Slightly belatedly, the feedback post!

This year, I moved internationally during the exchange (pro tip: don't do this), with the actual moving date being the day sign-ups ended so I handled noms and sign-ups while packing (pro tip: super don't do this), and essentially felt like I was juggling about three balls too many at any given time. Hopefully this feeling of complete chaos did not reach you, but if it did, don't worry, I will not be moving, internationally or otherwise, next year!

With the above disclaimed, if you have any feedback, I'd be happy to hear it! (Even if it's "you sure seemed more disorganized than usual this year" or whatnot.) Requests on where to advertise? Wishes for a clearer FAQ/instructions?

Authors have been revealed for the 2023 round! Thank you to all participants, signed up and pinch hitters alike – you are what keeps this exchange going.

While you are here, I'd like to hear your opinions on two things:

1. The canon promo post. This year, it was posted between nominations and sign-ups. Previously, it's been posted before either. Did you prefer the guarantee that the promoted thing would be in the tagset, or the extra time to check things out? Have you ever checked out anything based on the canon promo post, or is it just a bunch of people posting into the void?

2. The tagset. Currently, tags are nominated in the Character field and must be nominated like this:
Character: Leia Organa (OT)
Relationship: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker (OT)
Worldbuilding: Bespin gas extraction (OT)

This format has several benefits: it allows matching on characters, relationships, or worldbuilding tags, the tags do not wander at all, and it is immediately obvious if someone has not read the nomination instructions. However, it means no canonical tags can be used, which means every association of tag to fandom has to be approved as well. The prefixes also eat from the 100-character maximum tag length, which might cause issues for poly relationship nominators in particular. Did you run into tag length issues?

The alternative would be to use the Relationship field and nominate the above like this:
Leia Organa & none (OT)
Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker (OT)
WB: Bespin gas extraction (OT)

The immediate issues with this would be that the tags might wander (so Luke & Leia (OT) might decide to visit the Sequel Trilogy fandom despite the disambiguation), and that someone who has not read the nominations instructions might think this is a purely relationship-matching exchange and fill up their nom slots before realizing they can nom and request single characters and worldbuilding.

If you have anything else you wish to talk about, I would be interested to hear as well! Anonymous commenting is on.

Welcome to the 2021 feedback post!

1. Did the scheduling work? How did reveals on Yuri's Night feel? Relatedly, was there any scheduling overlap with other exchanges that adversely affected your participation?

2. The podfic requirements were amended this year to "1,000 words of an existing story podficced OR 500 words of a new story, written and podficced" (from the prior "500 words of a new story, written and podficced") – were you happy with this change, podficcers and people requesting podfic, or would you like further amendments?

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

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

See you in 2022!

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?

Authors have been revealed! Thank you for participating. I would especially like to thank our pinch hitters – SinginInTheRaine, newyorktopaloalto, misura, ambiguously, Alobear, colls, tristesses, Asymptotical, lynndyre, maristu, Burning_Nightingale, and Sholio – for helping ensure that everyone got a gift.

If you have any feedback on this year's Space Swap – deadlines, timing, modding, etc. – please leave a comment on this post. If not, see you in 2020!

How was this year's Space Swap for you, dear participants? We're not asking for anything in specific, but feel free to tell us what worked and what didn't work, as well as general suggestions and comments.

Most imporatantly, it will happen! (At least three people have asked me this. Don't worry, there'll be plenty of SPAAACE in 2018!) The rules and such will remain the same.

On the co-mod post: Both of my prior co-mods have run out of time to manage an exchange. Now, I can do this all myself, but the tagset/nominations phase is quite labor-intensive. Thus, I decided to see if someone wanted to be a junior co-mod! I'd teach you the ropes of how to manage a tagset (approving nominations and associations, fixing wandering tags), how to set up a sign-up form, how AO3's matching settings work, and all the other miscellaneous things involved in running an exchange. As payment, you would have to approve nominated tags that are in accordance with the guidelines here and post nominations clarification posts for unclear tags/tell me about any unclear tags you find. If you so desire, you can also do public outreach/officially answer participants' questions on behalf of Space Swap, and close noms/sign-ups and reveal the collection/authors. (If you choose to take on the time-sensitive button pressing, you get to pick the time the collection opens etc.) As this post requires real-time communication, you must be able to use an instant messaging thingy (IRC, Discord, or even Tumblr Messaging) during a time I am awake and online, eg 16:00-21:00 EE(S)T on weekdays or 10:00-21:00 EE(S)T on weekends.



Here's a draft schedule to celebrate:
Fandom pimping post: Late Jan/early Feb (How much time would be good for the buzz to stay but to give people time to actually look at the canons?)
Franchise wrangling post: Early Feb (week 6?)
Nominations: Wed 14.2. - Wed 21.2.
Sign-ups: Fri 23.2. - Sun 4.3.
Fics due: Wed 11 Apr (1 week before reveals)
Reveals: Wed 18 Apr (or elsewhen during weeks 15/16 – preferences? Time will be late afternoon/early evening Europe time, so between 13:00-16:00 GMT)
Author reveals: Wed 25 Apr (1 week after reveals)

If you have any concerns, please leave a comment.

First, an announcement: guineamania has hit a rough patch and has had to withdraw from modding Space Swap for the forseeable future. Good luck, guineamania.

Now, the questions:

• Did the scheduling work? Was there enough time in every phase? Too much? Not enough?
• Were the sign-up instructions clear?
• Did you have any problems with nominations? What was your opinion on the character-relationship-worldbuilding system used?
• Anything else you'd like to tell us?

A change that will be made: we'll have a reminder to re-date works at reveals. Also, the schedule will probably be a week or two earlier in the year, though we'll only work it out properly come January.

While the exchange was successful (everyone got a gift!), we'd still like to get input to make it even better next year. We-the-mods have discussed it amongst ourselves, and here's a list of things where we'd like your feedback, should you have any. Of course, we may have missed something, so feel free to tell us any other improvements you might want.

• How was the stuff creation time (8 weeks)? How about the other time intervals?
• What did you enjoy? What did you think could be improved?
• Any feedback on the (final) sign-up sheet?
• How do you feel about DW vs LJ? (We had two LJ mods and one DW mod, and almost all the questions came in via DW. Is there a reason for this fundamental imbalance?)
• Would a franchise wrangling post pre-nominations be good so that large megafranchises could be chopped up into sensible fandoms, rather than some subfandoms and then All Media Types? (*cough* Star Wars *cough*)
• Should ExtraPenguin, long-term horse icon user, use a picture of the horsehead nebula as hir Space Mod icon, rather than the current picture of Earth?

Love, the mod team.