fiction files redux discussion

feel free to check out my notes in the testing post in announcements in case you're wondering if i've tried something out or not.

so far so good: multiple moderators, polls, automatic hotlinking of html links, folders for our many different subfolders, ability to paste in html so can put up images... and i think, most crucially, a way to find more readers to talk to about books.

i also think the authors in the group will like the idea we can add them to our bookshelves and link to their profiles here.

haven't found any cons yet...

mondo pro: i can't believe i didn't mention that we can search the threads!!!!

"a way to find more readers to talk to about books."

would seem to be a clincher.

ben: i think your point about the assholes was well taken (over in the comments under the poll re myspace or goodreads). my thought would be to make it a private group, and have a big group of moderators. ultimately, i think us being here will attract more group members because i know at least jonathan will have a lot of traffic coming from his author page, and his group, no doubt, and you, brian, and i have all been writing reviews of books we read, and if somebody reads our reviews, and comes to our profile to see what else we like to read, they will see the group and ask to join! well, we can have a poll to see if that's what we do, but you know what i mean.

i think jonathan had it as public over on myspace. of course, that way we did get assholes. to asshole or not to asshole, that is the question. :P

i'm okay with assholes, as long as we can kick them out. but i'm sure the asshole ratio on goodreads is a lot smaller than on myspace, anyway.

couldn't be higher, i suppose.

I agree that MySpace in general has jumped the shark, though I still really like it for the music, and I will say that I have been on GoodReads almost every day because of the reviews you guys post.

I'm for it as long as we can get people to move, and I think you'll be able to bring the core group over, as well as grow it pretty quickly.

It sounds like you've tested it out pretty well, Mo. I think multiple moderators is a great idea... as long as the people who do it all agree to a set of rules and follow them so as to not step on each other's toes... that's just from experience...

I've been part of a mostly online group that required email list moderation of 4,000 members, an online discussion group, a website with articles... and in that group we basically agreed to a set of rules like -- what is a spammer and what do we do about them -- do we clean out membership ourselves to pare the numbers down or let it grow on its own without deleting people until they flame? Do people who respond to flames get a warning? How many flames does a user get before they are booted? And so on. That may be too many rules for us... the group I helped run was a professional networking one so we kinda had to have a lot of etiquette to protect our reputation.

Anyway, I thought your argument was persuasive!

thanks shel. i do hope that people come over and have a look around, and at least see what the possibilities are. maybe even be stimulated by going through ben's collection and adding all the ones they've read from his list to theirs. first thing i did -- made it much easier to populate my list of stuff ben hasn't read which is much smaller.

great tips about the moderation. at one point we were talking about making everybody a moderator, but you're right, toe-stepping could occur. i guess we could start with goodreads moderator guidelines and go from there. or make an anonymous poll and ask people what power the moderators should have. oh the joy of an anonymous poll. :)

thanks for coming over, and checking it out.

Yeah, Ben's list puts my own to shame. I'm practically illiterate.

(But I WILL have my revenge! PFL is on the way to his doorstep as I type!)

OK I'll add another dos centavos. I haven't seen the GR guidelines (not a moderator) but in my experience...

First, agree to rules (start with a very short, open list of these and don't overreact in creating new ones to every schmo who posts something stupid, while, as Ben puts it, keeping it real)

Second, either rotate full responsiblity by week or month (week works better for most people) -- including cleaning out threads, wagging fingers at users, accepting or finding new members (using current reads/bookshelves)

2b - agree to a set of responsibilities and dish them out on a rotating basis to the moderators

3. Number of moderators --> proportional to number of members because the job gets bigger as the group does.

Wow, 15 years of this online group stuff seems to be helping someone out, finally... haven't used this many internet culture brain cells in years!

I agree with Ben. I think the asshole quotient will be smaller over her (at least I hope so) and as long as the moderators can kick out the ones that creep up we should be fine.

Of course then you may have to create a poll on what specifically constitutes an asshole. Is it someone who uses the word "cunt" too much? Cause then we'd lose Martyn. Or is it someone who is so deadpan that if you don't know him already he might come off as rude? Cause then we would lose Dan. It could become a pickle!

;)

Oh and by the way, if this test group becomes a real group, I have some goodreads friends that are not currently in FF on myspace and I'm sure they would join. So there's some new blood potential at least.

Kerry wrote: "Oh and by the way, if this test group becomes a real group, I have some goodreads friends that are not currently in FF on myspace and I'm sure they would join. So there's some new blood potential ..."

i was hoping somebody would say that. in fact, i'm hoping the skipper likes what he sees, and invites his group over here too. it can't all be people we know! :)

. . . looks like we still need to round up some of the core-group . . . i'll recruit some of my goodreads friends who aren't fiction files . . .we got catch some newbies who are yet to see the possibilities of a forum like this . . .

i feel like we maybe need to do some housekeeping stuff before the newbies show up, or they'll get confused. or am i crazy?

that does make sense patty. what do you suggest? closing/re-naming some of these threads? or just deleting them?

I'd move it maybe to a folder for moderators somewhere, so we can review the things people said as we come up with any guidelines. Then delete later.

That and we need the guidelines to post somewhere... other than the yoga ball punishment...

And maybe even a little history of the group? That would be kinda cool, actually.

That and we need the guidelines to post somewh..."

HOLD THE PRESSES. This group is now located in CANADA??!! Nobody told me about that part of the deal, eh. ;)

Michael wrote: "That and we need the guidelines to post somewh..."

HOLD THE PRESSES. This group is now located in CANADA??!! Nobody told me about that part of the deal, eh. ;)

"

i was wondering if anybody would notice that. i hope you understand that as a rule i'm not much for nationalism, and yet, when it came to setting up the test group, i couldn't say anything but canada. one of the other moderators can probably change it, i'm sure. i have this thing about manifest destiny. :)

p.s. i just changed your status to moderator. you can undo it if you'd rather not... for some reason even though we seem to be allowed to have as many moderators as we want only five pictures show up on the sidebar. if people click on the members link they can see who has moderator status. :)

Maureen wrote: "Michael wrote: "That and we need the guidelines to post somewh..."

HOLD THE PRESSES. This group is now located in CANADA??!! Nobody told me about that part of the deal, eh. ;)
"
i was wonderin..."

BTW, I like the change to our location to "Reunion". Where the heck is that country anyway?
mm

Michael wrote: BTW, I like the change to our location to "Reunion". Where the heck is that country anyway?

it's somewhere between madagascar and mauritius, it turns out.

it just seemed like the most applicable place.

So far I'm liking GoodReads a lot.

Thread categorization,
Thread searching capability,
Refer to previous posts while commenting,
Quick page loading speed,
Reviews by smart people I know and love,
Multiple moderators with cute little nicknames,
Links for book purchases,
And asshole reduction is certainly nice...

What's not to like?



Not to mention being able to search threads...that's just miraculous as far as I'm concerned.

My only desire would be for a posters' name to be displayed larger. Shit. I'm gettin' old.

Just one more reason for me to ignore MySpace.

Frankly, I am indiferent, the advantages of a forum is too big to me even bother. The catholing system here seems a bit dummy for outsiders, they have quite some problem to reckon different english versions of the same work, and that upsets me because librarything is more efficient there... but well, I can ignore this and just go straigth to the group anyways...

it's true they're not so good about the multiple versions, especially in translation. that's why i signed up to be a "goodreads librarian," so at least i could sort out the books i'm actually concerned with.

of course, i'm too dimwitted to figure out the system... but hey... whatever... less work for me...

I am too signed and ben, I only wondered how could I create fake versions...

of course, the best idea is to convice people that a certain book exists and that they should add it, because some friend already added... It could be done in librarything, but I too lazy for that... Anyways the concept of "currently reading" or "to read" etc, are all strange...

You know I've been really worried about what will happen to all of the fiction files little babies. Will people just abandon them because they are on myspace? Is this an ugly divorce with the children being forgoten? I love Backspace even though sometimes I wished later that I hadn't posted some emotional stuff. And I always read what everyone else was posting. I'm starting to think Matijas idea of a coffetable book might be a really good Idea before all of this stuff is lost in space. I was thinking of starting some essays on my own page but if other people would like We could have a folder for esays, NO? I am going to message Matija and see if we can work on a solid archive of the old stuff. Thanks Michael!

Margaret wrote: "You know I've been really worried about what will happen to all of the fiction files little babies. Will people just abandon them because they are on myspace? Is this an ugly divorce with the child..."

hey margaret: i think part of the reason we had to split off those other groups (besides the fact that the skipper originally conceived of it as a fiction group) was because we couldn't have sub-topics, whereas here we can. should you desire to set up an essay group with its own folder (either withe egret or matija or by yourself) at a later date, i think people would be happy. when i started making the folders i put in things like "theoretically speaking" for those theory junkies, and "on writing" for people who wanted to talk about the craft, and while we did touch on those in the old group they were never really topically specific. :)

my 2 cents. :)

p.s. obviously that goes for patty's poetry group as well. :)

Just see what we are missing. Love the song to the webpage.

http://www.myspace.com/nylonmagazine

I, for one, am glad y'all came to Goodreads. I discovered the group when looking at a Knut Hamsun book. Whenever you link to a book using the "add book/author" link in a message, it makes a link back to the discussion thread from the book page. So that's probably a good thing to do if you want more potential members stumbling onto this group.