2015 Reading Challenge [Closed] discussion

I've loved seeing the amount of interest in participating next year and I know that I'm getting excited to begin a new challenge.

The creation of the 2016 RC is well underway and there are also a few threads talking about potential names and whether or not we should create a new group.

In the spirit of making the group and the challenge a true reflection of everyone's interests and ideas, I think it would be fun and interesting to start taking general ideas for how to improve for next year. Obviously, it's already an awesome group and I've really enjoyed the challenge but there's always room for growth :)

I know that it's a little early but I want there to be an area for brainstorming, allowing people to share ideas as they come.

Some food for thought:
How could the group be even better?
Is there anything that you would enjoy doing next year?
Are there any changes that you would like to see?

I would like 1 monthly book for the group (or 2, so people have choice).
Maybe some short challenges too.

I was thinking something similar :)

Do you think it should be pulled from one of the challenges that month or totally independent?

I've seen quite a few smaller challenges in other groups so that could be really fun!

I think it would be fun to start a games folder. I've seen it work in a couple other groups like the "would you rather" or "to the person above me" or "turn it up or turn it down", and then of course book titles based off the last letter of the book above you.

I second Zaz's suggestion of a monthly book or maybe a group book every 3 months if people don't want to do one every month!!

Brittany wrote: "I think it would be fun to start a games folder. I've seen it work in a couple other groups like the "would you rather" or "to the person above me" or "turn it up or turn it down", and then of cour..."

I agree, Brittany! Did you get them from Crazy for YA? Because I'm on there all the time and wow, they really make things fun and the members get to know each other a lot better!

Brittany wrote: "I think it would be fun to start a games folder. I've seen it work in a couple other groups like the "would you rather" or "to the person above me" or "turn it up or turn it down", and then of cour..."

I also agree! I think a games folder would be really fun and I think it would be a good way of bringing members of the group together in ways that are probably slightly more inclusive than discussions on specific books. Not that the book discussions are not all inclusive but I think sometimes if some people haven't read that certain book or aren't reading it with others then they don't have a lot of discussions with certain members so this is a way of bringing more members together.

Also, as well as all the game's that Brittany suggested, we could also have the occasional thing where we have categories and have to pick book characters for them (I haven't explained this well at all) like when we had the read-a-thon and we had the topic of 'who would be in your zombie apocalypse group' and we had the subheadings for each member and we chose book characters based off that. I really enjoy things like that and thought it was fun.

Since a lot of people jump around the challenge, maybe next year it could be cool to create all the folders in the beginning? It would be a lot of work (happy to help if needed!), but then people could talk about their books while reading them and not months after.

I'd definitely like to have all of the folders created at the start too - I think there are more than enough jumpers to make it worthwhile. :)

I agree, I think having all the folders from the start would make it easier for people to have more discussions and it means the jumpers don't have to come back to ones they've already read to add to the conversation or to add their progress post on it. It would be a lot of work initially, but once they're all up the moderators (or whoever volunteers to help) won't have to worry about them for the rest of the year.

One problem with all the folders available is that some people will post at the same time all their books planed, so they'll probably be less active all along the year.
But I agree, it's better for the jumpers so it's probably a good idea :)

I am a jumper and could be great to have all of the folders since the beginning, however I can see a problem.

I am in another group with the same challenge and they posted all the folders from the beginning, but the problem was the follow up of the threads, what I loved with this group was how each week we got new questions and new suggestions according the number of week/category. It could be great that all the folders were posted from the beginning as long as the weekly follow up can be done as it is now.

For the Progress Posts, they will be answered only when the book is read so we'll have some reading/participation for them during all the year, even if the topics are posted at the beginning of the year :)

I like the monthly, or every 3 months group book idea, too.

On how to categorize that book, we can just leave it to the members to stick it in any category where it fits (since most aren't reading in order anyway) or not put it in a category at all and make it a side-read. That way, there's still a lot of flexibility.

I like the ideas about the games!

Also, what I've noticed is that while the folder option is a good way to see what the others are reading and to get ideas, the potential for discussion about a book is not really fulfilled. The same book is perhaps posted in several different folders, so it means there are several small discussions instead of one, big one that could be active all year. People who read the book are not all able to discuss it together because you don't go looking for it in other folders. It would be fun to be able to have an ongoing discussion about a book even though someone read it months ago. Some discussions are very short and inactive, and these might benefit the most from combining all the small discussions. Since I also read out of order, I have hesitated to participate in discussions that were posted months ago as I feel I'm late and won't get any feedback, and so having one big discussion might mean that there are always people joining in :P
So one solution might be to have author folders instead (one folder for each letter) and in order to keep track of the topics we make a list for each topic where everyone should post their choice for the week? Not sure how those work though, maybe someone has a better idea..?

Oh and of course thanks for all your good work this year mods :)

Elín Birna wrote: "I like the ideas about the games!

Also, what I've noticed is that while the folder option is a good way to see what the others are reading and to get ideas, the potential for discussion about a bo..."

This never crossed my mind, but now that you mention it, it sounds like a great idea! I'd vote for it.

Having only one topic for a book which will be read at different times in the year can be a bad solution if you want discussion. People will join it only when they finish the book (to avoid spoilers) so they probably won't discuss it more later. And it will be difficult to really see what the others are reading for each week and maybe change the book or add one to the reading list.
Otherwise, I agree, having several topics for one book is not the best, but for the moment I'm not sure there is a different option. Other groups for the popsugar reading challenge work in other ways and the last time I checked, the discussions were not better than here.

I like Elín Birna's suggestion. I think there's a lot of topics without any real discussion because maybe only one person is reading the book for that specific week.
If you participate in a discussion, you get notifications when there's a new comment in the thread, and that makes it easy to go back and join the discussion later.

And when it comes to seeing what others a reading, I think you can find lots of inspiration in the folder with the reading lists.

I like Elín's suggestion too, and I think if we can work out a way to have them organised well, there would be a lot more discussion on the books.

I like this idea of a single topic per book. And to see what people are reading each week we could make better use of the progress posts.

Nobody chose/changed his/her book(s) after looking in the folders at what other members wanted to read or read for this week?

I was thinking that we could have a single thread under each week - a "What I'm Reading" thread where people can post their book for the week. That way, everyone can look in the thread and see a list of the books that people have chosen for the week (just in a different format). And then we could have folders for each letter for the books (titles or authors) - I do think that a single thread for each book would encourage more discussion, as long it's set out in the right way ... just not entirely sure what that way is!

I know that there is always more room for discussion. I also notice that I slack on progress posts because it seems repetitive with how I currently use them: posting my thoughts in the book's thread for the week, my plan, and progress posts.

So I tried to take the feedback that I've seen and build a new design, which would create somewhat of a timeline with the postings:

Mod Corner
- One Thread: mod suggestions for finding a book for each week (currently in weekly intros); one post per week
2016 Plans
- Your general plan for the year, with the option of "journaling" in the comments
Progress Posts
- One thread for each week of the year
- Comment with: "What are you starting this week?" (challenge week specified), allowing people to get ideas or just check in with others
A-Z by Title
- Threads created for each letter, with posts for each book in appropriate thread

This is definitely not set in stone but is just an idea. Please comment whether you like or dislike it, allowing for an informal poll.

I like this design Laura.

I like it too:)

I like it.

I'm not sure about the A-Z though. Would it make a big difference if it's a folder per letter instead of bunching all the books in one big folder?

I'm almost certain you'd need A-Z folders, otherwise it would be really difficult to find if a book already has a thread, as the threads won't be in alphabetical order, but in order of most recently commented on to least.

Laura, this design is very good, I'm sure it will foster discussion, while leaving the opportunity for everyone to change their planned books if they see something good...

I like your suggestions Laura! Especially the progress posts for each week can provide an overview of where people are in the challenge and what they are reading.
But I'm with Jody on the need to be able to quickly/easily find the threads (which will be hard if they automatically rank from most recently active to least active and not in alphabetical order), otherwise we will have duplicates anyway.

Zaz wrote: "Nobody chose/changed his/her book(s) after looking in the folders at what other members wanted to read or read for this week?"

I get what you mean Zaz. I have used the folders to get ideas on what to read, but I think there must be more ways to do it. Like Laura's idea about a thread on each topic. We could also add a listopia-list for each topic, or utilize the group shelves more, and use that as inspiration on what people are reading by having one shelf per week. It looks like it contains some books, but I guess most people haven't added their books there.

I think it's a great suggestion Laura!
And I think it's a good idea with the A-Z folder. It's going to be chaotic if the books aren't categorized in some way, so this is a great solution.

I'm not sure how the shelves thing work in groups. Is it possible to create different shelves for each week/topic? If it is, then the idea of using them more and that way make it easy to find inspiration for a certain week sounds really good.

I tried to make the overview as clear as possible but I did mean to have one thread for each letter. So no worries there :)

The threads would be something like

Mod Corner
2016 Plans
Progress Posts
Off-Topic
Fun/Games
Read-a-Thons
A
- Book
* Comments
- Book
* Comments
B
C
...

Laura wrote: "I tried to make the overview as clear as possible but I did mean to have one thread for each letter. So no worries there :)

The threads would be something like

Mod Corner
2016 Plans
Progress Po..."

I thought that was probably what you meant. I really like the look of that plan! That sounds really good!

I like this idea a lot too. The solution with the A-Z folders is great.

Jody wrote: "I'm almost certain you'd need A-Z folders, otherwise it would be really difficult to find if a book already has a thread, as the threads won't be in alphabetical order, but in order of most recentl..."

Oh yeah, listing by recent activity is the default, but I usually click on the "topics" part of the folder to rank them alphabetically instead, so I didn't really see the problem. Yeah, I guess it would be neater that way.

Unfortunately you can't do that when you use the app - you're stuck with the default.

The poll for the folders organization ended so the winner is... A to Z. It's probably more convenient for discussions so we'll see if it works well. For those reading in order, we'll add a line in the header to say which week we are currently reading ;)

Since we're doing alphabetical next year it would be nice to have a folder for the weekly progress updates. I don't know if that would be overkill, but it could be good to have a place where we can talk as a group about a specific week.

Yes, there will be a "progress posts" folder :)