Feedback post

[extrapenguin]

Welcome to the 2020 hindsight post!

1. Did the scheduling work? How did reveals on Yuri's Night feel? This year was a little bit awkward scheduling-wise on my end – some of that was this year, but some will continue into the forseeable future. What do you think of the week-and-a-weekend timeline for nominations and signups? Looking at the calendars for 2021 and 2022 would give 5 weeks and some days between assignments and the deadline. The main method to get more would be to compress nominations and sign-ups into a smaller timespan. Do you think the tradeoff would be worth it? – Relatedly, was there any scheduling overlap with other exchanges that adversely affected your participation?

2. This was the first year Interactive Fiction was its own thing to match on – do you think the minimum creation requirements (1,000 words total OR 3 different endings) worked, or should they be adjusted?

3. Relatedly, since there were multiple minimum creation requirement options for IF, do you think the ones for podfic should be adjusted from the current 500 words of a new story, written and podficced to 500 words of a new story, written and podficced OR podfic of an existing story 1,000 words long? I recall there was discussion of this a few years back but nothing came out of it.

4. Was there anything unclear in the instructions or rules?

5. Anything else you'd like to give as feedback?

Comments

[leahandillyana]

I just wish the exchange was advertised more widely. I deleted my sign up hours before sign-ups closed because nobody asked for fandoms I wanted to write. The exchange ended up having no fics based on manga/anime/cartoons/comics, from what I saw.

[extrapenguin]

Do you know where such advertising might be conducted? I advertised on fandom calendar, which is the general exchange event advertising place, but am open to suggestions.

[leahandillyana]

Not really, unfortunately, as all the manga/anime communities here are pretty much dead :/

[senmut]

I think it went very well. It overlapped sign up and writing for Wayback Exchange, but that one always has a LONG writing period, and thus was easily managed for me.

I liked the timing. But I am a fan of shorter writing periods, in general, than some exchanges lend toward these days.

[extrapenguin]

That's nice to hear! I mostly just don't want excess overlap with exchanges that draw from similar participant pools.

[flowersforgraves]

I would like the adjustment to the podfic rules. As a podficcer and writer, they occupy two different sorts of space in my creative brain, and often podficcing something that I've written is more uncomfortable for me. It would also be great for people requesting podfic to either confirm with the original authors that they don't mind podfic of their work, or check to make sure the author is on a site like FPS List for blanket permissions.

(I'm willing to talk about this privately too, as I know moderating an exchange that includes podfic is a little complicated!)

[extrapenguin]

Noted. I'm not sure about how podfic requests generally work – the people who requested it this round seem to not have had any specific stories in mind, but rather been open to podfic of anything that fit their requests. (The podfic-centric exchanges might have a different culture?) Do you mind having the 500×2 option as well? I'm loath to remove it in case the requester didn't go poking around and there's no extant podficcable work that fits the request, as otherwise the podficcer might be forced to default. Have I overlooked any podfic things?

[flowersforgraves]

Oh, yes, sorry if I implied you should remove the 500x2 option! I just meant that adding the other option you indicated would possibly tempt more podficcers to sign up or offer podfic.

The way genfreeformex did it -- where podfic requesters should link to a few suitable works -- was really helpful for me as a potential treater. At the very least, podfic requesters should probably indicate whether they're okay with their own works being podficced to fulfill their request.

In Unconventional Fanworks this year I'm going to link to FPS List and the Fanlore page of blanket permissions, which might also be a helpful resource for podficcers who might be new to a fandom or want to try and preserve a degree of anonymity.

[extrapenguin]

The rule change will be official, then! I'll also add that note on requesting podfics to the FAQ. Thank you!

[weakinteraction]

1. I'm in favour of trimming the preparation periods in favour of longer creating time, personally. But I almost always seem to end up leaving nominating/signing up until the last minute, so from my point of view it would just change when that "last minute" was.

2. I was very glad of the ability to match on IF, because I did and I had a great time creating it. The minimums seemed fine to me; in all honesty, I think it would be difficult to create something that didn't meet them and still had any substantial interactive elements.

Thanks for running this! I had a blast. (Task for this week: read the things in the collection that aren't my gifts.)

[extrapenguin]

So you'd prefer a 6th week of writing? I'll see how my schedule shakes out next year. (There might be a poll.)

The minimums seemed fine to me; in all honesty, I think it would be difficult to create something that didn't meet them and still had any substantial interactive elements.
Nodnod. They'll stay for the next round. I'm glad you enjoyed making the IF!

[thisbluespirit]

The schedule seemed fine to me! (I appreciate not having overlong writing periods really.)

[extrapenguin]

That's nice to hear! I generally aim for a 5-6 week creation period; this year's was just under 5.

[anr]

I would have loved to have seen all prompts so that could have looked at treating others.

[extrapenguin]

Did the requests summary not show up for you? I checked, and the "requests visible" tickybox should've been ticked.