to have a run-off tie than a regular tie, run-offs are also usually between only two options, giving us each only one vote. This in effect eliminates any such tie-breaker conflicts unless the run-off has three or more options and results in a run-off tie, which is possible but would be very rare. There are also the region and time period starter votes to consider which are held like run-offs and do include many options, but nothing is perfect and I posit that anyone would be less likely to care about accidentally causing a region or time period to win that they preferred slightly less.

What do all of you think?