We’re nearing the end of our yearly cycle and will begin a new one in July, so the time for changes is upon us. If anyone has any suggestions, now is the time!
The rotating months are going great and we’ve now made it to two full years and 12 volunteers and counting without a reset. That’s an accomplishment for out little club and I want to again say thanks to everyone for making it such a success.
In general, the nomination and poll time lengths and schedule and such are also all working well.
I see us continuing with all that just as before, if the rest of you do as well.
Onto the new changes:
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The six non-rotating months’ categories are up for review - We’ll have a poll to choose all six categories for the next year and it will include all club categories current and former. It will start in about a week or so and will run for a week. If anyone thinks they may not be here for the entire time that the poll is open, please let me know ahead of time and we’ll make arrangements.
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The Time Period and Region category pre-polls and the yearly categories poll will have new tie-breakers - I’ve never liked being the tie-breaker for a few reasons, but did it so that we’d have a simple, quick and non-arbitrary way to resolve ties. Now I think it’d be better to have some other way even if it is slightly more complex or arbitrary, though we’ll still try to keep the tie-breakers as simple as possible. Though not the reason for the change, this of course means that I’ll now be eligible to vote in those polls like any other member.
For the Time Period and Region pre-polls, first listed will take precedence in a tie. This translates to the older time period and whatever region happens to be listed first. From the start I’ve been re-arranging the regions list each time in a specific set cyclical order based on location and will continue to in the same way, so while not exactly random it should be enough for our purposes.
For the yearly categories poll, in the event of a relevant tie we’ll have a three-day single-choice run-off. In event of another relevant tie, we will then combine the tied categories for the year and be done with it.
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Basic guidelines will be included each time I ask for a rotating nominator - It’s a pretty small thing, but I think it’ll help a little. One thing is that we had discussed nomination maximums back at the start but I didn’t remind people nor enforce any. We’ve had a few people nominate a lot and it worked well but now that I’ll be posting the guidelines each time maybe it’d be better to include a set max, of say ten. With a minimum of four, that’ll still give a good range to decide on for the nominator.
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Bonus votes - Now, onto a bigger change in our midst. This is based on suggestions from others in previous years and I’ve been mulling over it for awhile now. Now is as good as any time to try it.
The idea is simple - anybody who participates regularly in the club gets “bonus votes” on poll results. Nothing will change with nominations, nothing will change during polls, everyone will vote just as before and all are still welcome. However, at the end of a poll anyone eligible for bonus votes will have any and all votes they cast on the poll doubled. This will be done manually by me and then final vote results will be announced in a post in the poll thread.
Just as before, no one will be able to change their votes once cast and anyone eligible for bonus votes will not be able to pick and choose which of their votes are doubled - everything they vote for will be doubled and everything they don’t vote for will still get zero votes from them - so as always everyone makes their selections when they vote on the poll and that’s it.
To qualify for bonus votes, you will need to have contributed to at least two out of the last six discussion threads. Simple as that. The qualification is subject to change as we test this out, but for now pretty much any post in a discussion thread will count.
Caveats: 1) Eligible posts need to be made by the month after the selection (e.g. October or November for October's selection), 2) Eligible posts need to be a month or so apart (this is not exact, but basically if you haven't made any other posts, you can't quickly post to two threads at once and expect to get bonus votes) and 3) Eligible posts need to be made before a poll is posted (i.e. there will be no updating eligibility during a poll). In each poll thread, I will post a list of those eligible for bonus votes.
If any of this sounds at all confusing, don’t worry. I hope it will go smoothly and easily once we get the hang of it. This is to give our regulars and even semi-regulars a bonus while still welcoming everyone and anyone whenever they want to participate, and anyone interested can qualify for bonus votes within a couple of months.
I’ve worked to make this as simple to implement as I possibly could. In many months there may be no change from the poll tally at all because everyone that voted may be eligible for bonus votes.
To be clear, whether new or long-time member, any of you interested in literature and our club can still vote, join in or drop by whenever you want and we encourage you to, even if you don’t qualify for bonus votes.
So, what do all of you think of this idea? It would only be on a trial basis. We could try it for a little while and if we don’t like it we’d scrap it, but if it works well we’d keep it. We’d start with the yearly categories poll we’re about to have.
Comments and reactions to any part of this post are welcome. After we get all this sorted out, we’ll be good for another year!
