Well, I was thinking changing May, but it would also be the easiest to have two going. That way whoever wanted to do MYOC could and whoever wanted to do the new one could as well. I enjoy MYOC as well, but I do think it's something that people could do on their own as well. I know I take months off from challenges and do that unofficially.

I would think that rotating flex plan would be too confusing, plus invite a lot of argument about what goes where and when.

I don't think anyone is advocating to get rid of a challenge, just add to what we have (at least that's what it sounds like to me).

But that getting together with people during MYOC month and doing a mutual theme sounds interesting. I'd be interested in doing that depending on the theme picked. I hope I (or you!) remember to bring that up next April when the discussion list gets started.

I love MYOC but agree that it tends to be the least communal of the challenges. I could do it on my own, but I do like having a list and recording my thoughts. The great thing about last year's MYOC is that a few of us did choose the same theme, so that made for better discussion. That theme was... musicals.

We have almost 5 full months to think about this before February hits, but I'd vote that if we're going to make changes, let's do it slowly. No removing or rotating or changing Challenges this coming year, but just the possible addition of a 14th Challenge for February. Maybe roll these ideas around for a few more days then we'll start a poll thread?

What if the full month of February became "Drama" month, with whatever rules are agreed upon, and the Academy challenge was extended to cover right from nomination announcements through to the awards night, overlapping other challenges going on in that period? There could be a lot of double counting between Drama and the AA, and AA would get a lot of breathing room so that those of us that like to try and see as many of the new nominees as possible don't have to wait until February to count them. If some just want to use February for the AA challenge so as not to affect the underlying challenges, they can certainly do that.

I think you're right. I was just throwing out ideas, but there's no sense in overhauling the whole system.

Maybe the Romance/Musicals should just be a mini-challenge? Run it from Feb 1st to the 15th. That's when all the movies air on TV. After Valentine's Day, the Romance stuff usually dries up. And it would give people time to participate in the Academy Awards challenge.

I was going to stay out of this, but thanks for this post.
I used to suggest that in the first post in the discussion threads, but nobody seemed interested in doing it, so I dropped it.

For example, this is from the first post in the first MYOC:

I'm going to save this partial quote for future ammunition, and/or put it in my sig.
Throwing out ideas is awesome, it's how this whole Challenge thing got rolling.

I like your mini Romance idea, but one "problem" we have is that the Oscars don't have a consistent date. Unless they have changed their policy/schedule recently, there is a wide range of possible dates for it.

It'd sure be easier for us if they went to consistent dates for the announcements and the show. I'll talk to Cheryl Isaacs about it next time we have lunch.
Sure, don't thank me for my years of stressing the MYOC Challenge!
Besides the musical group last year, I think I've noticed a few combo challengers over the years.

I'm not sure if I've ever exactly copied anyone's idea, but I annually love (wow, glad I caught that autocorrect on annually there!) many Challengers each year and wish we had more Mays.

So just some more info here, looking at the Academy Award site it looks like they are getting a bit more consistent with the date of the award broadcast, but still a nearly two week variance of between February 23rd and March 6th. And I think the announcements are planned to always be in late January from now on. So with us now starting at the announcement date (right?) that means that the entirety of February is pretty much always covered by the Academy Award Challenge. They'll only be a couple/few uncovered-by-Challenges days at the end of some Februarys.

My favorites are TVonDVD, SF/Fantasy, Horror, and Comedy. I also greatly enjoy the Action/Adventure/Crime/Mystery and Historical Appreciation. Drive-in is fun but I don't do a big push with it and, while I like it, I mostly use the MYOC to craft more TVonDVD as that's the bulk of my backlog.

I'd skip Academy Award, Animation, and Criterion. I half-heartedly participate in the Animation simply because I get burned out on it rather quickly, in spite of loving certain animated films and TV series. With the Academy Awards one I generally don't care for the "Best Picture" winners and looking for other category winners is a chore so if I just happen to watch one I'll put it down but don't spend much time at it. Criterion... well... I own many films which have seen a Criterion release as well as quite a few "true" Criterion releases, but they all fit other challenges and as it's a somewhat small number of films I'd just rather watch them in those other challenges rather than watch the same ~30 films every September.

In recent years I've pretty much half-way participated in the Holiday challenge as well. That's because I find it somewhat limiting and just don't have a lot of time for a challenge with all the other things I do during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I participate but mainly watch my favorite holiday films when I have time and the mood hits.

I don't see why you can't just use the MYOC month to make your own Drama/Romance or Musical/Romance or Musical or Drama or Horror/Comedy/Musical/Action or other challenge. I thought that's the *primary* reason the MYOC exists - so you can watch something *you* prefer that's not covered by one of the other challenges. Of course the way it works doesn't make for much conversation as everyone is pretty much doing their own thing so if you look at it in *that* light then, yeah, I can see a desire for a devoted month for common discussion.

One of the best things about MYOC is seeing what ideas people come up with.

There are two purposes to any challenge. One is for the participant to have a personal and/or communal objective to hit. But more important is the second, which is to promote a stronger sense of community through the discussion threads.

Personally, I'd scrap Make Your Own, and not just without remorse, but with cheer. I tried it the first two years, and even though I got a kick out of designing my own challenge, the discussion threads were all but pointless. I'd have been better off just starting threads elsewhere on the forum about the things I was watching, because at least then, other forum members who wanted to talk about those things would have seen that's what I wanted to talk about. I got the least by far out of that challenge's discussion thread. It didn't contribute whatsoever to any sense of community for me, and I've long resented it taking up an entire month that another, more structured challenge could be using to promote the community aspect that make the challenges rewarding.

As for rotating distributors and not being tied strictly to Criterion, I can understand the temptation. I think there is a solution going forward, though, and that lies in the launch of FilmStruck. From their official press release:

It may be prudent to expand the Criterion Challenge to become a FilmStruck Challenge that includes titles released by those other participating distributors. (I would hasten to add that perhaps we would not allow every Warner Bros. movie ever made, though.)

As for the idea of a rotating schedule, I'm in agreement that challenges should remain fixed in their months. I'm open to the idea of a one-time-only rewrite of the schedule, though, because I do think there's some merit to reconsidering whether some challenges may benefit from being placed differently than they have been. For instance, I'd be game for swapping Criterion & Comedy. I think after Historical Appreciation, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Animation all in a row, the levity of Comedy would be more appealing, and there's something about Barnes & Noble having their semi-annual Criterion sales in November that might make that month more satisfying for Criterion participants. Plus, I think the more cerebral art house fare suits November better, and would make a more interesting bridge from Horror to Holiday.

As for the idea of rotating within a challenge, I'm entirely in favor of that. Historical Appreciation started because of expressed interest in War and Western, and we decided to just combine the two. I recall some discussion at the time of just doing each on its own and alternating. Even though I feel satisfied with the structure that we built over the years to that challenge, I think paring it down to alternating War/Western would make it a better challenge than the one it became.

Well, I've only been around for a few years and could be totally wrong, but for me, the discussion threads are secondary. I participate in discussions when I feel like it, but I feel no obligation to do so. The challenges for me are a personal thing and coming up with a theme for May is something I put a lot of thought and discussion with my family into. As far as scrapping the MYOC theme because some don't care for its lack of community is not taking everyone else's opinions into account. I sit out lots of months because the theme doesn't appeal to me, or I participate every other year or so. Why scrap a month's theme just because some don't care for it (for whatever reason)? If no one cared, or participation dwindled to below 10 or something, then consider swapping it out for something else, but as long as people participate, for whatever reason motivates them, keep it going.

Before responding, I should take a moment to note that my relative harshness about this is strictly for the context of making ruthless choices about what to do with challenges. Outside this very specific conversation, I have a wholly laissez-faire attitude about these things.

My counterargument is that any of us can ALWAYS simply choose to watch whatever we want to watch, whenever we want to watch it. Respectfully, what anyone watches is irrelevant to the forum if they aren't discussing it on the forum. That's why the discussion thread must supersede the individual's enjoyment as a viewer, and MYOC is all but meaningless for that purpose. Any substantial cross-talk that occurs there is by happenstance, not design.

I appreciate your impassioned response to the idea of the removal of the MYOC Challenge. I have never done it before but I do enjoy looking at the various ideas that people have. This is a difficult discussion because everyone has challenges that they enjoy very much and don't want to see changed. I've been wondering why the focus on co-opting the Academy Awards Challenge so I looked it up for 2014. There were 44 participants and as I looked down through the lists most were very active in participating. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but it seems popular enough that it can stand on its own and doesn't need another challenge during it. It seems to me that we should be looking at the activity/participation of each challenge as we consider this.

The upcoming Academy Awards dates are:

2017
Announcement - January 24, 2017
Awards - February 26, 2017

2018
Announcement - ???
Awards - March 4, 2018

Let's say we ran a Romance/Musical mini-challenge from Feb 1-15. That would still give everyone 19 days (8 days in Jan & 11 days in Feb) to participate in the Academy Awards challenge. That's plenty of time for people that want to do both challenges.

And anyone that wanted to skip the Romance/Musical mini-challenge could just do the full Jan 24 - Feb 26 Oscar challenge.

There wouldn't be any harm in trying it out for a year. Worst case scenario, only a few people participate and we drop it.

I see one problem with this, and that's that so many of the Oscar-eligible movies are romance/musicals that running them concurrent would feel redundant. Now, if romance/musical ran concurrent with, say, Horror....! :P

On the other hand, it would be great for the people the love Romance/Musicals. They could watch non-Oscar Romance/Musicals during the mini-challenge. And after Feb 15th, they could watch award-nominated Romance/Musicals for the AA challenge. That would give them a full month of Romance/Musicals.

While community interaction is the main purpose of our Challenges, I think a good chunk of us here are introverts. Substantial interaction in the Challenge threads is pretty much the same 5-10 people each month, then a batch of people who interact peripherally like myself, then a bunch who do their own lists and never post otherwise. It's a long term goal to increase the interaction obviously.

We're never going to make everyone happy, with only 12 months and many more than that genres/possibilities for Challnges. The main goal of the MYOC was to help cover all the bases that we'd otherwise never be able to. For ones who don't like an individual MYOC, I'd suggest only doing themes that month that align with others, and actively working to get a group thing going there.

Or we could also put Drama and/or Musical/Romance every May in addition to MYOC to satisfy both camps. May might work better for Drama/etc than February, since February is already fully covered by a long-standing Challenge that has a lot of Drama/M/R overlap. I see sound arguments for both months.

Overall, I think a main purpose of the schedule we developed was to provide an outlet where we had one Challenge going 365 days a year, and pretty much every film/show was covered by at least one. There are compromises by combining genres, yes, but I think we largely succeeded. You can watch your entire library in a calendar year and have it all count somewhere. There are a small handful of exceptions, but I still think there aren't 50 mainstream-ish films that don't fit somewhere.

I'd personally prefer for us to finish the job and cover the rest, while maintaining the basic structure we already have and not eliminating or rotating any existing Challenge. Even if I don't enjoy a certain Challenge, I like how each one is developing a history, and past and future participants have a historical record and culture in each separate month.

What Trevor said.

I am primarily a lurker who is beginning to say more. I agree with Trevor's philosophies about the challenges purposes. MYOC is an unique challenge and I am not sure it should be removed. I have really thought about this and I see where February works for this because of the general similarity of the movie genres. I think the Academy Award Challenge could easily adapt to a half-month addition of these other genres without taking away another challenge. In less words, I don't have any problem with using February for this.

I support keeping MYOC. I enjoy coming up with themes, and think February is a good month for this.

FYI, assuming the challenge for Feb is created, I don't want to host anymore since it wasn't the challenge I envisioned.

I didn't think we've come even nearly to an answer on what we're doing. Unless I missed something, it might be exactly what you envisioned.

OK... So now I'm a bit confused or just lost track... Are we considering a Drama/Musical/Romance type challenge to fill the gap between January's TVonDVD and the ever-shifting Academy Award challenge? Something that lasts a few weeks with a shifting end date so as to not interfere with the AA one?

Another thought would be to have a Drama/Musical/Romance challenge which runs the full month of February and just let it overlap with the AA challenge since the AA challenge already overlaps with the Action/Adventure/Crime/Mystery challenge some depending on just *when* the Oscars are presented. I can see that working well enough for most.

Yes, I think it makes sense to have something for all of February and let Oscars be the only weird, shifting one.

Sorry if I hijacked the discussion. I didn't mean to derail your original proposal.

Was your idea more focused on pure drama, and less on romance?