Questions about SFFBC? Ask away!

[Cheryl]

No, not the search box. I'll try again to find the GR thread and copy my question there.

[Anna]

No, I meant it works the same way as the search field, meaning you can't use enter, you have to click. But I see you already figured that out in the other thread :)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Sivakumar, if you look back here, we're have a whole system for surveys. Please check "everything you need to know" and then message Anna or me!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Hey, so we have a newsletter, as some (most?) of you know. To get it, you need to either have your account set to get messages from everyone or friend the mod that sends them, which in 2021 is me, Allison.

But I know some people do not want to friend me for whatever reason, and also don't want to get messages for other (or maybe the same) reasons, and that's valid. So, my question is: are we happy with that set up, or would you like me to post in group, too?

[Jemppu]

Personally, I love receiving cleverly constructed messages from Allison. Can recommend.

[Anna]

You know how I feel about this, but here it is again:

You should absolutely post them in group!

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I don't want people either to have no escape from my ridiculousness or feel that I'm seeking...anything really, other than people to vote and join discussions, which are the real things I'm hoping to achieve every month!

[Anna]

I’m not saying stop the DMs but a thread would reach more people, specifically those who join after the 1st or who don’t even know their settings are preventing them from receiving it.

Also much easier for all of us to talk about your brilliant newsletters if they’re in a thread! I can do the posting with mod, just let me 😄 (Yes I have a very link heavy idea for it already 😜)

[Nicol]

My two cents: I love reading them (nerd alert: I look forward each month to see how you’re going to play into the monthly picks) and think everyone should have the chance to!

[Faith]

I didn't know there was a newsletter. I don't want/read messages, but I do look at many posts in the group.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Well, shucks! Okay, we can make a thread for folks to follow!

[Janelle]

I agree with Nicol! I always enjoy your messages, Allison.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

well thanks! but i don't want folks to feel obligated to do this haha I can only blush so hard. I'm glad the newsletter is something nicer than junk though!

[DivaDiane]

I third or fourth the love of Allison’s Newsletters and am glad to see you did decide to post for everyone to enjoy!

[Melanie, the neutral party]

We can critique them ... comment on them if you also post in a thread. You know how we love our opinions.

[YouKneeK]

Well, I’ll just pretend you all didn’t already make this decision without me (the nerve!) and say that I think it’s an awesome idea to post the newsletter in a group thread. ;)

Everybody has a slightly different approach to social-media-ish things, and different comfort levels with how much they share and connect. I think it’s great to give people a chance to see the work of art you call a newsletter even if they don’t want to accept messages from random strangers or befriend the (not so) scary Allison. People can ignore it, follow it, or casually read it when it catches their attention as they choose.

Edited to fix a typo.

[Sarah]

I'm curious- does anyone have a good way of telling if a book is available internationally? (For example in nominations and such- I'd hate to nominate something that was going to exclude members from participating if they wanted).

[Anna]

VPN pretty much. Or sometimes a private window, not logged into Amazon/Audible search will work, and in the Apple store you can change the country.

Also, since I'm not in the US, google searches like "BookName Scribd" will give me a link to the book on Scribd (available in US), and it'll say not available in my country, but I can't go to Scribd and search (without VPN), because it'll look like it's not on there. Same works for Audible US. But for other countries, I have to (again, not logged in) go to that country's Audible/Amazon and search.

[Sarah]

Anna wrote: "VPN pretty much. Or sometimes a private window, not logged into Amazon/Audible search will work, and in the Apple store you can change the country.

Also, since I'm not in the US, google searches l..."

thanks! I don't have a VPN but I was able to check alternate country amazon sites.

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

We could have a thread for checking international availability, no?

[CBRetriever]

and there have been some that were not available in digital format for US residents too: Cage of Souls for example. I was lucky enough to be able to purchase it on my amazon.fr account in Kindle format. Paper versions were available, but I'm not sure if libraries had them and the price was pretty high for even a used "good" copy on amazon.com

[Anna]

Ryan wrote: "We could have a thread for checking international availability, no?"

We could! Normally for mod polls Allison and I do a spot check in a couple of countries, and for themed polls we trust that people won't vote for something that's not available for them, so that those that voted for the winning book should be able to read it.

[Bonnie]

Allison wrote: "I don't want people either to have no escape from my ridiculousness or feel that I'm seeking...anything really, other than people to vote and join discussions, which are the real things I'm hoping ..."

Allison is quitting this job and going to Substack. So transparent, wants us to subscribe she can monetize GR modhood
;-)

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

lol!

[Bonnie]

Is there an ongoing thread to suggest to / provide ideas for / moderators, SFF titles that might be appropriate for Mod-Curated polls?

Occasionally I run across books I wouldn't "To Read" on my own, but think ~hmm, looks like something the group might like~ and I wonder if there is a place to send them.

Maybe you guys have too many options already, and wouldn't want that because it makes more work! Or maybe one exists already that I haven't seen.
Just wondering.

[Bonnie]

P.S. I wasn't thinking it would necessitate a reply, just an idea queue for when y'all are trawling for Mod Poll noms.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

that's not really an area we need much more inspiration with but thank you!

[Ryan, Your favourite moderators favourite moderator]

Bonnie wrote: "Is there an ongoing thread to suggest to / provide ideas for / moderators, SFF titles that might be appropriate for Mod-Curated polls?

Occasionally I run across books I wouldn't "To Read" on my ow..."

Buddy reads aren't an option? We're pretty good at taking note of books mentioned in all the groups threads. We don't have a tbr mountain, but a small moon with it's own gravity at this point.

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

Can we get the TBR cleanup challenge as a public challenge on StoryGraph? I'd create it myself, but I think it should be on the SFFBC account instead of my personal account. That way, SFFBC members with StoryGraph accounts can join and we can look at the books others add to the challenge for inspiration.
(Here's a random challenge to show what it would look like: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading... )

(And to not add to the mod's workload too much, I volunteer to create the challenge, I guess there's nothing on that account that I could destroy and you can just change the password afterwards.)

[Anna]

I was planning on adding all the challenges this year, but ended up not doing it because I wasn't sure how many people actively use it. But yes, I can totally do that! Not today though, but this week should be doable :)

[Anna]

Actually, now that I think about it, creating the challenge is a great way to see how many SFFBCers use TSG :) Or at least how many of us who participate in the challenge.

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

Awesome, thank you!

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

Anna wrote: "Actually, now that I think about it, creating the challenge is a great way to see how many SFFBCers use TSG :) Or at least how many of us who participate in the challenge."

You're right, it is. But I think there are no notifications when accounts you follow post new challenges (I'll check and tell you), so you should probably share the link somewhere in here as well - so people know it's there.

[Anna]

Yeah I was going to anyway! :)

You know what, challenge created! XD I didn't make it public yet, I don't know if we need to, since (for now) it's only for people who also use GR (or they wouldn't be in SFFBC), and they can (soon, after I post this) find the link in the TBRC thread. I'll make the 2023 challenge(s) public.

Here it is!

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading...

Any other challenges you want added? :)

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

Thanks! :)

I'm not doing any other challenges right now, but I think some of the ones we did would be cool to make public for others who are interested in doing them by themselves or at a later point.

[Anna]

I can make this one public too, I just thought let's see how it goes first.

[Anna]

Oh! Did you want it public so that people can see it in your profile? That makes sense.

(You're doing SO many challenges! :D)

I'll make it public, let's see if they think it's weird with prompts like "???".

edit: Seems to have gone through fine, it's public now.

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

No, I don't mind if it's public or not. I'm just doing it for myself.

But I didn't get a notification when you created the challenge or when you set it to public. I think I'll post a request to get notified about new challenges by accounts I follow.

[DivaDiane]

I saw that the challenge was posted in some fashion. Not a notification per se, but when I opened TSG it popped up.

I like how it marks the prompt complete when you mark the book read in 2022.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

oh that's a nice seratonin boost

[Ines, Resident Vampire]

I like how there have been already 60 books added to the challenge, that makes browsing fun.

[Raucous]

Ines wrote: "I like how there have been already 60 books added to the challenge, that makes browsing fun."

I'm enjoying that part of TSG's challenge interface as well. I've mostly finished this challenge, but if I were earlier on this would be giving me some great ideas for choices. It's still interesting to see what others picked (especially for "???").

[Anna]

Yeah I love this part of TSG, too. I was going to add all my books yesterday, but I decided to do a full import from GR first. It's done now, I'll be adding my books to the challenge sometime today, and then I'll take a good look at what others have added.

Let's continue our TSG related chat in that thread! :)
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

To address recent questions and concerns:

Question: What's up with the content warnings? What do they do and how do you pick them?

Answer:

Great question. tl;dr, these are big topics that cause many people a significant amount of psychological or emotional distress. When the mods are reading a book on the shelf, we try to think of everything someone with a panic disorder would need to know to protect themselves while reading.

In more detail, content warnings are big bucket topics that commonly cause feelings of anxiety or even panic in people. Whether it be a phobia, a trauma response or related to a medical condition, these are things like war or car crashes that we can assume, from data, many people find hard to cope with in a healthy and emotionally or even physically safe way. As the mods read the books, we try to flag as many topics as possible that might fall into these big buckets of anxiety-producing topics.

Occasionally, individuals will share new-to-us topics that cause them severe distress. We try to keep those in mind as well, as it's brave to share with someone on the internet that something makes you vulnerable, and we want to honor that, as well as reduce harm to our membership.

These are NOT issues that may offend or that we find "immoral." Offense and morality are highly individual and not for us to dictate or define. We mods are human, but we do try not to force any of our personal beliefs or dislikes on anyone else--for example, the war may be justified or not, accurate to a time and people or not, that is not our concern when we formulate content warnings. Please note our Group Harassment Policy for more on the topic of creating an inclusive space.

These are also not "Trigger warnings" as those are also very personal and inconsistent. For example, a car crash is "content" that may cause people to have a panic attack. However, for a specific individual, perhaps the car crash alone isn't the issue, the thing that really causes them panic is "driving in the snow". This would require that the person giving the warning have intimate personal knowledge of someone's fears or disorders, and is not sustainable for a group of this size. (Though as always, you can message a mod directly for specific trigger warnings and we'll be quick to oblige!) While it may not explicitly help the person with a "driving in snow" trigger, the fact that there's a car crash allows them to know that the driving in this book ends badly, no matter the weather, and they can adjust their mindset to accommodate.

Furthermore, the existence of any specific content will not in and of itself stop a book from appearing in a poll. It is not our aim to avoid difficult topics, but we do wish to reduce the harm these might cause by giving affected readers a heads up so that they can judge their own mental state, and engage in any practices which will help them consume the content safely.

[DivaDiane]

Thanks, Allison. While I don’t have any particular triggers or psychological/medical/physical reason why a particular event might cause me to think again about reading it, I do appreciate the content warnings, because I’m not a big fan of most horror tropes and sometimes the blurb is not enough.

I love you guys for being so conscientious and for doing your best to create an open and comfortable place for people to be.

Hurrah for our mods!!

[CBRetriever]

DivaDiane wrote: "Thanks, Allison. While I don’t have any particular triggers or psychological/medical/physical reason why a particular event might cause me to think again about reading it, I do appreciate the conte..."

Horror is a no go for me too. I don't like that genre in books or movies

[Beth]

The content warnings are helpful. While horror is fairly neutral for me, body horror is often a no-go and I appreciate that it's on the list of CWs.

[Michelle]

I always look through the TWs. I can't read horror, or books with suicide or physical abuse. We're all triggered by different things. For the reverse, I try to remember to mention in my reviews those books that are clean as a whistle, since some people look for this, too.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Thanks all! You are not obligated to share content that upsets you with the group. We'll continue doing the best we can!

[Mel]

Adding my thanks to those above for all the consideration and intention to make this a safe space for everyone. I also use the Content Warnings, since I can only take some dark subjects in small doses. I like to know if I'm going to be engaging with certain content, that I'm in the right headspace for it, or would rather hold off until later, or entirely.

Also appreciate the reassurance that no one needs to share personal information. Just wanted to add support, showing there are different reasons why people appreciate them.

And you! Thank you for all you do!