Tabulated review threads sorted by average score

[King Daniel]

Therin of Andor wrote:

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So have still only five people actually read "Children of Kings" and bothered to vote?

Six, now

[Sho]

Actually we've gathered nine votes by now .

[Patrick O'Brien]

Looks great Sho, nice work! I am going to cast a few more votes. I like being able to organise the threads by average score. Very cool

[Sho]

Thanks .

BTW, the regular automated update times are currently at midnight and midday, UTC. I occassionally trigger an update manually, though, such as just before posting my earlier post about the nine votes, because it hadn't collected KingDaniel's vote yet and I wanted it to be current before posting. Just by way of explanation in case anyone was looking hard enough to wonder about the irregular timestamps shown on the page.

[JD]

I just checked the thread for the third MyrU book so I could vote in the poll, but there isn't a poll. Do you want me to start a new thread with a poll?

[Sho]

Good question. As the thread author you have the ability to add a poll after the fact (via the Thread Tools button), which I personally would prefer over a new thread to avoid the redundancy and retread. The software will pick up the poll just fine as it was designed to do.

Rosalind is fearing that this will skew the results vs. the way the threads usually work, because the poll wouldn't have been there since the thread inception and wouldn't have gathered votes alongside the posting of the existing replies. She hence advocates new threads being opened instead. However, I think this can actually be mitigated by writing a new reply to the thread, announcing the addition of the poll. Between thread subscriptions and the relatively stable forum population making regular visits, I think this should encourage enough existing thread participants to return for a vote. Additionally, the mere existence of my site already changes the dynamics a bit by making older threads and their polls more visible. Not that voting ever required posting first anyway.

Furthermore, we were in agreement that the retro review thread project ought to be rate-limited, and I was planning to finally open my Harbinger thread this weekend or Monday-ish or so, so with a new thread we'd have a minor scheduling conflict.

Bottom line, I have no authority, but I'd say add a poll to your existing thread and write a reply to announce it .

[Christopher]

^I don't think it's worth worrying too much about factors that could skew the results, since BBS polls aren't scientific to begin with. The sample size is too small, participation is by choice so it isn't a random sample, etc. Polls are mainly just for fun.

[Sho]

Yup, that too. I mainly see the ranking as having a social value in context of the forum's microcosm, and when promoting it in another thread recently I explicitly warned against trusting the numbers blindly and encouraged clicking through to the actual threads. Listing them in the leftmost column instead of simply the book title was a deliberate choice from the start.

Still, must feel good to see Watching the Clock in #2 .

[Sho]

I've added a thread blacklist feature now to blacklist the duplicate That Which Divides review thread as the mods have proven unresponsive to pleas to merge them (I contacted Rosalind via PM, but perhaps she's on vacation or similar).

And more excitingly, I've posted the first retro review thread as discussed above: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=164281

I'm sorry to say for Christopher that it's already knocked Watching the Clock out of second place. But it's still early!

[Janos]

Nice work. I like this thread b/c it doesn't spoil the books and it may nudge me to read books I hadn't planned and/or help me prioritize the books I have yet to read, but have in my to-read pile.

[Sho]

Thanks!

And I agree, it has definitely influenced my own reading plans as well. I hadn't really planned on reading the Mirror Universe stories until I saw Rise Like Lions top the chart, but now I'm going to.

[bok2384]

I don't know if this is the place to post this question, but, Sho, what will be the next retro novel thread that you'll be posting? Is it going to be Summon the Thunder? Thanks.

[Sho]

It's what I'm reading right now, and afterwards I'll go on to read the rest of Vanguard, too. So yeah, I expect to complete the set of Vanguard threads . We have a couple of people on the board who mentioned they have the series in their reading schedule for this year as well (e.g. Killandra and Skywalker) so if we're lucky we'll even get some renewed first-time reader debate going in those.

However, I don't need to be the only one to post retro review threads, of course. I was a little keen to post the first one to establish the format, to the degree they need one (an extra word or two about spoiler policy seemed necessary). With that done now, the only thing to keep in mind is the agreed-upon rate-limiting of max one per week: I'd appreciate it if room were left for me to post the Vanguard threads every couple of weeks. Other than that, go to town .

[bok2384]

Sho wrote:

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It's what I'm reading right now, and afterwards I'll go on to read the rest of Vanguard, too. So yeah, I expect to complete the set of Vanguard threads . We have a couple of people on the board who mentioned they have the series in their reading schedule for this year as well (e.g. Killandra and Skywalker) so if we're lucky we'll even get some renewed first-time reader debate going in those.

However, I don't need to be the only one to post retro review threads, of course. I was a little keen to post the first one to establish the format, to the degree they need one (an extra word or two about spoiler policy seemed necessary). With that done now, the only thing to keep in mind is the agreed-upon rate-limiting of max one per week: I'd appreciate it if room were left for me to post the Vanguard threads every couple of weeks. Other than that, go to town .

That's great, thanks Sho. It could be good if we look upon this as a sort of book club type thing and we could get people to read along as well.

I wouldn't be posting any review threads as my reading is all over the place, I've gone from TNG's The Last Stand to Titan's The Red King.

However, count me in with reading Summon the Thunder along with you guys once I finished Red King. I've never been able to finish the novel, so hopefully the 3rd times a charm.

[Sho]

Agreed on the "book club" idea . Truth be told, I'm always a little frustrated how far I am behind "everyone" on reading the books, which means I rarely get to share in the initial release excitement. It was my secret hope that retro review threads would allow us stragglers to organize a bit and make up for that. Looking forward to exchanging opinions!

Edit: That's also partly why I decided to make the first post in the review threads a little more book advertisement-like by including the cover, blurb and excerpt links - to increase the chances of encouraging someone to pick up the book by posting the thread. Of course that's in all our interest even with threads for new books, though, and so I did the same for That Which Divides.