Anyone interested in reading and meeting new friends

[enatho]

I am actively seeking people who like to read and are interested in joining a reading group. Everyone who has joined seems to enjoy it. Just check out the introduction below and I hope to see you there!

Hello how are you doing? I would like to inform you that I have started a Yahoo! Groups forum. It is designed for anyone who likes to read and want to become involved in a reading group. If you or someone you know is interested in becoming a member, anyone is welcome to join. I would like this to be a success so if you can pass the word along to anyone who is interested, that would be a plus. Anyone who joins will be involved. Feel free to post any ideas on how I could improve it to make it great. I welcome anyone's ideas. I hope that you check it out and I hope to hear from you soon. I just wanted to give a little info about it. The group at this point is small, but your membership and participation are the key! Because it needs to grow!! ANYONE can post messages, upload photos, or even live chat with other members of the group. Each members input will be important, and I hope that you will spread the word to anyone you think would be interested. The active participants in the group are the keys to success!!! Hope to hear from you soon!!



http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thereadersguild/

[livius drusus]

I'll check out the link, but right off the bat I can tell you the intro turns me off. Exclamation point abuse is the main problem, but it also needs a good proofreader. If you're trying to appeal to readers, I think it's important to be anal about things like possessives. :twocents:

Oh, and welcome to FF. I hope you're here to participate instead of just to spread the word about your group. :welcome2:

[enatho]

Thanks for the feedback. I never gave it much thought about the exclamation in my post. I’m glad that you told me so I can know in the future. If you have any other questions or comments please let me know.


:wave:

[Adora]

I call spampost.

[LadyShea]

I call spampost.

Seconded. What is the proper response? Brooms?

[viscousmemories]

Nah, a quick Google reveals that s/he's been trying to drum up support for that reading group for six months without wholesale spamming and with very limited success. Since it's not commercial and s/he was courteous enough to respond we don't see any need to call out the National Guard. I'm kinda rootin' for him/her myself.

[CARLA]

livius drusus,

WHOOPS, I'M GUILTY AS WELL.. !! WHOOPS DID IT AGAIN.. :giggle: I will try, try, try not using EXCLAMATION POINTS.. I MAY NEED TREATMENT TO STOP.. HELP I'M EXCLAMATION POINT CRAZY. :eek:

enatho, Your not alone, welcome.. :wave: :wave:

I'll check out the link, but right off the bat I can tell you the intro turns me off. Exclamation point abuse is the main problem, but it also needs a good proofreader. If you're trying to appeal to readers, I think it's important to be anal about things like possessives.

Oh, and welcome to FF. I hope you're here to participate instead of just to spread the word about your group.

[enatho]

I would like to say thank you for all of your replies. I like to see things from everyone’s point of view. I can say that it is difficult to gain membership for a small reading group, and posting in forums is the only way I have known to gain results. It’s not SPAM as far as I see it, but others may see differently. That’s ok and I understand. If anyone has any better ideas I would love to hear them. Other than that, if you enjoy reading and love to share with others, feel free to check out the group. Thank you all


:yup:

[LadyShea]

Enatho, that's cool and I appreciate you responding. My spam comment reflects the tendency for some to join a forum not to interact or get to know the existing members, but with the sole purpose of drawing people to their own sites. Even though it's not commercial, I still think if you never planned to hang out and participate here, it is at the very least bad 'netiquette.

If I misread you, please accept my apologies and welcome!

[Brimshack]

Hey Liv...




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:muahaha:

[livius drusus]

You're sick, Brim. Sick, I tell ya!

[Dingfod]

You mean you couldn't tell that by his greenish hue?

[enatho]

I mean no harm to anyone, and I must say that I really enjoy this forum. I support the idea of free thought, and most people here seem to be pretty honest and very positive in their attitudes. I plan to post here often and hope to see good things come of it. It’s better than some forums I have visited before where some people are downright rude. It seems to be a pretty positive environment here and I like that.

:cool:

[JoeP]

You're sick, Brim. Sick, I tell ya!
When you have a smilie for the purpose :livcop:, shouldn't you use it?

[Shake]

I might be more interested if I could find more time for reading. I just got some new books this Xmas which are now sitting on top of the ones I haven't gotten around to reading from last Xmas!

[NietzscheCat]

It just seems to me that a Reading Group could be done within FF relatively easily, if someone was willing to set that up. I would certainly participate.

And oh yeah,

Hi Everybody!

[viscousmemories]

Hey :welcome: to the FF, NietzscheCat.

Methinks livius is gonna like the reading group idea...

[livius drusus]

Hethinks right, damn right. I even kind of have a couple of books in mind. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, NietzscheCat. Were you thinking of a thread or a subforum or something fancier or ...?

Welcome to delurking, NietzscheCat. :welcome2:

[NietzscheCat]

:fuming: GERRRRR...my computer...I'll make this message shorter.

Well, thanks Livius. I'm happy to see that you're interested. It shouldn't be all that elaborate. A kind of sub-forum with different threads for the books. It seems that maybe we could have people sign up for a book, so that we know who's in on it, and we can send messages to one another with ease. Maybe we could schedule times to be in the chat rooms to make conversation easier. :chin: that's about all i can come up with at the moment.

[ceptimus]

I'm in a reading group at my local library. I read lots of books anyway, but I find that belonging to the reading group introduces me to books that I would never have chosen myself, and some of them I have really enjoyed.

The way it works there, is that we meet once a month to discuss the book, and are provided with the following month's read. The books are provided free by the library (there are usually about ten of us).

The only problem I see with an on-line discussion, is how we get hold of the books. Do we have to buy them, or try to obtain them from a library? I can see problems...

There are some free e-books available on the web, but they tend to be mostly old books that are out of copyright. There are some classics available that way, but we found at my reading group that it is better to choose books that are not really well known, so that most of the group reads them for the first time prior to the discussion. Anyway, I hate reading books on a computer screen.

So, does anyone have a suggestion for where we obtain the books? Or maybe you are advocating a setup where not everyone reads the same book at the same time?

[NietzscheCat]

You've got a good point, ceptimus.
One option is of course to force everyone to buy their own copies, but this probably isn't the best choice. You might be surprised by the number of books online, but the selection is still limited. This may be our solution though. Everything from Dostoyevsky to the newest Harry Potter is up somewhere.

But until we come up with a real solution, the group could read mostly short stories and poems. These are all over the net, so that's pretty easy.

[livius drusus]

A quick point and then I'll be back for more detailed comment. Letters to Penthouse XXI: When Wild Meets Raunchy is now available on ebooks for 6 bucks. Just a thought.

[wade-w]

If something like this is started here, I'd like to suggest an essay by Voltaire, A Treatise on Toleration be the first choice. But then again, those that would benefit most would probably not participate. But I can hope!

[NietzscheCat]

A quick point and then I'll be back for more detailed comment. Letters to Penthouse XXI: When Wild Meets Raunchy is now available on ebooks for 6 bucks.


We could discuss that for days on end(though I imagine we would get pretty tired)

[viscousmemories]

Voltaire sounds good, but in line with ceptimus' concern about how we'd go about obtaining these books I have to say the most effective solution would be to just go with one of the dozens I already own that I haven't got around to reading. :yup:

Oh and short. God please let's do short books. :praying:

[godfry n. glad]

okay....

I say you just decide what book you wanna start with and allow everybody to get what they can.

There's always public libraries, but some folks have bad ones or none at all. Big city folks can hit the used bookstores. New bookstores are pricier, but can be fun, depending on you and what you like in a bookstore.

Then, as a last resort, there's always online.

Voltaire, eh? Do you have a favorite translator? Favorite edition? Favorite publisher? Lemme see what I can find.

godfry

[NietzscheCat]

Voltaire's pretty easy to find. I found that essay a second ago but my computer's spazzing so I can't give you a link. Also, there's something called the "Guetenberg Project" that is a database of a lot of classic books, essays, etc. for FREE.

[enatho]

I usually tend to get my monthly books for the Reader’s Guild group by finding them in the public library. For one thing, it’s free that way. I like the idea of a reading group, because you can get all kinds of perspectives and reviews about books. That’s why I came up with the Reader’s Guild. I hope to see new faces there, as well as I hope that this wonderful group in this forums starts a great reading thread. Let me know if anything comes of it. :yup:

[viscousmemories]

Just for the record I was only kidding when I said we should pick a book I already own.

I'm a narcissist for sure, but I'm really not that bad.

[enatho]

a good thick book might do you good as well

[viscousmemories]

enatho, we didn't address this thread for violating our no-spam rule because you aren't soliciting for a commercial business and because you were courteous enough to respond when confronted. You said in response that you liked it here and looked forward to participating in the many other discussions, and I hope you do. But if you continue to bump this thread we will be forced to treat it like spam. It will be locked and the contents of your first post deleted, along with any future threads on the subject.

I'm sorry for any misunderstanding.

[xouper]

viscousmemories: ... It will be locked and the contents of your first post deleted, ...
:deepsigh:

[viscousmemories]

:deepsigh:
Hey, nothing's set in stone here. :)

Until a few weeks ago we didn't even have a no-spam rule. After we got a spammer, we started this thread (http://www.freethought-forum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1348) to talk about what, if anything, to do about it. The end result was that we should have a vanilla "no spam" rule and decide what to do with apparent violations on a case by case basis.

So in the case of this thread I decided to let it go since it's just a relatively inoffensive person trying to drum up support for his reading group. But now if he's just gonna come back every few days and bump it, I feel like our generosity is being taken advantage of and he's using the FF as his personal billboard.

Do you want to start another thread on this or bump the old one or talk here or... 'cause I'm definitely open to further discussion about how to have max free speech without becoming a billboard site. :)

[LadyShea]

But now if he's just gonna come back every few days and bump it, I feel like our generosity is being taken advantage of and he's using the FF as his personal billboard.

...'cause I'm definitely open to further discussion about how to have max free speech without becoming a billboard site.

Well, why not just let him either choose to be good to his word and participate, or not. Certainly we individually can choose to ignore it or call him on it or whatever.

Unless he keeps opening new threads on the same topic and making a mess of the board, I don't see any harm, personally.

[viscousmemories]

Well, why not just let him either choose to be good to his word and participate, or not. Certainly we individually can choose to ignore it or call him on it or whatever.

Unless he keeps opening new threads on the same topic and making a mess of the board, I don't see any harm, personally.
My thinking was that his not having posted at all in 10 days then returning only to post a fairly insubstantial comment on his own thread was a pretty strong indication that he came by to re-advertise his site, not to participate in any discussions here.

I have two problems with that. One is that I feel like I'm being played for a chump because I gave him the benefit of the doubt instead of just deleting it as spam outright, and the other is the whole if we had 10 people doing it across the forum it wouldn't be long before all the active threads were spam threads instead of actual discussion topics...

[LadyShea]

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt doesn't make you a chump, it makes you a nice person.

the whole if we had 10 people doing it across the forum it wouldn't be long before all the active threads were spam threads instead of actual discussion topics

We don't have 10 people doing it. If it becomes a problem then certainly revisit the issue. No need to stress, my friend :)

[viscousmemories]

Giving someone the benefit of the doubt doesn't make you a chump, it makes you a nice person.
Yabbut, there's that whole "Spam me once shame on you, spam me twice shame on me" thing... I'm not sorry I gave him the benefit of the doubt before, but if he only stops in to bump his thread every week or so (as appears to be the developing pattern) I think I'll be sorry.

We don't have 10 people doing it. If it becomes a problem then certainly revisit the issue. No need to stress, my friend :)
That's a good point. No need for desperate measures today. I'd still like to figure out how we can be flexible without being taken for a ride, though. I'd hate to get to a point where all the top threads are people advertising their own site and the real topics are buried. :chin:

[enatho]

if anyone is interested in jopining the reading group. You are welcome to do so.

:yup:

[livius drusus]

enatho, are you going to genuinely participate here or just come back every couple of weeks to pimp your group? We don't much appreciate being used as a billboard, and I can assure you it's very unlikely anyone here will find your behavior a good recommendation for anything.

Please stop using FF in this pathetic manner. The more you do it, the less we trust you. Meanwhile, I remind everyone that you can make this thread disappear by clicking on Thread Tools - Ignore this thread.