I need some time to think about where to go from here. Right now I'm thinking about what would benefit the community as a whole.
I spoke on the phone recently to Tara, a moderator, and we are under the impression that being a facilitator to numerous book discussions would NOT be in BookTalk's best interest.
We currently have no more than a dozen people that post on any given book discussion. Adding the Classics forum shouldn't detract much from the focus of the community, which is our main reading selection. But having another prominent forum for concurrent book discussions will fragment our members into smaller groups, which doesn't help us at all.
Part of what we offer is the community or friendship we all feel by interacting regularly with one another. Several ideas that we have been tossing around lately would be counter-productive in this regard.
1. By being a community that simply discusses all books we thin ourselves out too much. We would not have large discussions in our main book, which would mean we would not have anything to entice authors to come chat with us.
2. By offering a prominent forum for discussing any and all books, and then building a database of all suggested books, we would have little to no control over the quality of what is read. And WHAT we read and discuss is our entire image.
I'm thinking about the big picture right now. I really want to focus on educational and academic books. I'm getting nervous even thinking about anything else. Down the road we might branch out, but right now we are too damn small. We need the members working as a community towards some sort of common goal.
Our quarterly book discussions need to be our focus. It's what we sell to authors. I have visited a ton of book groups, and to be honest, they are a complete clusterfuck. They have a ton of forums for discussing every type of book, which works well for them, but they don't offer anything unique.
At BookTalk we offer personal chat sessions with the authors. To me and to most people I have chatted with this is big. By branching out and making this a community for discussing just about any book, we start attracting members that have absolutely no interest in our core mission. We become like everyone else.
I'm open to suggestions, but am pausing to do some thinking right now. I have been thinking about the "Classics" forum and do like this particular idea, but only because it shouldn't be a distraction.
And I have a vision for how that forum will operate. We want ONE thread created for each Classic. It needs to be organized. I'll move all the discussions about classic books from The Academy to this new Classics forum once it is created.
I have some other ideas for how to eliminate the troublesome sticky topics at the top of many forums.
Anyone have a good name for this classics forum? Keep in mind we want to discuss the Bible and all other scriptures, along with just about any famous book.
Chris
Edited by: Chris OConnor 
at: 3/24/05 1:45 am
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As just one little forum at the bottom of all the others I worry that The Academy might get lost. 
