First book poll and timing, this folder, etc.

[William]

I thought I'd make a folder so we could not only gather good ideas from others, but make it a little easier to communicate between leader and mods. If that's a problem, we can of course remove it.

So I think the poll for what book next should happen pretty soon, but mostly because of Christmas/Holidays will get people pretty busy, and we want to leave the poll open a while before closing it, and still have time for people to get their hands on the book. So perhaps start within the next 1-7 days? Finish when, Dec 21-24? I'm just throwing it out there. Also, are we picking 1 or 2 books for January? How long are we going to read it? Are we going to discuss it by chapters (providing it has numbered chapters) like a thread for chap. 1-10 and another for 11-20 sort of thing? I'd imagine that would depend greatly on the length and numbering of the book, but I guess the choice is discuss parts and then the whole, or just the whole once people are done? It's sorta fun to talk about it along the way, I think.

Anyway, I'll be interested in what everybody else thinks!

[William]

I was playing with polls, and they're nicely customizable, with the ability to randomly order the choices, and to hide results til the end if you like, and everything is editable, so you can change options whenever you like.

[Deborah]

I like the idea of hidden results.

I participate on a writing site where there's voting on the best writing of the week. The truth is, I know that my vote often goes to something I feel bad isn't getting more votes, rather than the thing I might actually want to vote for.

[William]

lol! That's extremely sweet of you, but your point is excellent, I like the idea of hidden results as well.

[Logophile]

We've got TONS of nominations now, and enough people for some good discussions, so I think we should start a poll for a group read (or two) ASAP. I sort of like the idea of two books, as long as nobody (including me!) feels obligated to read them both. Two books makes it more likely we'll be reading at least one book folks haven't already read or aren't interested in. Hidden voting is fine by me (I tend to want to avoid creating a tie, so I'll vote for something other than my first pick if it would tie the votes!)

Will, I leave it in your capable hands to decide what to put in the poll and all those logistics. We probably won't want to include ALL the nominations this time around though, will we? Every book might only get one or two votes if we do! Or maybe we could split them between a January poll and a February poll, so everyone will have plenty of time to see what's coming up next.

[William]

I'll get right on it boss!
Re poll size
Well, looking around some other clubs, they seem to do alright with large numbers of nominations per poll, and I'd hate to feel like I was marginalizing somebody's choice by making an editorial decision to hold back somebody's nominations. Plus, the list can roll over to some extent, perhaps we should remove some bottom number of books, and add the new nominations to the top half of the previous month's nominations to compose the new month's list. I'll begin right away, REMEMBER I can always change the settings of the poll, so I'll set it for a week's length, hidden results.

[William]

So my thoughts are to select two from this month, as Logophile suggested, and take the top vote getting books NOT selected this month and roll them into next month's nominations, where people can then add ONE book to the list per person (I think if you want to nominate the same book every month that's fine with me!)

All these thoughts are of course subject to change as desired by our members!

[Logophile]

Thanks for getting the poll up so quickly, Will. Took me a while to read all the book descriptions so as to make an informed decision!