April 2014 ReadaThing - Hiss and Purr. Come give your opinion.

(copied from the last RaT, with some updates)

For future reference, mine or anyone else's who runs a RaT:

The Announcement thread should go up as soon as the time is determined, listing time and dates, a sample of the timeline, and a link to the Wikipage (which, obviously, also needs to go up then). Also send Loranne a link, for SoTT and blog post, and ask Jeremy to modify the group header. And post in Talk about LibraryThing.
A week to 24 hours before the RaT begins, a What will you read? thread should go up, asking for plans and themes and the like.
The Logbook thread should go up at least a couple hours before the RaT begins, with specific reference to the time of starting (as compared to when the thread is posted), a list of interesting questions to answer, and a link to the Wikipage. Try not to edit that post in the future - make a second post immediately after it for adding stuff if necessary.

In the timeline, days should be written out, attached to 1 am, not to midnight (too confusing - is that the day that's ending or the one that's beginning?). So
Midnight
0100 (Tuesday)
0200
etc.

Did the three timezone table work? Was everyone able to find a timezone that worked for them as a reference?
Is there anything else you would have liked to see?
Did anything happen that didn't work for you?
Do you like the week-long RaTs or would you prefer a shorter period? Longer won't work, I don't think - too much.
Anything else - suggestions?

There was less confusion at the end of the RaT this time, I think. Even if I never did fix the PDF timeline.

Any suggestions for WHEN or a THEME for the next RaT? A couple months' gap, at least, unless you want to run it, but if there's a period that will work for a lot of people we could probably fit in a RaT around late June or July.

The timetable was fine for me, and everyone else seemed to add to it alright. It was confusing at first because I'd mostly add when I finished reading and then have to think no, not this time, an hour (or 2 or 3) ago, and then minus 2... So, kind of awkward, but manageable. The only irksome thing about it is the adding of non-"official" times, which are in any of various timezones and therefore rather unclear, plus people doing it different ways. Is there a way to not bother with that? Either adding half hrs into the table also, or having people just pick one side or the other, or...?

Maybe a wiki for books finished during it? Not imperative, but it might be fun to have a kind of -we accomplished this- list, you know? Just an idea. :)

I think everything was fine.

Weeklong was good, I think it gives everyone a chance to find at least a little time. Longer would just fizzle, I think, and shorter would probably be too limiting, people working and being busy with this or that, I imagine plenty of folks wouldn't manage to squeeze hours in.

A theme could be fun, but my only suggestion is to make it very very broad. Plenty of us have our things we like, or don't like, or a notion of what we want to read next, so if stuff doesn't fit, then it'd be lack of participation, which is opposite of the goal!

Thanks a lot for all the organisation. The timetable worked very well. I didn"t have had any problems. Unfortunately, I only had time for those hours I set in the timesline.

I really enjoyed it and found the announcements clear and the wiki timeline workable (and sure it's a teensy bit of head wriggling to get your time in the right place, but probably still the easiest option).

My only thought would be to split the timeline by day rather than one long edit for ease of use at the end of the week.

My only thought would be to split the timeline by day rather than one long edit for ease of use at the end of the week.

I like this idea. And then half hours could be added in without it being unwieldy, too. The only problem is, we're dealing with multiple timezones, so, okay we stick with UTC for the splitting up of days, but then people on the west coast of the US and people in Australia and whatnot, are going to be all over the place finding their time slots. So, sadly, I don't know how feasible it'd be.

>5 .Monkey.: fair point - timezones do make it tricky!

Yeah. We can poll the group and see what folks think; if no one minds it, then we can do it that way. But if those in the further time zones think it'd be too complicated, then it's probably not the best way to go about things.

>5 .Monkey.: I really like the idea of splitting the table into individual days by UTC time zone. I don't see how it would be any less feasible if it is just making one continuous object into seven objects, posted one right after the other.

While I am normally in LT's timezone (thus making it easy to find my time-slot), for this one I was traveling to Germany and had to do the mental timezone math. The math was a lot easier than scrolling through the timeline trying to find the right spot for Tuesday at 2 pm -- it is too far away from 1:00 am for either day marker to be visible in the edit window. If there were seven individual days, finding the correct 2:00 pm would not be a problem!

Yeah, I started doing a ctrl+F and typing the first couple letters of the day it was and then scrolling to the right hour, to get to the right spot easier, lol.

I like the idea of individual days, too.

Could we run it later on the last day next time? I rarely read until the evening on weekends, as there are too many chores that need my attention during the day. :)

Well, the point is midnight to midnight, it just wasn't midnight in your timezone is all. For me it ended at 2am, and for anyone in Asia or Oceania it ended in the wee hours up to noon. I think staying with UTC makes the most sense—it's in the middle.

+1 on the individual day idea

>10 fuzzi:

Thanks for all the organization that went into this and wow! What a lot of reading people managed!

I'm just relieved listening to audio books counted as I didn't get as much sit down with a book time as I'd hoped during the course of the week but it was a good reason to focus on the audio books while doing other things that had to be done. I also didn't finish many books this week, but I did manage to finish 3 - 2 of which had been started before the week. Labyrinth was just too big to get through and listening to it probably slows the process even further!

With regard to filling the timeline in, it was a little fiddly trying to find the right place but not too terribly so. Splitting into days would be great if it didn't make it more difficult for people not in/close to UTC time. I'll be honest, I kept having to get a UTC clock up on the internet to check what time I'd read from and to (I never did quite get the hang of whether I was an hour ahead or an hour behind, but I'll put that down to life using up too many braincells at the moment!)

Much as the idea of a theme sounds good in principle, I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from taking part if a theme didn't appeal to them -or perhaps a choice of a couple of different themes in the hope of people finding something that enticed them. Could a themed participation be optional - maybe two columns on the timeline - one for theme related reads and the other for non theme related ones (would that make it too confusing?)

I think the week length RaT worked well on a personal level - it encouraged me to fit in as much reading as possible because I was making myself accountable (and seeing blank spots on the timeline spurred me on) but was maintainable - although next week on a life level would be easier to find the reading time (or at least in theory), trying to keep that up alongside 'normal' things for too long is impractical and demoralising I think. Also a week was long enough that if I didn't have time to read on a given day, I still felt like I could participate because there would be other days when I would get time, so my efforts did count - if it was a three day thing and there was a day or two that I couldn't manage, I think I'd be more inclined to step down completely and presume my participation wouldn't make a difference.

I shall look forward to the next RaT whenever it happens - thank you to everyone involved!

Time Zones confuse me. I am in the LT time zone so if that was listed as one of the markers that would be very helpful and possibly help those on the West Coast.

The organization is awesome. I enjoy the week long. For a theme I think broad would be good. I usually don't read for theme because I feel like I over think it and then can't find books to fit into it.

I had trouble at first trying to add my time after the first few days. I opened to tabs one with the timeline in edit mode and one not in the edit mode. I had to take my time to find my slot. I do like the idea of adding in the half hours. Sometimes I am only able to read for 30 minutes and not the hour.

I like the idea of a wiki for books finished.

I love participating in the RaTs and look forward to the next one. I would also love to help out if the time permits next time.

Splitting by day sounds excellent - I'll do some experimentation. It _might_ even be possible to split by day with jagged edges - split the columns separately. Or not. I'll see if half-hours might work, too...there was an earlier RaT that had two columns, for the hour and half-hour, I think.

Themes would definitely be broad. Mystery, for instance - which means any book that contains a mystery, which is most of them! Scientific investigation, "what is my goal" quest books (every farmboy-hero ever...), like that. I like themes that can be twisted to fit just about any book. More limited ones like "female author" (or "male author") do put stronger limitations on what books count. We had one where the theme was "summer", and some of the reasons given were pretty convoluted - which is part of the fun, for me.

We have (in the broad sense of "we") had a wikipage for books in earlier RaTs - that could easily be reinstated.

>14 crazy4reading: LT's time zone was listed - EDT, the left-most column. And yes, I on the west coast did use that for my marker. Thanks for the offer to help - we'll ping you when the next one's happening!

>13 Peace2: One reason I like using UTC as the base is the ease with which you can _find_ a UTC clock on the internet, to cross-check your timezone shift. And yes, even when I worked in a job that required paying attention to timezones across the world, it never became easy (I can think in military time, but timezones still confuse me).

I have less trouble with them due to having family/friends spread around the US (I grew up in IL w/ best friend who lived in AZ, mom's fam in MI, etc) and then dating someone on another continent and moving to said continent when we got married :P so, it's natural for me to always be flipping around timezones. I'm less used to UTC (GMT is more my "base" for that sort of thing), so it being Summer Time and adjusting 2hrs rather than 1 did throw me a smidge, but no big deal.

I agree that a week is a reasonable amount of time for the ReadAThing. I would also like to have the table split into individual days if that is possible -- and to have half hours listed. This time, at least twice I started reading on the half hour although I read for an hour; I just listed the start and stop times on the timetable.

We didn't have a theme this time, did we? If so, I missed it. Personally, I would prefer to let people read whatever they want.

No, no theme. It's always optional - you're free to ignore it. Well, actually, we did have a theme(ish) - Drop Everything and Read Day. But since that's sort of the point of the RaT, it was water to fish.

Just want to add a voice for shorter RaTs . . . I find I lose interest in following the longer ones . . . I also have more of a tendency to think . . . "Oh, I'll read more tomorrow." when I get busy . . . and then don't read as much as I would like.

For me, setting aside a whole long weekend (3-4 days) to read works much better . . . because I actually block those days out on the calendar and read. I can't really block off a whole week . . . especially when it includes two weekends.

I also noticed there was a drop-off in participation during the middle of the week . . .

So, just voting the possibility of alternating between the shorter and longer RaTs . . . there's no reason why they all have to be the same length.

No, they don't have to be. But there was only a small drop, and I still believe the week-long style gives people the option to join in when they can. A shorter time means if you're busy during it those couple days, you can't participate. If you're busy during a couple days of a week, then it's not an obstacle. I think trying to do shorter ones will lead to less participation overall. Someone is welcome to try it out and see how it goes, of course.

>20 .Monkey.: ITA :)

>20 .Monkey.: & 21
I'm speaking as one of the people who agrees to help out and watch the threads for the whole RaT. (And has also been part of setting them up.) I'm certainly willing to turn all that over to the people who want the longer RaTs . . . I'm just saying it has become too long for me. And my memory of past RaTs is that we actually had more people interacting at the same time back when they were shorter.

But then I'm growing weary with much of LT lately, so maybe this is just one more sign . . .

>22 LucindaLibri: don't leave... :(