Updates to the Nominations Process

[Melanti]

Recently, we've been having a lot of books on the polls, and we (the moderators) have been talking about various possible methods to get that number down to a more reasonable number.

There were several possibilities suggested in the comments of this round of polls, but the method we've settled on is that rather than have a set number of seconds required for a book to move forward to the polls, nominations are going to work like a mini round of voting and the top 5 books with the most number of seconds will be the ones that move on to the polls.

Additionally, we're no longer going to allow more than one book by any given author to be nominated in the same category.

Below are the new additional rules. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

1. Only five books, by five different authors will move forward to each poll. This will be determined by the number of seconds a book receives. The five books with the most seconds moves to the poll.

2. Only one nomination or one second per member. will be allowed. A nomination can be changed only until it has been seconded. Once seconded, in fairness to the member making the second, the nomination will stand.

2a. A second can be withdrawn and placed on another choice. This change must in some way be noted in a post such as, "I am withdrawing my second for book A and placing it on book B." It will be easier to moderator to track changes.

3. Only one book per author, In the event of more than one book by the same author is nominated, only the first one to receive a second will be eligible. The nominator of the ruled ineligible book will be able to nominate a replacement or second another already in nomination.

3a. Same author-multiple categories The same author may be nominated in multiple categories in a single month as long as the nominations are for different books. In the case of identical nominations, precedence will go to the first one to receive a second.

[Terris]

I like it!

[Shauna]

Sounds good!

[Tonia]

Awesome. A big thanks to the team for the time it has taking to organise this. :)

[Christine]

I like these new guidelines! Hopefully the more manageable number of choices in the polls will result in more discussion participation, and also require less moderator time to set up all those polls. Nice work, mod team! :-)

[J_BlueFlower]

Sounds good. Lets try them out. I hope it does not mean too much extra work for the moderators. Thank you for your good work.

[Darren]

I suspect this will mean a lot more seconds being declared, and a lot of tactical changing of seconds (which never happened before), so more work for the mods in keeping track, so thanking them in advance for that! :o)

[Melanti]

Darren wrote: "I suspect this will mean a lot more seconds being declared, and a lot of tactical changing of seconds (which never happened before), so more work for the mods in keeping track, so thanking them in ..."

You're welcome! Yes, we're anticipating some (a lot?) strategic switching of seconds - which is why we added rule 2A. PLEASE be very clear that you're switching your vote, and what your previous vote was for. That should help us keep things straight, especially for those members who don't have unique names.

[Francisca]

These are going to be even more exciting nomination threads! :D

And I'll add my voice to chorus of thanks to the moderators for all they do!

[Sam]

Thanks to the mods for your work on this and the group in general!

[siriusedward]

Great changes!Thanks to the moderators for all their work..

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Darren wrote: "I suspect this will mean a lot more seconds being declared, and a lot of tactical changing of seconds (which never happened before), so more work for the mods in keeping track, so thanking them in ..."

We may need plenty of help in keeping track on these. :)

[James]

If you hover your mouse over someone's username and look at the url it will show you their user ID.
(Hover over "James" above and you can see .../user/show/30503411-james so my ID is 30503411.)
It'd probably be best to use that to monitor seconds/changed seconds since going by names could get confusing for those with same or similar names.

[Brina]

Thank you moderators for these tweeks to the nominating process.

[Melanti]

James wrote: "If you hover your mouse over someone's username and look at the url it will show you their user ID.
(Hover over "James" above and you can see .../user/show/30503411-james so my ID is 30503411.)
It'..."

True, but that's a lot more work than saying "James with the red guy avatar" or "The James that voted for Dickens".

We'll see how it goes. If this increases participation in nominations a lot, we might have to use the ID#s. Previously, though, we've just had a few people with similar names each month.

[Luke]

Melanti wrote: "James wrote: "If you hover your mouse over someone's username and look at the url it will show you their user ID.
(Hover over "James" above and you can see .../user/show/30503411-james so my ID is ..."

Maybe have people do what they do in the A-Z challenge and have them mention the message number of their previous nomination/seconding when making a change? Then they help with the tracking process and you don't have to worry about usernames.

[Michele]

James wrote: "If you hover your mouse over someone's username and look at the url it will show you their user ID.
(Hover over "James" above and you can see .../user/show/30503411-james so my ID is 30503411.)"

Hm, when I hover over your name I see this:

James (PepeCarnelo) | 38 comments

If I hover over your little avatar square (userpicture), I see this:

James
184 books | 6 friends
see comment history

I wonder why I don't see it...

[Melanti]

Aubrey wrote: "Maybe have people do what they do in the A-Z challenge and have them mention the message number of their previous nomination/seconding when making a change..."

We'll see how it goes first. For now we'll just try using people's names & previous vote since we don't necessarily have to look at the previous post, just what it said. Thank you, though! That is a good suggestion.

Michele wrote: "James wrote: "If you hover your mouse over someone's username and look at the url it will show you their user ID.
(Hover over "James" above and you can see .../user/show/30503411-james so my ID is ..."

He means down in the URL area, not the title text.

[Carlo]

Much better thanks.

I had a quick question regarding the Long Read poll: Will this poll still be accepting books which have already been read? The reason I ask is because I noticed the top two this month, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair, have already been read. DC multiple times I believe. I just assumed that they would be in the Revisit poll. (sorry if this question has already been addressed previously).

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Carlo, when we first decided to have a Long Read category we discussed the oversized books on our shelf. We thought that for many people it was detracting them from other reading and took up to much time to read 600+ pages in a month. We thought it would be better to allow them an opportunity to read these oversized books, even past winners, over a three month period.

Because some of the long reads would be from our shelf and all would be read over a three month time, it was also decided that once a book had been selected for long reading it would never be eligible for future nomination. Of course, if Buddy Reading had been thought about before the long read category we might have gone in a different direction.

[Carlo]

Makes sense. Thanks Bob.

[Melanti]

Bumping to keep the thread high up on the list of recent topics.

[Francisca]

"The five books with the most seconds moves to the poll."

Just out of curiosity: what happens with ties in number of seconds?

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

How about moderator discretion

[Carlo]

Whichever book got the tied number of seconds the quickest?

[Janet]

The other groups I belong to put the other books tied for last place in the poll. If there are 3 books tied for second place they would just put in one more to make the 5 nominations. However, if the tie was for the fifth place they would put in all the books that were at that level. I do want to complement the moderators for the great job they have been doing at updating.

[Melanti]

Katy wrote: "How about moderator discretion"

To clarify - the current plan is for the moderator for a category to abstain from seconding unless a last-minute tie breaker is needed. So it's not that the moderator gets any more say than anyone else - just that what say he/she does have will get used at the last minute.

If that doesn't sufficiently break a tie, then we'll have to go with other methods - either by letting an extra book or two onto the poll, or by asking for one last second if there's a lot of books tied for fifth place.

[Mercedee]

This is a great update. Thank you moderators for making this group so dynamic and interesting! How did the voting test go? Will voting results still be viewable in the future or will they be blind?

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

The closed polling was interesting, but results are speculative, not enough information from such a small test. It may have been better to test New School which seems to have consistent high numbers of nominated books. Future polling will be viewable from start to finish and individual votes can be changed.

[Petrichor]

I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd also like to thank the moderators for all the effort they put into running this group, even more so with the new nomination rules!

[J_BlueFlower]

It is going to be interesting to see to what degree the number of seconds corresponds to the number of votes in the coming polls. Will the books have the same order after the poll? I guess not. My random guess it that it is one set of people being active in the discussions and an other - much bigger and different - set of people voting.

[J_BlueFlower]

Melanti wrote: "Katy wrote: "How about moderator discretion"

To clarify - the current plan is for the moderator for a category to abstain from seconding unless a last-minute tie breaker is needed. So it's not tha..."

I don't mind if the moderators have an extra vote/second/whatever, specially if it can ease the work.

[Melanti]

J_BlueFlower wrote: "It is going to be interesting to see to what degree the number of seconds corresponds to the number of votes in the coming polls. Will the books have the same order after the poll? I guess not. My ..."

We tend to have around 350-400 votes, so, yes - there's a lot more people who vote in polls than actively participate in discussions. That's fairly common for Goodreads, though.

[Kathleen]

I think the changes are making this very exciting!

It is frustrating that so many people vote that never participate, but this format seems the best way to put forward choices with the most interest before the voting even begins. Excellent plan, moderators. Thank you!

[J_BlueFlower]

Melanti wrote: "We tend to have around 350-400 votes, so, yes - there's a lot more people who vote in polls than actively participate in discussions. That's fairly common for Goodreads, though."

Yes, it is always like that no matter where. That was not my point. Point is that those who discuss actively and those who only vote are not the same type of people. The interesting thing is if the two groups are so different that books will switch places, or will it most of the time be the one with most second that win the vote?

[Pink]

It will also be interesting to see if we get less votes at the polls with less books to choose from. At least the ones progressing have already had lots of interest by us active members, so any winner should be a popular choice.

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

The hope of course is that the books that win will be read by many members and that the discussions will be more active.

[katie]

I think the new system makes a lot of sense, thank you to the mods for doing all this work! I appreciate you!

[Milena]

Katy wrote: "The hope of course is that the books that win will be read by many members and that the discussions will be more active."

Thank you moderators. I think you did a great job.

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

You are welcome

[Melanti]

You're welcome!

I'm glad this has seemed to go smoothly (so far),

[Michelle]

I think I’m missing it somewhere, but I am curious as to whether I may second books in different categories. For instance, may I second a book in Old School as well as New School? Or may I only choose one category each month? It doesn’t seem to specify either way and I’d like to make sure that I do not unknowingly break the rules. Thank you.

[Francisca]

Michelle wrote: "I think I’m missing it somewhere, but I am curious as to whether I may second books in different categories. For instance, may I second a book in Old School as well as New School? Or may I only cho..."

You can second or nominate (but not both) once in each of the categories. So you can second/nominate 4-5 books ever month.

[Katy, Quarterly Long Reads]

Michelle wrote: "I think I’m missing it somewhere, but I am curious as to whether I may second books in different categories. For instance, may I second a book in Old School as well as New School? Or may I only cho..."

Yes, what Francisca said.

[Michelle]

Thank you for the clarification!

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

Oh I like these rules. Everyone has the chance to have his say, and the options are endless

[Aprilleigh]

I'm guilty of being one of those people who nominate, second, and vote in the polls without participating in the discussions. I read the comments, but it's rare for me to make one. I should probably participate more, but it's usually late at night when I settle down to read the discussions so I tend to be too tired to be witty or intelligible.

[Luke]

I'd participate if the work I nominated won, as I either have already read the book or have had no interest in it, but that hasn't happened yet, so.

[Bob, Short Story Classics]

Participate at any level you are comfortable with, we don't keep records, there is no requirement to participate in discussions. Your active participation in nominations, seconds, and polling are consistent and appreciated. Read the books you think you will enjoy and comment whenever you have something say.

The most important thing is to read and have fun doing it!

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name]

I choose which books I will reread. If I remember being moved in any way, I will read it again. I may choose a different format for the second time around. My issue is that I don't think my comments are scholastic compared to some of these deep conversations that occur. But I don't really let that stop me from having my say.