The Reading Groups Experience: Finishing Line

How I Ended Up Here and All That Happened On the Road, Chapter Eight

Less than a week to go before we needed to be ready ...

Finally, Melissa looked into the reading group project - and posted in the modsuite about it, basically slamming our draft.

Ok, the draft was long, contained very detailed descriptions of all the different groups, and equally detailed instructions on how to do the sorting process. It was supposed to be a final draft after all, ready to use as a blueprint for the actual set up of the groups. If you had not been part of or monitored all the discussions leading up to it, first in the Room of Requirement thread, then in the test group forum, then in the drafting group - I am sure it appeared totally overwhelming and impossible.

It was clear to us who had been part of the process that a lot of Melissa's criticism was based on misunderstandings - she thought it was more complicated than it actually was, and some of the things she criticised was not there. I therefore posted a long explanation in way of an answer, pointing out the misunderstanding and trying to clarify how it was all meant to work. Yes, long, really long, I felt that was necessary. Remember, less than a week to go - at this late hour, to have to start drawing up a new plan, even to start tinkering too much on the one we had - this seemed impossible.

Melissa posted an answer, saying that she couldn't possibly be expected to have the time to read a long post like that, with all she had to do now that she was soon leaving for Britain.

This is where I gave up. I am not proud of it, it was not very honourable to abandon ship at that critical hour - but I gave up. I felt totally shattered, put down and disrespected, not to say disregarded - so I did abandon it all, and did no more to make the reading group project happen.

It did happen though. Bel talked to Melissa on YIM and got through to her, so the project got the go! signal, finally, with some minor alterations. Some things also had to be altered for technical reasons. Several members of staff were engaged in setting it up, working hard, and Bel was driving it all to the finishing line. So it did happen, and people enjoyed it very much, from all that I have heard. The Barnes and Noble groups happened too, with some of our best staffers as leaders in some of the groups, and people enjoyed them as well.

All well in the world, right? I did contemplate leaving the site, but changed my mind. I was involved as a moderator for one of the groups, working with Chelikins, before she was made a moderator too. Picking up, moving on, continuing my ordinary moderator job in the ordinary forums, enduring the ordinary low level chaos. And then another exiting project appeared on the horizon: the Essay Project, what was later to become Scribbulus