a suggestion for making book discussions more active

MadArchitect

Just thought I'd throw this idea your way and see if it stuck. As an experiment, why not take one of the official discussions for next month and add a regularly scheduled chat session specifically for that book? What I mean is, a chat session in addition to the casual weekly chat sessions that used to be a regular occurence and are making something of a comeback these days.

The downside, of course, is that doing so makes one more thing for the mod(s) to have to do, but it isn't a very big thing to do. Just make a note of it somewhere on the page, update that note each week, maybe send out a mass email, and make sure that at least one mod shows up for the chat. It doesn't even really have to be a mod -- just someone willing to represent BookTalk as do some minimal moderating of the discussion. Oh, and one other thing: copy the transcript of the chat and make a post of it in the discussion forum so that people who didn't make it to the chat aren't left entirely out. (I tend to work a lot of nights, so I wouldn't really feel comfortable promising to serve as chat moderator, but if the chat moderator would copy and paste the chat into an email, I'd be glad to clean it up and post it to the forum.)

The other downside, as I see it, is that live chats might require a little more structure. For example, if a chat draws in 6 chatters, half of whom are nearly done with the book they're discussing, the half of whom are only two chapters in, there are basically going to be two seperate, overlapping discussions going on. So for that reason, it may be good to schedule the chats weekly (every Tuesday, for example), but to assign certain sections for each chat. So, for example, for Tuesday the 1st the group would chat about roughly the first 12th (four chats a month, three months in a quarter) of the book, while for Tuesday the 7th the group would chat about roughly the second 12th, and so on. The discussion forum doesn't have to follow the same structure, or any structure at all for that matter, and the fact that there are two components to discussion (weekly chats and ongoing threads) means that some people can follow the chat structure while others read at their own pace, and everyone can still chime in without getting completely lost.

Oh, and yeah, the chats might bomb. That's probably the worst thing that can come of this, other than some wasted effort, but all things considered, even that's not so bad. But I would suggest that you try to run it for an entire quarter before you give up on it. Even if it does ultimately succeed, the first month or so is almost guaranteed to be rough going. People have to get used to the pace of the thing, and giving up after a few weeks is likely to prevent the thing from ever getting off the ground like it could.

So what are the benefits? Well, these are the few that I foresee:

1) Chatting can be a more direct way to talk to people than the back and forth of posting, and the differences in format can lead in directions that posting wouldn't necessarily lead. Posting the transcripts of chats into the forum would allow us to follow those leads the rest of the week.

2) Providing as many ways to get involved as possible can only encourage people to contribute to discussions. Some people may end up enjoying the chats more than the posting; some people may stick with posting and not get involved in the chats. Some people will probably contribute to both. All three ways are great so long as people are getting involved. And if we're good about posting the chat transcripts to the discussion forum, the two formats ought to feed off of one another.

3) Chatting weekly might provide us with a way of practicing for author chats. The more we chat about a book as a group, the better we're likely to be at it. Hopefully, by doing it on a weekly basis, we'll develop some focus, some etiquitte, and the author chats won't be as frustrating a mess as they sometimes have been in the past.

Anyway, give it some thought. I know you've got a lot on your plate, but I think that this makes for a comparatively easy way to boost activity on the forums.

Chris OConnor

Mad, I read your above post and loved it. I am just too busy to do anything about it right now. Once the new forum is up and our new chat room is working we can discuss this subject. Thanks for thinking through this and offering such sound advice.


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