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Book of the Month

Stewart

Stewart

Active Member
Once a month is over would it be possible to move the discussion into the fiction forum leaving only the current discussion?

When searching for a book and limiting the search to the fiction forum some books, of course, don't get discussed because they don't appear in this forum.

You could place a sticky atop the Book of the Month forum listing previous books and provide a link next to its name where the discussion can now be located.
 
It's a good point about BotM books not being found in fiction forum searches.

An easier way would just be to copy the thread into the relevant forum, eg fiction / horror etc. Then each thread would be available in both BotM and in fiction.
 
Halo said:
An easier way would just be to copy the thread into the relevant forum, eg fiction / horror etc. Then each thread would be available in both BotM and in fiction.
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Would you then lock the BOTM thread so that two discussions aren't on the same topic?
 
I personally think that the idea of having a Sticky in BOTM and moving the thread to the correct forum is more viable than copying the entire thread. I can see little point in having two threads with what is essentially the same information in, open at the same time. Even if you closed the BOTM thread after a month you would still have a lot of duplicate postings. Another option would be to move the thread to the relevant section but leave a redirect in BOTM.
 
Ice said:
Another option would be to move the thread to the relevant section but leave a redirect in BOTM.
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I like this idea. I agree that we don't need two threads with the same posts. I think leaving redirects would allow members to see what books have been read as BOTM while allowing us to avoid redundant threads.
 
Once a book is selected why not create threads in Fiction that say something like Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov -- December/05 Book of the Month in their titles?
 
ions said:
Once a book is selected why not create threads in Fiction that say something like Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov -- December/05 Book of the Month in their titles?
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Initially I thought ions' idea was silly. Then I went and looked at the way the Book of the Month thread is set up, and I think it's much better than relocating the Book of the Month threads.

I think a single locked thread should be made as a sticky in Fiction entitled, "Previous Book of the Month links", and this would contain a link to each Book of the Month discussion. This way a mod only needs to add a link to the bottom of the list each month. The 'Book of the Month' entries can stay as such. The only reason to have this thread at all is to make the Searching more effective, right? I could ask why one wouldn't just search within the BOTM forum too... but I guess this may not occur to everyone, particularly those who don't frequent that forum (such as myself).

Moving the BOTM threads into the Fiction forum would make it more difficult for people to see which books have been selected previously (and the sticky as suggested above would make this even easier). It's also nice to have all the threads there so that newcomers can see that the Book of the Month discussions are well-established and up-to-date, which may influence their decision to join up.
 
Perhaps a compromise. I'd like to see the threads moved into category specific forums because that is generally where members (especially new ones) will be looking. We could change the title to include BOTM December 05 at the end so it is obvious that it was a BOTM. By leaving the redirect, you can still go to BOTM to see the books that have been suggested and easily link to their discussions.

Ultimately, I think newer members are going to be more likely to post in them if they are moved into other forums. When I first joined, I didn't post in those threads because it wasn't clear to me that I could do so. I thought they were only for members who had read them that month. It was a good few weeks before I finally figured it out.
 
I like the idea of moving the threads to the fiction thread, but I still think that we should keep the BOTM section open, just with redirects to the new positions of the threads. It makes it a lot easier to see what our books of the month have been, which, among onther things, is handy so that you can ensure that your suggestion for BOTM has not already been chosen before.
 
I don't look at BOTM all that much, so correct me if I am wrong. Doesn't BOTM discussion threads contain a lot of spoilers???? I know when I have looked in on them they have lots of spoilers because people are all reading the same book at the same time and don't bother to use spoiler tags. If this is the case then it wouldn't be good moving them elsewhere in the forum.
 
Wabbit said:
Doesn't BOTM discussion threads contain a lot of spoilers????
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You're right, but there have been complaints about that. Some BOTM readers read at different rates and would prefer that we still use the spoiler tags. They are probably right. It is simply the courteous thing to do.
 
Now I am the opposite. I feel that it is not productive inserting several spoiler tags into a thread that is primarily to discuss a book that has been read. It makes it unweildly and can be an annoyance. I think a better option would be to include something like *possible spoilers* into the heading and allow people the opportunity to discuss a book freely, without worrying if what they are writing may be construed as a spoiler. For the people that read at different rates, surely it would be better for them to finish the book before entering into discussion? (though I know this discussion has come up before - Book of the Month Discussion Suggestion).
 
I agree that the spoiler tags are a pain. They discontinue the flow of reading AND they make me have to move my hand to the mouse. ;) It's for this reason, and the reasoning in the thread linked Book of the Month Discussion Suggestion, that I stay out of book discussions for books I have not read unless it will be so long before I read the book that I'll forget any part of the discussion.

Another thought for organizing the BOTM could be to have a sticky which lists all the BOTM discussions there have been and add to it as we go. To make search results better put a copy of this sticky in both BOTM and Fiction. That should make search results better and give a centralized list to refer to. I'd volunteer to do it but I won't have time today. With a list like this it won't matter where the actual discussion takes place as long as each sticky is updated concurrently.
 
ions said:
With a list like this it won't matter where the actual discussion takes place as long as each sticky is updated concurrently.
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I'm with ions. It solves the searching problem and means that discussions can stay where they were originally. Let's face it - you have to do a search to find a specific book-thread anyway, so having a thread on 'Life of Pi' 5 pages back in the Fiction section or in the BOTM thread still means you have to search for it.

I don't think a sticky is necessary in the BOTM forum, though. A search in the BOM thread will reveal all the titles anyway. Having two identical stickies seems unnecessary and possibly confusing.
 
Ions, don't worry about creating a thread for the sticky if that is the way we decide to go. One of the Mods will happily do it (unless you really want to :D)

With regards to the sticky in the Fiction sub-forum, not all the books read in BOTM are general fiction. Thus we would need a Sticky at the top of each sub-forum (Fiction, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Children's Fiction, Crime, Thrillers and Mystery, Comedy and Non-Fiction). I guess we could place a Sticky at the top of each and update the relevant Sticky whenever a new BOTM was chosen.
 
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