Science and Inquiry discussion

This is a thread where we can discuss how nominations for the monthly group read can be improved.

This comment was posted by CatReader in the April 2024 Nominations thread:

"Would it be worthwhile going forward to encourage people to nominate books that they've either finished reading or are currently reading and enjoying? There are a few reasons I'm asking:

"1. I've noticed a lot of months lately where there's very little book discussion in the winning book's thread, not even by the person who nominated the book. There are some cases I've observed where even the person who nominated the winning book still doesn't appear to have read the book (or at least not logged it in Goodreads).

"2. If a group member has already read or is reading their nomination, then they would have a good sense of whether the book is accessible to our general audience, i.e., suitable for both science-curious laypeople and the scientists in our group alike. I've noticed we've had some winning books in the last year or so that are highly technical and require a pretty advanced knowledge base to appreciate. This issue would be largely obviated if the group member had read the book and discerned it would likely be audience-appropriate.

"(I've personally always nominated books I've already read or am reading, and I try to be active in the discussion thread if my book wins. I would love more active discussions from this group.)"

This was my reply to CatReader in the April 2024 Nominations thread:

"CatReader wrote: "Would it be worthwhile going forward to encourage people to nominate books that they've either finished reading or are currently reading and enjoying?"

"Interesting suggestions. I'd be interested to see what other members think.

"I hate to put more restrictions on nominations, since we're already having trouble getting enough. I belong to a different group where one of the requirements for making a nomination is that you must make at least one comment if your nomination is selected. It seems a reasonable requirement, but that group has a lot of trouble getting even one or two nominations each month. I don't know if that requirement is the reason for the lack of nominations, but it scares me.

"Yes, I'd like to see more discussion too. And I really appreciate your efforts toward that end."

I remember that I nominated a book shortly after joining this group, years ago. The book looked like a fascinating combination of mathematics with linguistics, geography, literature and art. The book became the "book of the month" and I was thrilled.

Then I read the book. It was absolutely the worst book I had ever read. Since then, I rarely nominate books -- unless I have read the book and could honestly give it 5 stars.

So it does gall me that many people who nominate books don't even bother to read them! I think they should lead the discussions, since they obviously have an interest in their nominated books!

I feel like my time is precious. There are many fantastic books out there. So I don't want to waste my time reading a book that is less than excellent.

Thank you Betsy and David!

I understand your concern about raising the barrier to entry too high, Betsy. But at the same time, a nominator is much more likely to feel enthusiastic and inclined to discuss their chosen book if they've already read (or are currently reading) it. I worry that our nominations have too low of a barrier to entry and thus are aspirational vs. intentional.

For what it's worth, I went back to the nomination threads for January 2024 and November 2023 (I skipped December 2023 as there weren't many nominations that month, and Betsy's poll included books from prior months to fill out the ballot). For January 2024, of 10 nominations, 5 books have been read by their nominators and logged into Goodreads as of today, and the other 5 have not. For November 2023, out of 11 nominations, only 3 books have been read by their nominators and logged into Goodreads to date, and the other 8 nominations have not.

Maybe there's another way in this group to capture science-related books that look interesting and may be worth reading, besides our monthly nomination poll. I'm always looking out for books like this personally, and I have in the past read books that I've learned about through others' nominations in this group (and used the prior book-of-the-month shelf from before I joined the group as a way to discover new-to-me books).

For a while several years ago, I asked anyone who nominated a book to lead the discussion. It wasn't too difficult. They had to commit to read the book and post a brief review, and maybe post one or two questions about the book to hopefully stimulate discussion. It wasn't very successful. Of course, there was no way to enforce it, and most people ignored it.

Would you consider trying out one month where you stipulate that we can only nominate books we've read, and before you accept someone's nomination, in addition to the usual criteria, you verify that they've logged the book they're nominating as "read" in their Goodreads profile? (Obviously anyone can mark a book as read on Goodreads whether or not they've read it, but I'm assuming good intentions here.) I can help with this verification step if you'd like. We may end up with fewer than the usual 10 nominations, but maybe they would be of higher quality and lead to a winning book discussion that's more active.

CatReader wrote: "Would you consider trying out one month where you stipulate that we can only nominate books we've read, and before you accept someone's nomination, in addition to the usual criteria, you verify tha..."

The problem is not the verification; that's no big deal. The problem is that I can understand the impetus to nominate a book you haven't read yet, but you want to read. Plus, it's not just the nominators who don't seem to follow through. A book is not selected unless it wins the poll, which means usually about 15-20 people voted for it. Where are the reviews and comments from all those people?

Anyone else have any thoughts?

Our discussion thread "What is your most recently read science book?" often has a sentence or two about books that people have read, and brief remarks. I wonder if there is a way to give those books (the ones that are praised) a higher priority?

I've been guilty as charged of nominating books I haven't read, but I do read them when they win (except for the book of this month, I wanted to read some books I had pending).

I see we have two problems to solve:
1. We want discussions to be more active.
2. We want to make sure that the book that gets selected is accessible to the majority of members.

For 1., I'd propose we market this group outside of Goodreads. It's very hard to find the group feature (I haven't been able to join a group from the mobile app) and it's not the most friendly experience. I'd be happy to manage an account in X and maybe Facebook to bring more people in the group. We could ask for a small text from someone who has read the book or eagerly wants to read it promoting the book, use it to create an engaging post, and have members react so the post gets promoted so we can have more members join and we end up having more lively discussions.

I believe point 2. is easier to control because we could ask people to read the reviews from Goodreads to have a sense of how accessible/technical a book is. Or we could ask that nominations have at least a certain amount of reviews and an avg. rating higher than some threshold.

These are just ideas meant to be improved so please let me know your thoughts!

Another group I belong to is very active when it comes to nominations and discussion. They have a few moderators with one assigned specifically to the discussion that month. That person replies to responses and stimulates discussion with questions in the first post. Some times links are added to articles about the author or the subject.

Another thing that they do is have a theme each month. It promotes quite a bit of thought (at least on my part) about what to nominate. The nominations also require seconds before they are added to the poll. One of the rules is that it must be a book that you want to read and can get a copy of before you nominate it as well.

I noticed that Betsy and David are the only moderators for this group. That is quite a bit to ask of only 2 people. Maybe adding a couple more moderators who can also purposefully add to the discussion may help.

I am also one of those who lurks, but adds comments occasionally. I have not nominated books as I am never sure if what I like will be acceptable. I do read quite a few of the ones that have been voted on though.

Anastasia wrote: “Another group I belong to is very active when it comes to nominations and discussion. They have a few moderators with one assigned specifically to the discussion that month. That person replies to ...”

I think Anastasia makes a couple of good suggestions. In another group where I am a mod, it’s my responsibility to post starting questions for each BotM discussion. That’s not hard to do, even for books I haven’t read. I’ve found that at least a couple of people usually respond to the prompt, and once in a while some discussion grows out of that. Obviously that would be more workload for the current mods, but as Anastasia suggests, adding another mod might be a solution for that.

I also think that requiring seconding might help get people invested a bit more. It probably wouldn’t affect the actual winners much, since a book that wins the poll would likely also have been able to garner a second or two. But I’ve found that just the act of seconding a book makes me affirmatively commit—even if only just a little—to reading it.

spoko wrote: "Anastasia wrote: “Another group I belong to is very active when it comes to nominations and discussion. They have a few moderators with one assigned specifically to the discussion that month. That ..."

Those are terrific suggestions. I second them!

I think there's a creative way of implementing Anastasia's ideas of theme months to create discussion fodder. Instead of going for themes like "physics/astrophysics books" or "books about nature", what about more creative themes like:

- biographies, autobiographies, or memoirs of scientists you admire
- science books that changed your worldview/opinion on a topic
- science books that you found insightful but didn't completely agree with
- science books published before 2000 that you think are insightful to read today
- science books that relate to Nobel Prize winners/Nobel Prize winning work

Nominations would have to include at least 1-2 sentences by the nominator on how their book fits that month's prompt.

I love the idea of having a leader for each discussion. I'm happy to lead the discussion and ask questions for any book I nominate that happens to win. I think most people would do that if you made it a requirement of nomination.

After following this discussion I thought I have a look at past polls to see if the numbers suggested anything. I selected 20 polls for months prior to March 2024. The average “win” percent, (percent of votes for the top vote getter) is just under 22%, with very little deviation. Therefore, 78% of voters in those months did not vote for the winning candidate. The number of candidate books has an expected effect. When the number of candidates is 10 to 11, the average winning voter percent is 18.8% and the average number of voters is 83.5. When the number of candidate books is 9, the average winning voter percent is 23.2% and the average number of voters is 77.7. And when the number of candidate books is 7 to 8, the winning voter percent is 25.0% and the average number of voters is 74.2. So, the fewer the candidates, the higher percentage of winning votes, but at the same time the number of voters declines. The number of winning voters increases when there are fewer candidates; e.g., 18.8, 23.4 and 24.8 for the same categories. So for a poll with 8 or less candidates you would likely see about 6 more winning voters than in a poll with 10 or more candidates.

If one assumes that voters are more likely to read a book they voted for and not one they didn't vote for, it could mean that if the number of candidate books is capped at a certain number, it might lead to more winning votes and therefore a larger discussion group.

Steve wrote: "After following this discussion I thought I have a look at past polls to see if the numbers suggested anything. I selected 20 polls for months prior to March 2024. The average “win” percent, (perce..."

Sounds reasonable to me

Steve wrote: "After following this discussion I thought I have a look at past polls to see if the numbers suggested anything. I selected 20 polls for months prior to March 2024. The average “win” percent, (perce..."

Sounds reasonable to me, too.

FWIW, for 2023 book club picks:

- 2 of my nominations won (January and December) and I actively participated/led the discussion for both months.
- I had previously read the March and November picks before they were nominated.
- I picked up and read the April, May and September picks after they won the book of the month poll -- though I had only voted for the winner in April.
- the other five months, the winning books were in the astrophysics/physics/cosmology/math genres, which I don't find very interesting to read. So I neither voted for nor read those books.

Another point that may merit further discussion -- >90% of the books I read are audiobooks. A few of the books from last year (February and September in particular) seem to be available only in physical book and Ebook form at least from the library system (I know some audiobooks are Audible exclusives, and I don't subscribe to Audible). It may help improve participation if we stipulate nominated books are available on audio as well.

CatReader wrote: “It may help improve participation if we stipulate nominated books are available on audio as well.”

As another person who primarily (almost exclusively) reads via audiobooks, I would also find this valuable. Too, it can serve as a stand-in criterion for a book having reached a certain threshold of popularity. It’s not a 1:1 relationship, but a decent indicator.

CatReader wrote: "I think there's a creative way of implementing Anastasia's ideas of theme months to create discussion fodder. Instead of going for themes like "physics/astrophysics books" or "books about nature", ..."

I'm not really enamored with the idea of themes. It seems to me those are just more restrictive and not likely to increase nominations. We have a diverse membership with diverse interests. My focus has always been to provide as much choice as possible.

I'm not committed to requiring 10 nominations each month, however. That is an arbitrary number, based on my bias for more choice. But I wouldn't mind cutting that to 8 or even 6, especially if we institute some other restrictions.

spoko wrote: "CatReader wrote: “It may help improve participation if we stipulate nominated books are available on audio as well.”

I'm agnostic about this, since I rarely do audiobooks, but I've noticed that that would eliminate a lot of older books. That may be okay, but it's another limiting factor.

I agree with Betsy regarding themes. I love having a diversity of books to choose from when I vote in the polls.

I wonder if maybe we're worrying unnecessarily. I just reviewed all the past polls back to 2010 and noticed that in 2010 and 2011 we regularly had less than 30 people voting on the monthly polls. Nowadays, I worry when we get less than 100 votes.

Yes, I still would like to see more active discussions, but at least people are paying attention.

The only recent book that was a bit of a disappointment to me was the February 2024 winner and that was not because I was not interested but just because I could not get my hands on it anywhere. I think availability is the key. I always look to see if I can get a book before I vote for it but I don't know if everybody does that.

In short, I love this group the way it is!

I agree with the accessibility/availability comments. It’d be nice if nominated books at least had an ebook option if not an audiobook option. I would have loved to read February’s book but couldn’t find it at any library and couldn’t justify spending $20+ on a paperback.

I have to admit I have always found trouble navigating the forum as I tend to only use my phone. I found changing setting so I get all notifications not too much bother and that way I see more than the polls. I like the idea that the month is the starter but people are encouraged to add to the discussion thread whenever they finish a nominated book. My apologies for being an eternal lurker, so often I follow the polls and read the books but don’t vote and miss the month range for discussion.

On the subject of nominations, I like learning about 10 new books but would be as happy with 5. Themes restrict the openness of choice but less books will increase the percentage of people winning. You could also have double threads if discussions pull different people. One qualifier of a B thread is a runner up from the month before or something like that, a longer read or some criteria other than raw votes.

To summarize so far, we have the following suggestions:

>Require that the person nominating the book has read it or is in the process of reading it.

>Don’t require 10 nominations. Maybe 8 or even 5 or 6.

>Advertise the group outside of Goodreads, maybe in X and/or FB. Ask for a small text from someone who has read the book or eagerly wants to read it, promoting the book, use it to create an engaging post, and have members react so the post gets promoted so we can have more members join and we end up having more lively discussions.

>Ask that nominations have a certain number of reviews on
Goodreads and an avg rating higher than some threshold.

>More moderators.

>Have a theme each month.

>Require seconds before a book is added to the poll.

>Require that the nominator has verified that the book is accessible.

>Require that the nominator commit to leading the discussion if their book is chosen.

>Require that all nominations be available in at least one print format and at least one ebook format and at least one audible format.

>Have more discussion threads, i.e. for more than just the monthly poll winner. Maybe for the runner up or some other criteria.

Several comments:

I'm not sure we need more moderators, we just need more involvement. My strength is as an administrator and facilitator. I'm not good at eliciting discussion nor am I able to commit to reading each selection. I don't know how David feels about it, but I know he's pretty good about reading most of the books and posting at least a brief comment and review. But if there's anyone out there who would like to volunteer as a moderator to focus on discussions, please let me or David know.

Advertising outside of Goodreads is an interesting idea. I belong to a Nonfictiion Book Club in Facebook and I can post an invite to our group on that page at least to start.

I believe Hector and Shannon's comments about the difficulty with the phone app are a big problem that it's going to be hard to overcome. Goodreads programmers don't seem to be interested in improving the app or the group features generally. But it is a real issue. Some people don't even have a computer other than their phone.

The instructions for nominating already request that only books that are accessible be nominated, and I check that accessibility. But I can easily be more strict about it. Previously I have been reluctant to disallow a book just because it didn't have an audio format or an ebook. But I can change that easily. Also, I like the idea of limiting nominations to books that have a certain number of GR reviews (maybe 500?) and a minimum avg rating (maybe 3.5?).

As I said above, I don't like the idea of limiting nominations to a single theme. But we have other discussion threads that could be used to focus on different themes. Some of those that CatReader suggested are very intriguing. I'd be happy to start some of those.

I question whether requiring seconds would do much to help. It might increase the possibility of the seconder reading the book and posting a comment, but it might also reduce the number of books nominated.

I have mixed feelings about requiring the person nominating the book commit to leading the discussion. As I said I tried it in a half-assed way earlier without success. Also, we have a lot of lurkers. And that's okay. Lurking is okay. We also have a lot of members in other countries whose first language may not be English. I don't want to do anything to discourage either of those people from participating by putting them on the spot and forcing them to do something they're not comfortable with. I'd like this to be a comfortable place to share interests in science books.

yes sir we need to advertise outside Goodreads

I am fairly new to the group and I nominated The Devil's Element: Phosphorus and a World Out of Balance because my RL book group is going to be reading it and I have a copy. But The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean looked so interesting and I could get an ebook from the library and so it was first. I will read Phosphorous. March is along ways from over! ☺️

Hi Betsy, I saw your group message about the SurveyMonkey link that didn't work.

I'll share a few thoughts here, if that's OK. I think the changes made to book club nomination requirement have been steps in the right direction in terms of making book picks more accessible to everyone (the requirement that nominated books need to have physical book, Ebook and audiobook versions in particular is great) but I still think we're missing the active engagement metrics we'd like.

I would be in favor of relaxing the 500 ratings requirement and shortening the new release embargo from 3-4 months to maybe 2-3 months. There are a lot of great books I've read in the last year that I'd love to nominate that meet all metrics except those.

It would be nice to have some variety in terms of nomination genres. I feel like we pick a lot of astrophysics, physics, and mathematics books, and relatively few biology, astronomy, anthropology, and medicine books. Maybe this could be more balanced, like not taking any astrophysics book nominations if an astrophysics book has been selected as the book of the month in the last 1-2 months.

A while ago someone pointed out that in other GR groups, a book nominator was required to be the discussion leader if their book selection won, posting at least 1-2 comments in the book discussion thread intended to stimulate discussion. I love this suggestion. I think it's been happening for the most part recently, though we have had at least two months in the last year where the nominator (the same person both times) did not participate in the discussion or show evidence that they read/finished the book themselves.

CatReader wrote: "It would be nice to have some variety in terms of nomination genres. I feel like we pick a lot of astrophysics, physics, and mathematics books, and relatively few biology, astronomy, anthropology, and medicine books."

This comment got me wondering. In 2013, I did an unscientific analysis of what topics we read most. See: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

So, I just did an update of that, based on the last 28 months, at the end of that thread. Interesting.

CatReader also suggests relaxing some of the restrictions: "I would be in favor of relaxing the 500 ratings requirement and shortening the new release embargo from 3-4 months to maybe 2-3 months. There are a lot of great books I've read in the last year that I'd love to nominate that meet all metrics except those."

I understand the desire to read the newest books, but you must remember that outside of large urban centers in the U.S., it takes a while for recently published works to become available in smaller markets, in local bookstores, and local libraries. We have members all over the world and not everyone wants to or is able to purchase from Amazon U.S.

The longer a book has been out and the more people have read it, the likelier it will be available in the boonies.

I'm testing whether we can use ranked choice voting for our book club polls. If you would like to participate (this is just a test, totally up to you), go to my profile, click "more photos". Then scan the QR code.

If you don't know what ranked choice voting is, I'll explain more later.

Thanks.

I know I said participating in the ranked choice voting test was totally voluntary, and it is. But no one has tried it. Or, if you tried it and it didn't work or you found it too cumbersome, I'd really like to know that.

I think our monthly book poll is a perfect choice for RCV. As Steve noted in message 17 above, the average winning percentage is less than 25% of votes. That's not very good. And I know for many polls there are multiple selections that I would feel comfortable voting for. But the Goodreads poll capability is very limited.

With RCV, you are allowed to vote for multiple choices, ranking them according to your preference. First choice, second choice, third choice, etc. Then when voting is over, if your first choice doesn't win, that vote of yours is ignored and your vote goes instead to your second choice. If your second choice doesn't win, then that vote is ignored and your vote goes to your third choice. This continues until one selection gets at least 50% of the votes. This theoretically results in more people getting a result that they like.

Goodreads does not provide this capability, but I found another site that provides a free, nonprofit RCV system. However, since Goodreads does not permit links to external sites, I had to find a workaround. That's why you have to go to my profile and scan the QR code.

It seems to work fine for me. But I need to know if it works for others and whether you think it's too cumbersome to use. I would very much appreciate if some of you would try it out and let me know what you think.

One thing I have discovered, it's pretty much impossible to do on a phone. Even using the desktop site. So I'd like to know how many of you use Goodreads exclusively on a phone because you don't have a computer available. I set up a poll for that: https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/3...

Thanks.

I really like this concept of ranked choice voting. Just as an experiment, here is a link to the same voting test that Betsy suggests:
https://www.rcv123.org/ballot/1/WfF4R...

This direct link works for me. Does it work for anybody else?

By the way, since I like the idea of a ranked choice voting approach, I added a suggestion for this as a new feature in Goodreads. You can add suggestions here:
https://help.goodreads.com/s/suggesti...

David wrote: "I really like this concept of ranked choice voting. Just as an experiment, here is a link to the same voting test that Betsy suggests:
https://www.rcv123.org/ballot/1/WfF4R...

"

David, that's great. I don't know why it wouldn't let me do it earlier. It even works in the phone app. Thanks.

The link David shared work perfectly. Betsy do you still need us to test the QR code?

Hector wrote: "The link David shared work perfectly. Betsy do you still need us to test the QR code?"

No. Thanks. The link is much easier.

I think ranked choice voting is great and David’s link worked perfectly.
Sometimes I have used the Goodreads poll option of changing my vote in somewhat the same vein. If my first choice seems to be unlikely to win based on the votes a couple of days before the close, I will switch my vote to a preferred title that is closer to the top vote getter.

So, we completed the polling for October 2025 using the regular Goodreads poll and a ranked choice option, and the final choice was the same. You can see the ranked choice final results here:

https://www.rcv123.org/results/CvGXCj...

Even though the final choice was the same, I think the ranked choice results are interesting. The total votes for "Tuberculosis" increased substantially as the rounds progressed.

I believe I'll continue using RCV for our book polls at least for the next few months, unless anyone has an objection.