Looking at her blog, I instantly decided to follow her; I also posted a link to her blog in the "New BL Blogs to Follow" group. In the space of a single day, she's pretty much nailed the site's issues such as they present to someone who's just signed up, but instead of just deleting her blog again in frustration, she's listed them and asked "is this a site worth staying on?"
Please pitch in with your views (by responding to her post in the official BL group).
As the "official" BookLikes group has been swamped by unchecked waves of spam, I've decided to create a replacement group for us to address the issues that we'd otherwise post in the "official" group:
Since it's member-managed, it of course won't cause any issues to actually be fixed. But let's face it, with BL admin AWOL, that's not happening anyway -- and this will at least give us a new place to discuss issues and voice grievances.
Most importantly, being a member-administered group, this will be a group where we will be able to keep out the spammers.
In light of this, it would be helpful if there were several other administrators besides me, so if you're interested, please let me know.
My hope is that we'll eventually be able to dry out the playing field that the spammers have found in the "official" group. There hardly seems any point for any of us to remain in that group but for the few threads that remain useful to us, and ultimately it makes more sense to me to move those threads to a new group that we ourselves can control and leave the "official" group behind once and for all. That way, we'd not only remove thread views from the spammers own statistics -- we'd also be spared seeing their threads in our notifications and at the top of our own dashboards. I don't think this will entirely get rid of the spammers (nor does removing them from our "friends" lists, after all), but at least it will be one more way of making BL at least a bit less welcoming to them.
To get us started, I've replicated the five most important ongoing threads from the "official" group in the new group:
* BL Members' Non-BookLikes Blog URLs
If you want to add any further threads, feel free to do so -- just please keep it to threads that are of interest to the community as a whole.
Happy blogging all and have a great weekend!
My only salvation in stressful times: Creature comforts. Lots of them. And BookLikes!
2019 was a hell of a year in virtually every respect, and I don't mean that in a good sense -- I can only hope 2020 will be a LOT better. BookLikes was my one happy place this year, so thank you all, the whole BookLikes community, for keeping me sane and happy whenever real life was getting a bit overwhelming.
And of course, the boys' love helped as well ...
... and, as I said, creature comforts. Lots of them.
(Task: How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods?)
Those who were active on this site before mid-2018 probably remember "Follow Fridays", a series of interviews presenting individual BookLikes bloggers. (For reference, the last "Follow Fridays" post, with links to all previous posts at the bottom, is HERE.)
OB brought up the idea of reviving that series of interviews among ourselves in the comments section of a blog post today, and we've been tossing it back and forth a bit (I confess I really like the idea) -- as to whether / how to keep the interview format, how to send images to be included in the interview, etc. So I thought I'd just turn it over to the BL crowd at large:
* Would this be something you're interested in seeing revived?
* Ideas as to format (interview / questionaire or something else)?
* If interview, how should we choose the interviewer? The same person every time, or revolving among a group, or changing with every interview ... and picked -- how exactly?
* How do we choose the interviewees -- in particular, the 50 million dollar question: Absent administrative omniscience as to the universe of bloggers actually active on Booklikes (and in light of the known difficulties in discovering active bloggers before they vanish in frustration for lack of feedback on their posts) ... how do we rope in the unknowns, outside the circle of known faces / blog names routinely floating down our dashboards anyway?
Other ideas? Suggestions? Comments? Please share and speak up!
___________________________________
Current thoughts:
* Interviews moving from blogger to blogger, with the interviewee of one week becoming the interviewer the following week. This should (hopefully) also help in letting the interviews move away from just running around and around within the same circle of bloggers.
* Preferably, interviewees who don't have a huge number of followers yet (say, fewer than 50, or maybe even fewer than 30).
* Discussion group threads for backup, such as FAQs, rules, etc. I initially thought about creating a new group, but thinking more about it, we already do have a perfectly-named group, "Finding More BookLikes Blogs to Follow", that many of us are members in. So: backup threads in that group, with #Follow Fridays at the beginning of the thread title.
* Interview questions modeled on the pattern set by the original "Follow Friday" interviews, but mixed and matched with questions from other sources, possibly on a "pick at least 5 / 10 questions out of these 15 / 20" basis. Examples / suggestions:
Mike Finn's interview here: https://thereadingchick.com/2018/07/28/blogger-to-blogger-series-an-interview-with-mike-of-mike-finns-fiction/
-- or the "memes" / "bookish question" games that used to make the rounds of this site every so often, such as
IF the interviewee is OK with this, questions might also relate to their day job, if that job intersects with their love of reading (e.g., librarians, bookstore owners, authors, or teachers).
Additional ideas?
Following up on BrokenTune's post regarding the "Find New BookLikes Blogs to Follow" group -- and while it can't be emphasized enough that to find more active bloggers you may want to follow, the best method is to actively participate in discussions on blog posts and check out the other participants in those discussions -- BookLikes' active discussion groups may also provide some guidance and inspiration.
So, here's a run down of the groups that, to my knowledge, are currently active on BookLikes (even if their members' discussions, too, tend to occur via blog posts and their comments sections, see above):
Find New Booklikes Blogs To Follow
As BrokenTune explained, specifically dedicated to finding new people to interact on Booklikes.
There are various threads where people can introduce themselves (for active reviewer bloggers, authors on BL, etc.), but the one thread you will want to follow by all means and even if you don't ever look at any of the other threads (or, for that matter, any other groups) is Shout-out for Newbies and "Underfollowed" (but Active) Blogs -- the one thread where everybody is invited to share new blogs they have discovered and want to see roped more firmly into the community.
Created to read and discuss what would generally be called 'popular' science titles; one book every other month, beginning in January of every year.
The group votes on a fresh list of submissions every two months, once the book for the next group read has been selected. The group's "overflow nomination list" is here:
http://booklikes.com/apps/reading-lists/840/the-flat-book-society-nominated-books
Current (= May 2019) selection: Penny Le Couteur & Jay Burreson: Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
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