Questions about SFFBC? Ask away!

[Anna]

I just added a new topic with all the current and upcoming group reads and happenings. I will keep it updated, so it can be your first stop for all things SFFBC.

Go check it out, let me know how it could be better!

Also, if you ave any questions about how something in the group works, or any general comments about SFFBC, this is the right place to ask! Do read Everything you need to know first, to see if your question is already answered there.

Have a question about Goodreads in general? Ask in Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads?

[Gabi]

This is a brilliant idea, Anna! Thank you so much for your effort to make things easier for us!

[Anna]

Thanks Gabi! I've been wanting to do something like this since I became a mod, but the way I was originally going to do it didn't work on the iOS app, so I gave up. This isn't as sophisticated convoluted, but I'm hoping it'll help!

Any ideas about what other things should be there, or if it's too messy, or anything, are welcome!

[Chris]

Looks good! Thanks!

[Cheryl]

Wow, thank you!

[M.L.]

The Author section disappeared from the main page. It's currently 'hidden.' Is it coming back? :)

[Gabi]

M.L. wrote: "The Author section disappeared from the main page. It's currently 'hidden.' Is it coming back? :)"

It's still there with me (desktop version)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I think topics fall off the main page...we can only show a set number of topics at a time. I don't remember doing anything that would have altered the display, but we'll look into it!

In the meantime, if you click "more discussions" it should still show for you :)

[M.L.]

Thanks, I see it! :)

[Victoria]

Just a general question, is there a poll to vote best books of the year from the ones read during that year? I would like to see which ones we've enjoyed most. Also I would be curious as to which were least enjoyed, but a worse book poll seems too unpleasant to even be suggested :)

[Anna]

That was done in 2015:

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

I'm not sure I love having it as a poll, though. This way you can only vote for one, but in reality there are probably a few that stand out, and a few you absolutely hated, so it makes more sense to me to do it discussion style.

[Anthony]

Anna wrote: "That was done in 2015:

Sci-Fi & Fantasy

I'm not sure I love having it as a poll, though. This way you can only vote for one, but in reality there are probably a few that stand out, and a few you ..."

Will there be a discussion thread for this, then?

[Anna]

Yes!

[Anthony]

Woot!

[Gaia]

hi can I be in this group even if I don't read a book per month and I don't do challenges?

[Dawn F]

As far as I have understood there is no obligation to do anything at all. You can even lurk if that’s what you want to do :)

[Anna]

Yes, I just replied to you in the other thread. Everyone is welcome to use the group how they see fit, as long as any rules aren't broken :) So dive in and see what interests you!

[Gaia]

Anna wrote: "Yes, I just replied to you in the other thread. Everyone is welcome to use the group how they see fit, as long as any rules aren't broken :) So dive in and see what interests you!"

Thanks. I'll be careful thou sometimes I make mistakes. Oh, how do I hide spoilers btw?

[Anna]

How to use spoiler tags:



Click on "(some html is ok)" in the top right corner of the text box (on desktop version) as you're typing your post to copy/paste the code. Or go to this help page if you're not on the desktop version.

[Gaia]

thanks. Last thing: I feel I should tell you to be fair. Please do not ban me. I often buy books but some are not available in my country so I am forced to read them on sites online when I can't buy them. Hope that is ok?

[Anna]

We can't police how you read your books, but we obviously don't allow or encourage any piracy here.

[Sara]

At the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, where do we find the 1 fantasy and 1 science fiction book chosen for the month? What are the two we are reading for October?

[Sara]

Never mind, I figured it out!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

No worries, Sara! Navigating is a bit difficult on the app particularly.

We're reading Babel-17 and The Traitor Baru Cormorant! You can see it on the front page of the group on the website under "Currently Reading" just below the welcome. Next to that we post next month's books on or around the 16th of the preceding month :) Welcome!! Hope you can join in!

ETA: Oh, good!!

[CBRetriever]

I don't participate in very many myself as I've never done a monthly book read and only participated in a couple of group reads. It's not a requirement to participate in the forum

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Rose wrote: "I don't know if anyone is responding to this anymore but I do have a question. Are we allowed to skip a month's book read? And what are the group reads?"

What CBRetriever said! You are definitely allowed to skip any books you want! The group reads are always posted on the home page for the group. Next month's read goes up on or about the 16th of the preceding month (and can be watched from the polls if you'd like).

This month we're reading The Song of Achilles and Rosewater. In December 2018 we're reading Jade City and China Mountain Zhang.

[Kaa]

Is discussion on personal threads in the Challenges folder limited to the group challenges, or could I also keep track of my Ursula Le Guin challenge there (in addition to the group challenges)?

[Anna]

Feel free to track whatever you like, no restrictions!

[Beth]

I went into my personal 2018 challenges thread to try and change the topic name, and didn't see any way to do it. Would I need to add a new thread if I wanted to set one up with an ongoing/generic title? (If so I'll just do that at the beginning of 2019. Thanks!)

[Anna]

There should be a link that says "(edit)" at the top, next to the thread title.

[Beth]

So there is. Fixed, thanks! Age/poor eyesight can be credited for my not seeing that itty-bitty text.

[Anna]

It helps when you know it's there :D

[Cheryl]

I hope this can be for questions about GR, too. I want to ask here because this is biggest and best group and I'm uncomfortable in Feedback.

So, I need help organizing my bookshelves. If you take a peek, you'll see that they're big. And so far my organization tags have to do with Availability to-read. Once a book is Read, that's (usually) the only tag it has. It's worked fine for years, but I've finally decided I need to be smart like you people.

I really really want to be able to find books on my shelves by intended age range, by subject matter, by theme, etc. etc. so I can help ppl with recommendations (and for other related reasons).

So, maybe I get started by deciding what tags I need? Or how do you advise I start? Am I going to be finding out how to use "bulk edit" - ? What other advice can you give me?

(Mods, if you want this to be in a different thread I'll gladly move it.)

[Anna]

Take a look at what people have said in the Shelving! thread, maybe you'll get some ideas?

(I know you've already seen it, but in case there's an older post with good ideas.)

[Becky]

Cheryl wrote: "Am I going to be finding out how to use "bulk edit" - ?"

Bulk edit isn't terribly difficult to use, but it can take a little getting used to. I used it last night to clear out a couple hundred books from my TBR that I am no longer interested in, and it gave me an error... but the books still deleted. Fun.

My main suggestions here would be 1) EXPORT FIRST! This way, you have a record of what you had if you need it, and can try to recreate if something goes wrong.
2) take care that the action you're doing is the one you intend - the links to "Remove books from this shelf" and "Remove books from ALL shelves" are right next to each other. So make sure you click wisely, as there's no undo if you remove from all shelves. You'd have to add the books again entirely.

I have used a placeholder shelf for books that I want to shift around in the past. Move them all there, and then sort accordingly. It's easier to keep track that way for me, if I'm making a lot of changes. (Unfortunately, all shelving changes are now recorded on the review page, so that's fun. Grrr...)

Do you/are you planning to use additional exclusive shelves? I usually deal with exclusive shelvings separately from "tag" shelvings - it's just easier that way for me.

Good luck!

[Beth]

Becky wrote: "(Unfortunately, all shelving changes are now recorded on the review page, so that's fun. Grrr...)"

Shelving changes will also show up on your profile page on a seemingly random basis, which I just hate. I remove the ones I catch but that isn't a satisfactory fix for an obnoxious algorithm. Grrr, indeed!

[Cheryl]

Thank you. I had forgotten about that other thread. I'm going to copy my question over there because I'm greedy for even more advice.

Becky, I think my exclusive shelves are going to be fine the way they are, at least for the foreseeable future. I'm just going to try to add a bunch of tagged shelves.

Beth, I don't understand. I almost never look at my profile page, or at other people's. Do you think I'll be inflicting my friends with lots of notifications, or something like that?

[Cheryl]

So, new questions.

Have we ever had a BotM theme of Non-Fiction? Could we?

Also, could we have Short-Story collections more often?

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Do you mean something like books about the genres? We've tried to incorporate more analysis and reaction pieces to what we read as added interest and I've loved that. I'm not sure nonfic about the genre is in the same spirit as reading within the genre. If you brought it up in the themes thread and lots of people were interested though, we'd absolutely consider it.

Short stories...we definitely want to have something for that. Our problem is the full discussion thread. If we wait the usual week, the earlier stories might not get the right amount of love. If we open it immediately, anyone who's read it before the thread opens can spoil stories for everyone so there still won't be discussion.

The only workarounds we can think of is to break tradition entirely and have spoiler tags in the full discussion thread thereby pissing off our mobile-users, or have full discussion threads for each of the stories, which breaks the rule and is quite cumbersome.

Anyone have different ideas about that or thoughts on those suggestions?

[Anna]

I'd love to continue the theme related discussion in the Give Us Your Themes! thread.

[Richard]

Hi, Moderators one and all,

Thank you so much for organizing my posts and my history information for my reading. You saved my life, my sanity (already on shaky ground), and my health - ready to ask for the organ donors to take my up on my brain excavation. I really thought I had lost a lot of hard work and heavily detailed information. You saved my sanity, my heart, and my demeanor. My sweet wife thanks you all as well. Good job all the way around!!! Thanks again!!!

Richard W. Buro
From Deep in the Heart of the Great Lone Star State

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Glad it was all sorted for you, Richard!

[Beige]

I have a basic newbie question.... The discussion threads are different from what I'm used to. I'm used to commenting as I read with chapter #s and spoiler tags. I want to respect this groups rules, so to confirm, do I just wait until I'm finished reading and then comment in the spoiler thread? Thx.

[Anna]

Yes, for the official group reads, which are listed on the group homepage, we have a non spoilery initial thoughts discussion, and then a spoilery one that opens a week later. We also do buddy reads, where we use the style you described, with spoiler tags. The reason we don't use spoiler tags in the official group discussions, is that (iOS) app users can't see them at all.

[Beige]

Anna wrote: "Yes, for the official group reads, which are listed on the group homepage, we have a non spoilery initial thoughts discussion, and then a spoilery one that opens a week later. We also do buddy read..."

Ahh. Thanks for explaining. Yeah, I never use the app. I use the desktop version on my iPhone. It's small, but the zoom function works well :)

[Anna]

Beige, I do the same thing! I can't stand the app.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

The app is the ruiner of worlds!! Anna, did I tell you that cute thing it does now where I can't comment on threads in the Android app?

But anyways, yes. We have the kludgiest of systems with a "be completely vague please" thread and a "okay, this is going to sit here and gnaw at you until you can read spoilers for the end" thread. It's the best we can do with GR as it is, but aside from a few disagreements about what a spoiler is, it seems to keep the most people engaged without fear of spoiling that we've been able to manage.

[Anna]

Allison wrote: "The app is the ruiner of worlds!! Anna, did I tell you that cute thing it does now where I can't comment on threads in the Android app?"

No! :o Get rid of the useless thing!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Yeah, yeah...it's just loads faster and is good for logging my book progress. Neither here nor there!

[Anna]

(I also have the app on my phone, but don't tell anyone. I never open it though, it just tells me when I have notifications I might want to look at ... on the desktop site.)