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Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 6th, 2019, 3:58 pm
by calm-realm
I participated on the 'book of the month' for January and I have read the Announcement about the book for march, but I am having trouble understanding how the book of the month nominations and votes work. I hope Scott or someone else involved can help.

Is there any voting 'topic'(or site, platform) where the votes and nominations are shown? Or does it work just via private messages? As far as I can tell I am not allowed to send private messages yet, so does this means I cannot nominate books or vote?

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 6th, 2019, 4:17 pm
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
Here is the current system:
Scott wrote: November 22nd, 2018, 11:47 am
Nominations for future Philosophy Books of the Month can only be made by (1) moderators, (2) contributors, or (3) those who participate in the Philosophy Book of the Month Discussion Forum (which requires actually reading the book each month). If fall into one of those three categories, please send me a PM with any books you wish to nominate at any time. If you haven't participated in the previous Book of the Month discussions but plan to start participating when we re-start in January, please hold your nominations until then.
I have attempted to send PMs asking for nominations from those who have participated in January in terms of both reading the January book and joining in the discussion of the book. I will do the same for the February book and then again for the March book.

calm-realm, I did send you a PM on February 1st inviting you to nominate a book. I'll followup with my email address in case you cannot reply to that PM.

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 7th, 2019, 3:17 am
by Arjen
I want to ask/suggest something. While I think a book of the month club is a good idea, I personally am not interested in the current books. Because of that reason, I can't nominate a book. So, it looks like the situation will stay as is for a while. That is ok of course, but it might be a nice idea to expand on the book section a bit. All of us read books, I think. We could have a section just for discussions about books, or part of a book that someone just read. If the OP is good, interesting discussions can be had. I am just thinking out loud here, but 2 sub-subfora for the books section seems like a good idea to me. 1 for the book of the month club and 1 for other books that someone just read and wants to talk about. It would be a step in the direction of specialized discussions about a single philosopher. If at one point a subforum for philosophers is created, topics like that can be moved there.

Anyway, I think it might be more interesting to people, because i would be about what they are reading, not what is agreed on to read.

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 7th, 2019, 4:36 pm
by calm-realm
I received the PM, Scott, but as I said I cannot answer it. I will send you an email then.

But wouldn't it be easier to have one topic to vote the next book on every sub-forum for the book of the month? For instance there would be a topic 'book of the month for March 2019' in the 'fourth age' subforum, and so on. This way everyone would see the nominations and votes

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 8th, 2019, 7:34 am
by Arjen
I agree with calm-realm.
That is where I expected it.

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 9th, 2019, 1:24 pm
by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
calm-realm wrote: February 7th, 2019, 4:36 pm wouldn't it be easier to have one topic to vote the next book on every sub-forum for the book of the month? For instance there would be a topic 'book of the month for March 2019' in the 'fourth age' subforum, and so on. This way everyone would see the nominations and votes
That could work, except I would prefer it get done a few months in advance. So the March 2019 forum could have a topic to vote on the May or June book. Ideally, I'd prefer to give folks a couple months notice to get and read a book.

We just re-started the program in January so right now it's not running how it will ideally run regularly. We have to do some things a little differently to get things going. I expect to soon get all of the following: (1) more nominations, (2) more participation, and (3) a longer list of upcoming books. Once we have everything going well like that, which I predict to be the case in a few more months, then we can definitely have monthly votes with the vote topics similar to to the way you describe.

Re: Book of the month: nominations via private messages?

Posted: February 9th, 2019, 5:04 pm
by Arjen
It sounds promising.
What do you think about creating a spot for discussions of books people read?