Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

Hello hello all! Guys, feel free to leave below any ideas or improvements or suggestions you think would be cool to see in next year’s challenge. I always like to incorporate other people’s ideas into it if I can!

Improvements:
- Maybe bring back the task guidance tab on the spreadsheet and update it as questions are asked about each task. It seems that sometimes I gave a response to a question and then forgot my response to it and later changed my mind lol!
- Streamline all number related tasks. If a task says "more than", then it can have more than, but if it doesn't, then it can't. One general rule for all of them!

Ideas for next year:
- Each category has a “golden task� which is harder than the others in the category and is worth 3 points instead of 1? - This is actually an idea for last year that I never ended up using this year.
- Assigning each member a number like last year and depending on your number you can get more points on certain tasks. - This is an idea from (I think) Abigael. I think it's cool but would require a lot of coding for the points and would only work in teams of 5 or 10. It needs more thought/planning but could be applied or some variation of it.

Yea my suggestion was to bring back the task guidance tab! That way if people have questions, they can refer back to that tab with examples. Especially if you’re unavailable. Also maybe all the captains can decide what counts and what doesn’t. I did like that each group had a sub captain so when one person is busy, another can answer.

I liked what we did the year before of listing a middle grade book next to our names and it has to do with a task. It’s great for recommendations! But the tasks were really good this year!

I second Ilsen.

I just wanted to say that I loved having sub captain. It made things a lot easier this year.

Kadi wrote: "Improvements:
- Maybe bring back the task guidance tab on the spreadsheet and update it as questions are asked about each task. It seems that sometimes I gave a response to a question and then forg..."

Besides the last one, I love the other 3 suggestions/improvements.

What I would like to add:
I love that you create each team combining people who read fewer books with people reading more books.
But I think together with this, it would be amazing also combining new people (new to the challenge) with ones who've participated before.

This year and last year I've been in teams where the majority went AWOL, and even though I'm enjoying reading, I'm also competitive and I need similar people around me. Although I know it's almost imposible to know beforehand whos's truly in or not.

Of course, I understand the cases where something emerges and it's more important than reading, but I had teammates (I won't name them) who I noticed were mostly reading other books that weren't mg and had nothing to do with the challenge :(.

And I get that you can combine your other reading preferences, but then why would you even get into a Middle-Grade challenge in the first place?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset, just wanting to put this in the way, because I think some people don't understand how important it is for their teammates to actually work as a team and read mg books (that's why we got into the challenge in the first place, I'm assuming. :D ).

Hope it makes sense and I'm sorry if I seem bitter.
I just miss the 2019 challenge where I was in a team where we had just one AWOL but still were almost beating the other competitive team. In the end they won, but hey, we had so much fun! ^_^

I had personal stuff come up, but thankfully the libby app came through so I was still able to participate. I read 2 extra books this was a fluke this year, I'm trying to balance reading with other hobbies.

maybe bigger teams so it's not as noticeable when AWOL circumstances happen to team members?

not sure how that would work since only so many people want to do this.

maybe more points for the tougher challenge categories

This is so random to come back to this like 8 months after the discussion but I’m thinking about this year’s challenge and it’s great to come back and see everyone’s comments on here.

I’m a bit torn about this smaller team/bigger team debate.
I remember one year we had quite big teams and I said never again because there was one team with people who excelled beyond what they thought they would each read individually which is great! But it also meant I was very stressed as they basically finished the majority of the tasks before we were even halfway through the month. I can’t remember what year that was but I remember I even created new tasks and it was crazy disorganised of me lol!

And then in 2022 we had 6 teams! And that wasn’t great either even though the teams were small teams of 5 because there were some teams who found it hard to finish even half of the tasks in the entire month.

I feel like 6-7 people is the sweet spot. I definitely think it’s good to mix newbies with the regulars but it’s always a gamble because I know from the regulars who reads a lot and who doesn’t whereas newbies can say in the questionnaire form that they’ll read 5 books and then read 20😂
I don’t know, I guess it’s always unpredictable but there’s a lot of factors to consider

Also Dana I totally get your points! I think the fact that there were people who weren’t totally committed came from me recruiting people outside of the group to join in with the challenge. I always have a big recruitment drive before the challenge because fresh faces can make it fun and I also have to push to meet the numbers required to make the challenge competitively fun.

I do think this can be helped by either making the teams bigger like Aurora said (8 people teams maybe?) or making the tasks easier but not too simple.

I’m still looking for a fun spin idea for this year as it’s our 5th anniversary for the challenge so it’s quite special!

Have you ever set a minimum number of books previously, Kadi? I know that might seem too rigid at first glance, but maybe if people could commit to a least 4 books (1 per week), that could potentially help frame the level of commitment for each prospective participant? Still supposed to be fun, but 1 book/month is not going to cut it for a "reading challenge"? :)

I don't know if it would help at all - ignore this entirely if you think not. I just remember being a newbie who pledged 5 and read 20, and also doing that in part because someone on my team read 0 to 1 books, and I was trying to pick up their slack (we finished second-to-last, I think, regardless!). ;)

fwiw - I have enjoyed all of the tasks and their difficulty level previously. :) I really liked the collaborative team ones, as well as the individual tasks to score points. It's been a good mix, for me! :)

@capn I remember that, I was very impressed by how much you read. I had no idea you read that many books for that reason though I thought you were just an insanely fast reader!

But that’s what I mean by newbies being unpredictable like what you say you can read and what you actually end up reading can be different. It can be more because you feel more motivated or it can be less because you’re suddenly busy with work or something that you didn’t think you would be busy with before you signed up.

I never set a minimum read in the past but now that I think about it you’re right. I don’t want to drive people away by saying you have to read a certain amount, like none of the group challenges are like that. But at the same time and I’ve never really thought about this but it makes it unbalanced for the team if there are people who can’t commit. I’ve been in big reading challenges before where they block you from joining if you go awol!

I do think 4 books are too much though because it depends on the book size like 4 books that are 300-400 pages each is a lot more than 4 100 page books. I’m going to say 3 is a good solid starting point.

Three seems entirely reasonable, and not at all too much to ask. :)

And I can hardly imagine you phrasing it in such a way that it would put people off anyway, Kadi. :) Good vibes here!

(I am a fast reader, probably, AND I was sooo excited for the challenge, I had literal stacks of books waiting and ready for August 1st! XD I like a good challenge to push myself!).

EDIT: Also, I just wanted to add that it might be good for people to take a look at their own reading stats - Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ automatically keeps track of them! If you go to Your Year in Books (upper right-hand side of your profile page, OR, in 'My Books', on the lower left-hand side)

In "Year in Books" it gives your average book length (mine is only 153 pages, probably because I read a lot of picture books to kids), and your total number of books read last year (I only managed 73 - and that's because I didn't take part in the August Reading Challenge last year!). :)

The total # of books you read last year divided by 12 will give your monthly average. Mine is 73/12 = 6.08 (There used to be a bar graph of books/month read, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. I used to have a huge spike in August, ha ha!).

So that might be one way for people to figure out how many books they can pledge to read - maybe do one more than your typical monthly average (if it's greater than or equal to 3 books! Ha!)?

Or go for a new PB (personal best)? :)

One other thought - if you make the questionnaire have drop-down ranges of books?

For example, "I plan to read":
3-5 books
5-8 books
8 to 12 books
12+ books

Or something like this? A range might be more comfortable (and instructive) for the user, and make it easier for you to plan.

Of course the problem is (for me, anyway), that I then put aside 6 books or whatever, but the POINTS will be for different books that I either have or can borrow and wanted to read anyway. So books tend to get added, rather than subtracted, from my estimated total. :) I can't anticipate this - it's just a natural consequence of seeing your points system and realising that if I just read like 3 more books, I could score my team 24 additional points, or whatever. ;)

(Maybe also an additional question, like, "Hypothetical situation: your team can take the lead, but in order to do so, 3 more books will need to be read in the next 2 days. Which are you more likely to do?
a) pull an all-nighter and read all 3 yourself
b) push yourself, bring a book everywhere, and read 1 or 2 of those yourself, since you spoke to another team member who said they'd read the remainder
c) nothing - I did my bit already.
d) I probably wouldn't even be paying attention, LOL)

XD

Cant believe its coming up to august already

EdenB15 wrote: "Cant believe its coming up to august already"

(I'm so excited!) XD

Nerd that I am - I missed last year's, but have been amassing and saving up MG-designated reads for the next August, just so I'll have a big, fat pool of books to draw from! /review/list...

And get this, Kadi - they are NEWISH for a change! :D Yes, breaking the habit of a lifetime (preferring musty, dusty, found-at-a-thrift-store retro reads), almost all of mine are freshly printed, nearly half of which are brand new! I'm going to be relevant this time and all! XD

Now what do I read over the next 2 months in the meantime...?! ;)