ARCycling: Christmas break and coal in stockings.

Let's start with the coal in stockings thing. It's the less fun and more mandatory part of this post.

I've been over this before and for some of you Requesters, this ain't an issue. But for others *eyes the masses of the internet*, more of an issue. ARCycling was started to pass around REVIEW BOOKS for more REVIEW. So far we've really mastered the 'pass around REVIEW BOOKS' part. Less so on the 'for more REVIEW' part. Comprende?

Now for some easy math. I think this was covered in like elementary school? Percentages? Let's take the total number of books we had ARCycled up until two weeks ago (11/25) which 356 books. Now I don't keep exact dates of when reviews come in, but let's be nice to ourselves and say that we had 63 then (we didn't). So 63 reviews for 356 books. Even before I do the division, it looks bad, yeah? And rounding in the more optimistic numbers, that's 18%.

18%!!!!

That's pretty bad over several months of being up. I mean, I have nothing to compare it to, but I'd LIKE for it be closer to 50%. I mean yeesh.

So, like any good company, we've come up with something to hopefully counteract this. Requesters, if you've gotten 5 or more books from ARCycling and haven't reviewed one, you're going to be temporarily banned until all of the reviews pop up. But this is easy to counteract! Review the books! I personally don't care if you say the book was such crap it isn't worth mopping a Taco Bell bathroom floor with! I'm a non-partial party here. I earn no money or popularity off these reviews. I just like reviews! That being said I know the "I don't like writing negative reviews" or "I pointed a gun to my own head and still couldn't finish it" or "I haven't gotten it yet", etc reasons. The 5:1 ratio still exists is time limitless. Especially the not gotten it. No worries if you haven't gotten it yet.

Ideally, we'd like for you to review every title you get. Even if it takes a while. Or you hire your baby sister to write something (though intelligible writing is always good for both you and me!). When you hit your 5:1 ratio, Lili will email you, wagging her finger and letting you know this is just a temporary ban! Temporary! This will also be added to the rules page for Requesters!
If this review ratio doesn't get better, we'll lower the ratio to 3:1. So there. If you regularly submit reviews, you're in no danger!

Now for festive things!!

So, if you are still in school, you know the beauty that is getting away from responsibility of work, etc. for a few glorious weeks and doing festive things. Then you grow up, get slammed into the real world and have to work and festivity is only something you see other people doing.
Or at least, that's my life.

In order to recapture that a little bit, we'll be closing ARCycling for the Sunday before Christmas and the Sunday before New Years. I know this has been mentioned before, but this is a little more of an official post on it.

That information again: ARCycling will be closed December 23 and 30th.

Now here's the very, very, very, very important thing to keep in mind: the closing does NOT count towards Two Week Time Out. TWTO only works when there are, you know, books moving. If no books move, nothing moves. SO, if you get 2 books on December 16th (last session before closing), you will be freed from Two Time Out on January 20th.

Make sense? Yeah? Okay, now for some random cat images!