A question on thread posting

[Everyman]

For Little Dorrit, and for some previous books, there has been no proposed schedule for the reading, but all the sections for discussion have been posted at the beginning of the period.

Personally, I find this not as conducive to positive discussion as a scheduled reading where the discussion sections are posted according to the proposed schedule, usually once a week (but sometimes on other schedules depending on the book). I find that when all the discussion sections are posted up front, the group tends to get very spread out, some people finishing it within a week or two and others taking the full two months scheduled for the book. This means that some people will be ready to post on the entire book while others are only in the early chapters. In my experience this means that there tends to be less active discussion because those who are already in, for example, chapter 42 tend not to want to come back to actively discuss Chapter 13, if that's were other readers still are. And those who get to the end in mid January have tended to move on to other books by the time others get to the end of the book, and are less interested in coming back to discuss a book they finished six weeks earlier.

This may only be my experience, of course, and others may find the flexibility of reading and posting at one's own pace outweighs whatever benefits there are of the discussion proceeding according to a common pace.

While I may change my mind, I'm thinking I won't participate in the Little Dorrit discussion (even though I like the book a lot) because of the problem of sustaining a high quality discussion throughout the two month scheduled reading period. If there are others who feel the same way, perhaps there should be a group discussion of how our discussions are structured. Perhaps we should alternate both ways book-by-book for awhile to see which alternative generates the best discussion.

[Jess :)]

Perhaps a suggested schedule could be posted along with the discussion threads? Members who read quickly could post as they do; those who want to keep pace with the group would have a guideline for doing so.

[Phil]

I do think that if you go down the route of a dated schedule, then it's important to also have an overall discussion thread in which people who get ahead, or have already read the book, can post anything about it without worrying about spoilers or anything (kind of "enter at your own risk")

[Dolores, co-moderator]

This is the way we have been doing the discussions since we began the group in December 2012. We have had no problems with it set up this way. There were times when we had a schedule for certain books and some people followed it and some didn't, but it doesn't matter because the discussions are always available at any times for anyone to follow whenever they want. With such a large group, it is easier this way.