2006: A Proposal for Discussion

Chris OConnor · Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2005 9:37 pm Post subject: 2006: A Proposal for Discussion

2006: A Proposal for Discussion

Thank you all for participating in this ongoing discussion about how to improve BookTalk. I’m starting this new thread and locking the previous. For those that didn’t yet read the other thread you can skim over it here.

I will share my general opinion, which has been greatly impacted by the previous discussion thread and numerous helpful emails I have received. BookTalk is in no way going away. While I have voiced my concern over a lack of activity, this should not be interpreted as a prelude to me giving up. BookTalk is here for good, and my desire to initiate a discussion is because I want to fix that which needs to be fixed. We can do better and will do better. Your help is appreciated in this learning process.

Everything I say here is subject to change as we discuss the details. And I am proposing these changes for 1st Quarter 2006.

I’d like to keep our logo: “The freethinker’s book discussion community.”

We accept the dictionary definition of “freethinker” to include theists that attempt to use reason to form their beliefs. (Yes, you Rolf!) Freethought is about rejecting authority and dogma, questioning everything, and employing reason in the formulation of beliefs.

Atheists and theists are welcome to debate the topic in the Religion, Philosophy, & the Arts forum to exhaustion. As long as debate participants are civil and respectful of each other and the rules of the community they will be allowed to battle it out. Trying to dissuade this topic is not good for the community. Anyone that doesn’t want to engage in this debate can avoid those threads, myself included.

We will edit the entire web site and change the verbiage to be more welcoming to people of all beliefs. If we are truly welcoming and encouraging anyone and everyone to join our community, there is no reason to say things like, “Theists are welcome to join…” Of course they are welcome to join. Not only are they welcome to join, but also they deserve all the same rights and respect as atheists. And it was me that came up with this harsh wording, so I apologize to everyone. It will be fixed soon.

We fine-tune our Community Rules page so that it is understood that we all must be nice and that spam, preaching, profanity, and being a jackass is not acceptable. We’ve had very little problem with this in the past, and I assume we will not as we move into the future. BookTalk will always be an intellectual community and anything that distracts or gets us derailed will be addressed promptly. We’ll add a rule that says something to the tune that all rules are subject to revision.

We develop a well-defined Mission Statement. What is our purpose? What do we wish to achieve? Are we trying to contribute something of value to the world, or is this just a place for book lovers to congregate and socialize?

In the past we haven’t had a Mission Statement. If you visit our About page you see the opening paragraph, which will soon be edited:

Quote:
“BookTalk is an online book discussion community dedicated to the advancement of critical thinking, reason, intelligence, freedom of inquiry, philosophy and the scientific method. We are a secular community, which means we support and promote a naturalistic worldview.”

I propose getting rid of all reference to being a "secular community." We’re a freethinker community, not a secular community. All we are asking people to do is think critically about everything. This may seem like a semantics game, but I want to elaborate on what I’m now thinking in regards to our core mission.

I want BookTalk to be about education and broadening our horizons. I’d like members to become more informed and better citizens of the world as a direct result of their interaction and participation on BookTalk. We should be a place to learn and think and grow, which doesn’t necessarily mean accepting atheism and rejecting theism. Any of you great writers that can help develop a Mission Statement, based upon these objectives, please do.

I’d love to believe that education naturally leads to atheism, but maybe it doesn’t. We can test this hypothesis by welcoming people of all backgrounds and beliefs to read and discuss quality books with us.

BookTalk should not be a community for converting theists to atheists. We really need to be the best book discussion community in the world, that so happens to have some rules about what books will be allowed for group discussion. Individual members must be free to read and discuss any book they want, so long as they create their own thread and people join the discussion freely.

BookTalk, however, will only allow quality books that approach life from a freethought worldview. What does this mean? All it means is that religion and faith aren’t part of the equation. We won’t be reading any Jerry Falwell or Michael Behe, at least not as a quarterly selection. As you may notice there isn’t a change happening here. The real change must be in our web site verbiage and overall tone.

The members, moderators, and myself will need to be welcoming to any and all members, independent of their religious affiliation. We will no longer inform theistic members that this is a “secular” community. Our rules are simply no spamming, no preaching, and no profanity, etc…. We could develop some additional rules, but you get the point. Everyone is welcome here.

And the reasons for being welcoming is as follows…

1. There don’t appear to be enough freethinkers that are interested in reading and discussing nonfiction books to support such a niche community. We have not succeeded at attracting enough freethinkers to make this place work.

2. The more intelligent members we have, no matter what their religious beliefs, the more our community as a whole benefits. We’ll have better discussions, more traffic, higher post count, good debates, more books sold, and an overall superior community.

3. By encouraging and welcoming theists we are doing the entire world a service. This is a big deal to me. Atheists aren’t doing a bit of good by excluding theists from participating in our community. How can we help share our love of science and reason if we only allow like-minded people?

I guess what I’m saying is…

1. We remain “the freethinker’s book discussion community."

2. We encourage and welcome everyone to join

3. We only read books that fit our Mission Statement – they are educational, entertaining, and do not advocate theism.

But our books DO NOT have to have anything at all to do with secularism, freethought, atheism or any other variation on that theme. They just can't be written from a theistic or supernatural perspective.

“Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” was about the plight of the American Indians. Is this a freethinker book? No, but it fits the Mission Statement perfectly. We would be a rather boring community if every book were an attempt at converting people to atheism.

With the above changes I think we would help BookTalk incredibly. But even with these changes it isn’t enough to make us appealing to a larger audience, and I think that is our primary objective. BookTalk needs to add hundreds of members to be the community I think we deserve to be. And I have an idea that I think might help make that dream a reality.

Think about this long and hard before you shoot it down. I recently posted a request for feedback on the Amazon.com Affiliates forums. Many members came over to BookTalk and gave me their honest opinion on what we’re doing right, and what we’re doing wrong. One suggestion in particular stood out.

Think about this scenario. You’re a nonfiction fan and are looking for a great book discussion community so you run a search for “nonfiction books” or “book discussions.” BookTalk comes up as the #1 search hit. You click on our link and arrive on our Home page. The first thing you see is our "Current Book" selection, which is “The Ethical Brain.” Uh oh. You have zero interest in ethics or even science. But you’re an avid reader of all sorts of other nonfiction. Seeing that our reading period is an entire quarter you hit the back button and keep searching.

I think this happens all the time. Perhaps our biggest problem is not the “freethinker” aspect, but the limited focus. A quarter is a long time to be reading only one book. Visitors that don’t like the current selection are prone to wander. They aren’t necessarily bookmarking BookTalk and scheduling themselves another visit to our community a few months down the line. They’re gone. We’ve lost them potentially forever.

The solution seems obvious and I am slapping myself for not thinking of this in the past. We need to read and discuss several books concurrently. So here is what I propose. Please don’t just think of the negatives - think about everything we have discussed over the past few weeks. Think about how we get a ton of hits every day, but these visitors are not joining. We need to make a change to be more inviting to more people and this is an excellent strategy.

So here it is…

We read and discuss a total of 4 books every quarter.

3 nonfiction
1 is fiction

Visitors see 4 choices the moment they log in, which naturally quadruples our chance of retaining them as a member. Fiction fans now have a reason to join.

Let me tell you how I envision these book choices being made.

The three nonfiction books are selected from the three forum categories we currently have in our “General Forums” section.

Science, Nature, & Technology (1 book)
Politics, Current Events, & History (1 book)
Religion, Philosophy, & the Arts (1 book)

Then we select a fiction book for the 4th selection. Not just any old fiction book, but one that makes sense for our community. Perhaps it compliments one of our nonfiction selections, or even a past book selection. Maybe it is a new freethinker author and we want to support them by doing a community review of their new book.

The fiction book must be educational and have some sort of value outside of just being an escape mechanism. We should remain relatively loose on the rules for this 4th fiction book, as it is supposed to be a hook for pulling in more people.

Remember, not everyone reads nonfiction. Those visitors that arrive on our site that don’t do nonfiction are currently leaving us and never returning. Of course we don’t want to attract immature kids, so we can come up with some ground rules for this 4th book to lessen the odds of pulling them in. But our Community Rules will help in this regard. Anyone that spams, preaches or is a general jackass will be warned and then banned.

The benefit of having 4 books is a no-brainer. Yes, for a period of time we could easily see a drop in the total posts per book, but this is a small price to pay for the long-term benefits. With our current activity we could even see zero posts in one or more books. Look around at other book discussion groups. They all read several books concurrently.

Think about this and I would really appreciate feedback. We’re currently reading “The Ethical Brain.” Even if we didn’t gain a single member we would probably see a higher total post count. Many current members are not reading and participating in the discussion of “The Ethical Brain,” but would love to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” for example. Ok, so for a month or two only one or two members are reading Atlas Shrugged, but the seed is planted. Visitors see 4 concurrent discussions. Over time new members pour into the community and we grow.

And I have a technique in mind for minimizing the impact of slow or dead book discussions. Look at the forums page. The top forum is titled, “The Ethical Brain – by Michael Gazzaniga.” Right now there are 114 total posts in that forum. This is key information. Visitors see the total posts in any and all forums, along with the date of the last post, and then make a lightning fast decision on the community as a whole. If there is a low post count in a forum, plus no posts for several days, they may conclude that this is a dead community. They leave and never return. We all make quick decisions online. We see a web page and within 5 seconds decide if it looks worth our time. Having 4 book choices PLUS active forums with daily posts is essential.

Anyway, the solution is to put all 4-book discussions in one forum. For example, this quarter the forum would not be called, “The Ethical Brain,” but instead would be entitled, “4th Quarter 2005 Book Discussions.” Every future quarter would have a similar name representing the time period of the discussion.

The description would no longer be a little review of the book, but would instead be an image of each of the 4 books being discussed. The forum name would link into the forum, and the book images would lead to Amazon.com so people can purchase their books.

I would make the book images appropriately sized so that everyone can easily read the book cover. We would only have the current reading period forum with book images. All the others below it would simply be text. This would keep the forums page short.

Obviously if we’re discussing 4 total books we need the forum to be very organized. As you all know, I always create a separate thread for each chapter of the book. Let’s assume each book has 12 chapters. In my opinion, 12 Chapters x 4 Books = 48 individual threads is excessive. I propose that we break each book up into quarters or some other manageable size.

Suppose we are reading the following 4 books in one quarter: (this is a hypothetical selection only)

1. Freethinkers – nonfiction
2. Collapse - nonfiction
3. Ethical Brain - nonfiction
4. Beneath a Marble Sky – fiction

The forum threads would look like this:

Freethinkers: Introduction & Chapters 1 – 3
Freethinkers: Chapters 4 – 6
Freethinkers: Chapters 7 – 9
Freethinkers: Chapters 10 – 12 & Conclusion
Collapse: Prologue & Chapters 1 – 4
Collapse: Chapters 5 – 8
Collapse: Chapters 9 – 12
Collapse: Chapters 13 – 16
Ethical Brain: Introduction & Chapters 1 – 3
Ethical Brain: Chapters 4 – 6
Ethical Brain: Chapters 7 - 9
Ethical Brain: Chapters 10 – 12 & Conclusion
Beneath a Marble Sky: Chapters 1 - 5
Beneath a Marble Sky: Chapters 6 - 10
Beneath a Marble Sky: Chapters 11 - 15
Beneath a Marble Sky: Chapters 16 – 20
Beneath a Marble Sky: Chapters 1

We could have a different discussion leader for each book. The discussion leaders names would be posted below the books images.

Members and visitors would look for the right thread and make their posts. The book getting the most discussion would see it’s threads getting bumped to the top. This is a good thing. Hey, there could be competition. People reading different books could try to see who has the best & biggest discussion for the quarter.

Many of you guys are prolific readers and would undoubtedly read and discuss multiple books, but the point is that we will have way more to offer to way more people. I’d probably always read one nonfiction and always the fiction. The top thread in each new quarterly forum would be a sticky thread that explains that people should look for the correct book and chapter thread in which to post. But members can create their own threads in they want too.

Then, as we move into the quarter and see which book is getting the most activity, we invite one or more authors. We don’t invite them until we’ve got an idea of how the discussion is unfolding. I would strongly encourage all members to attend Author Chats, even if they didn’t read the associated book. We need a packed chat room to make author chats exciting and enticing for authors.

It is embarrassing to have 6 people show up for an Author Chat. If you didn’t read the book consider your attendance a means of supporting the community. There is no reason why we can’t have 4 different Author Chats in one quarter, provided we have quality discussions happening for each book. But I need your help in participating in discussions AND in attending Author Chats.

My final big suggestion is about advertising BookTalk to the freethinker world and beyond:

I propose we do our book polls in the middle of each quarter so that they are completely done before the beginning of the 3rd month of the current quarter. This gives every member a full month to order and receive one or more of the winning books from (hopefully) our Amazon.com links.

Also, we will start sending press releases. Not really releases to the media, but to dozens of freethinker sites. We can send these to non-freethinker sites as well. Any site that will give us publicity is fair game.

As soon as we have our 4 books selected we send a brief email or fax to these sites for them to post on their web sites and print in their upcoming newsletters. They’re always looking for this type of filler material. This is the sort of thing I could use help with each quarter. I’m not the world’s best writer and it would be helpful if one or more of you could help put these little articles together. I can email and fax them out.

And I forgot to mention the change to our Home page. As I said we would have a forum on our main forums page called “4th Quarter 2005 Book Discussions.” We will also have a table at the top of the Home page with all 4 books. See how we have the “Previous Book” and “Current Book” boxes? We’ll replace that with one box all the way across titled “4th Quarter 2005 Book Discussions.” All book images will be shown with floating boxes for the descriptions. Pretty much what you see now, but for all 4 books. The fiction book will have a different color background so that people can readily see it is fiction.

I’d appreciate feedback on these ideas. Thank you. ::44

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 10/27/05 8:51 am

Chris OConnor

A one-line summary of this entire concept would be...

Spread our passion for freethought, science and reason by reading and discussing quality books, both nonfiction and fiction, with people of all different backgrounds and belief systems.

dpaxton

Chris,

You have had a whole bunch of thought on this. I think it is a matter of how you want to run your site. You will need some advertising to attract new people in. You might be able to spend as much time figuring out how to get this on the cheap. I am looking for a community by which some intelligent thought can come forward. Maybe over time, there can be a diverse community and a series of books.

I mainly read non-fiction.

I do have a fiction collection though.

I am not personally sure how one without funding and a whole lot of time makes this happens on a popular scale. I have had plenty of time working through start-ups. I volunteer some time to help out. There are plenty of ways to bring things up and I do like your stance on this.

Dave

dpaxton

About author chat. Is there some way to do an email specifically about this? I can get this email on my phone and schedule my time accordingly. This way I will not forget. I would love to know maybe a week in advance and get the book and actually talk to the author. Maybe a member service on upcoming real time events?

Chris OConnor

I do emails to the entire community, but MANY people that their "accept emails from administrator" feature turned off.

pctacitus

Chris, you have my support. Of course, I ship in March, and barring something bad, I won't come up for air 'til June. Then only briefly. I have a schedule for 06 which may prohibit participation for certain periods, but near the end of the year I will have alot of freetime (barring deployment/mobilization).

Doug Larson: “The cat could very well be man's best friend but would never stoop to admitting it."

GOD defiles Reason

Here at BookTalk, we aspire to bring people of all backgrounds and cultures together in the common interests of making our world a better place to live through
reading and discussing quality nonfiction books that promote education, critical thinking, and reason.
To become more informed, more enriched, and more enlightened citizens of the world. Together, we can form that golden thread that affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity and stuff.

"To learn. To think. To grow." (Hell, that sounds like a motto right there, ay.)

Freethinking - It's not just for Freethinkers anymore.

I stole a line from the Humanist manifesto.

Rolf Venema

Dear Friends, Chris in pasticular,
It was very good for me, as an outsider (being Dutch), to read your objectives with booktalk. And I must say, the way you now put it does apeal to me. (is this English?)
I like to think of myself as a freethinker, although I am a believer. Yes, it is possible to believe in what an old Greek philosofor said: "There is more between earth and heaven, than you and I can see". But if that believe is contradicting things that reasoning or science prove to be, than the faith has to change. That is called, in my opinion: evolution, or as you like, growth. I think that everyone believes. Man cannot do without. But it does not mean that everyone has to believe in supernatural godlike entities. One can also believe in values; in freedom; in the good of people; the capitalistic system; in force and violence as a good thing to fight bad people or things; in as Gandhi did: in the opposite fighting bad people with non-violence means; in communism; in your love for people; in atheism being the one way to knowledge etc.
I underline the new concept Chris is suggesting. It feels as having respect for what people think or believe in, without denying your own point of view. I agree that there must not be any converting to what system ever. We want to learn from each other. This is the main reason why I stay at Booktalk: I want to learn from people with other views, to broaden my own.

I have, of course also a critical note:
what was very strange for me is that almost no one writes under his own name. I did so for a while, but it felt to me as hiding, as if I was ashamed of myself. I do not understand why people have the aliases they have. It is not encouriging when you start on booktalk and see that most of he post (though very good of quality, no doubt about that), of one who calls himself 'Mr. Pessimistic" No offence. I had to look trough it, to understand that you are not a pessimist at all! (Sorry for taking you as an example, but I think to know that you will understand).

The other critical note is that good old Chris has to pay for it all. My opinion was and is that if I enjoy something it is something worth to me, e.g. money. If you take a course that has great benefits to you, you find it normal to pay for it. So I would like to propose, that every one who enjoys this site, gives now and then something to support the site and of course Chris for that matter.
I am not promoting the idea that members have to pay, but only (as I am used to in church) to give for the things you appreciate. It is not fair to leave it all to Chris.

Last remark:
It is very hard for me to express my thoughts in a accurate and good way. I am lacking of the right words and expressions. That can lead to misunderstanding and the idea that I know it all. Which of course would be nice but.......well I am human: thank God! So if anyone, reading my contribution, thinks: that cannot be right, please let me know. It will imporve my English aswell.
And the of course the spelling.i've tried to let my contribution checked on the seplling, with the knob down. But it does not function.

marti1900

GODdefiles says

Quote:
Freethinking - It's not just for Freethinkers anymore.

LOL Made me think of the Buick ad. It's not your father's freethinking

Chris,nicely done.

Marti in Mexico

Chris OConnor

As I think further about these proposed changes I see one other possible improvement. Ok, so we're reading and discussing 4 books concurrently and seeing our membership grow accordingly. Obviously, this is a good thing for BookTalk. But we also would like book sales to grow in proportion.

On our Home page we have a table at the very top, below our logo and in the same spot as our "Previous Book" and "Current Book", which is for our current book selections. During the 1st quarter of next year it would be called "Q1 2006 Book Discussions." There would be the images of all 4 books going across this table, with links directly below the books.

But what happens when we have selected the next quarters 4 books an entire month before the current quarter has ended. If our purpose is to get members and visitors to order their next books in advance we will need to show these next books too.

So how do we best do this?

Do we now show a total of 8 book images right there at the top of the Home page? Or do we only have images for the current 4 books, and then below this section we have text links for the upcoming quarters book selections? Any opinions?

I'm also thinking that it might be difficult to have all 4 books going across in one row, so maybe we stick with the 2-across format we currently have, and just do two rows. We get rid of the headings, "Previous Book" and "Current Book" and have one big heading stretching across the entire top called "Q1 Book Discussions." The 3 nonfiction books would have the same background color, while the fiction would be of a different color to make it stand out.

Chris

Jeremy1952

Chris, let me first say I deeply and sincerely appreciate all the thought and work you put in to this. I have some comments, neither negative nor positive I think, just comments.

Quote:
We develop a well-defined Mission Statement. What is our purpose? What do we wish to achieve? Are we trying to contribute something of value to the world, or is this just a place for book lovers to congregate and socialize?

One of the reasons I had trouble getting up to speed on the previous thread was that I never understood that this was meant to show a profit or even break even. Marti related the IRS distinction between “hobby” and “business”, and I thought this was a hobby which, if financial support was necessary, would come from us regs.

Quote:
I propose getting rid of all reference to being a "secular community." We’re a freethinker community, not a secular community.

cool

Quote:
I’d love to believe that education naturally leads to atheism, but maybe it doesn’t.

I’d love to insert a quote here from Gazzaniga about his friend and peer who is a practicing Roman Catholic, and the justification he came up with for supporting stem cell research, but I cant’ find it. Anyway that’s the gist.

Quote:
We read and discuss a total of 4 books every quarter.

Hmmm… sounds exciting, but I must point out that when we were doing one book a month it was “too much” so we moved to one per quarter. If we do it though, I’m in.

If you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything. Daniel Dennett, 1984

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Oct 27, 2005 6:43 pm Post subject: Re: 2006: 4 books a quarter

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