It sounds like the main concern is that the thread entitled, "
Permanent Thread - All Book Suggestions go Here," is bulky, confusing, and hard to navigate effectively. I agree.
The solution seems to be us having one large sortable database. By "sortable" I mean that there would be several fields that anyone can sort however they like.
I will soon be paying a programmer to create this database so that anyone can effectively view our database and find what they want quickly and easily.
Here is how I am envisioning the design...
Imagine a page on our site entitled, "Suggested Books." This page contains a table, with the following columns across the top...
Title
Author
Subject
Amazon.com link
If you click on "Title" it sorts the entire database of book titles alphabetically. Click it again, it sorts in reverse alphabetical order.
Click on Author it sorts the entire database by author alphabetically, and then naturally if you click it again it reverses the order.
What it seems you guys want is to be able to sort by subject. Well, we will be able to once this database is created and up and running. We will try to keep the total number of subjects to a minimum, such as "science, history, current events, etc..." Or we can get even more specific, but the goal will be for people to be able to find books quickly and efficiently, so fewer categories seems wiser.
I don't see a reason to have a bunch of sticky topic threads, when many of the books suggested will have to be suggested yet again in the permanent thread. Talk about redundant. Visitors will really think we're a mess.
I also will soon create a page that explains the whole voting process for new people. We'll be using the Acronym "SNOW."
S = Suggestions
N = Nominations
O = Options
W = Winner(S) SuggestionsWe will continually be adding to the book suggestion database that I just mentioned above. The books we suggest will NOT have to be ideal for our quarterly readings, but merely good books members suggest other members read. This is an important point. Again, this massive database will simply be a sortable database of books members suggest other members read.
I'll always reserve the right to not allow certain books into the database, as we don't want it too damn big. Heck, big is ok I suppose. If it is designed properly. We could even have categories for Humor, Art, and other off-the-wall topics.
I'd like to make it so members can enter books into the database themselves, but I'm not sure if this will be possible. I may have to do it myself.
(N) NominationsFrom our database members can pick a handful of books they would like to see on any given poll. In other words, they scan the database and pick books they feel would make excellent reads for our quarterly selections.
They then make a post in the appropriate nomination thread naming the book or books they wish to nominate. All books appearing in the nomination thread must appear in the database, and if they don't they will be added. Nominations should be a subset of our database.
We could have a dozen nominated books appearing in the nomination thread, but obviously we will never have more than 5 on a poll. Ideally, each book poll contains 3 or 4 books.
(O) OptionsFrom the nomination thread we will pick between 3 and 5 book options that will appear on the poll.
(W) WinnerOne book will be announced as the winner of each poll.
So we go from suggestions to nominations to options to a winner. This is basically what we do now, but the process is confusing without a page explaining how it works for new people. And also, without having a sortable database we have to use that bulky "permanent" thread.
Chris
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at: 3/21/05 2:15 am
