Round (D)one - Thanks and Feedback

[modzilla]

Finish Line! Thank You!

Creators are now revealed at the fffx 2020-21 collection. You are welcome to share what you wrote or drew far and wide.

I want to thank everyone for taking a chance on an exchange with unusually high requirements for works, on an unknown mod, and on various of my more experimental ideas. I am especially grateful to pinch hitters, to treaters, to people who consumed canons thinking about treating or pinch hitting, to betas, to commenters, and to the other Triple Crown moderators for conceiving of similar events that could complement and support each other. Three people took on pinch hits before assignments went out. My friend made me such a gorgeous icon. Just LOOK at that Godzilla with a clipboard. You're all stars.

Although I was wibblesome at the time of reveals, I think fffx generally worked and would like to run this again. So I'd be grateful to hear your feedback.

Feedback

Art
I am glad we included comics and would be happy to do that in future, so this can be the Five Figure Fanwork Exchange indefinitely. I would be happy to hear from artists about whether the minimums/requirements worked or could be tweaked.

Schedule
The 2020 schedule was:
Nominations start: 14 July 2020
Sign-ups start: 24 July
Sign-ups close: 7 August
Assignments out by: 14 August
Assignment Swap Week: 14-20 September
Check-in Week: 16-22 November
Assignments due: 30 January 2021
Works revealed: 27 February - delayed to 12 March
Creators revealed: 13 March - delayed to 26 March

How did it work for you? Should 2021-22 be similar? Should the check-in be at a different point relative to the overall schedule?

Assignment swaps
I liked having this option. Checking my notes, eight people asked to swap their assignments. Does anyone have any feedback on this aspect?

Letter deadlines / Mandatory optional details
I know it causes a lot of stress in exchanges when people are waiting on indefinitely incomplete/locked letters. I'm not sure if my threat of deleting letters that were incomplete past a certain point was helpful for this situation. I deleted three people's letter links.

Other
?? DNWs? Pinch hitter prompt promotion? Handling of nominations? I might give slightly fewer nominations next year but only SLIGHTLY. There were a lot. But I want people to be able to request and offer what they want, and matching wasn't a problem, only sorting.

Triple Crown

In the next day or so, I will provide the Triple Crown Committee with a final list of people who have participated in this exchange in such a way as to qualify for Triple Crown prizes. (See triplecrownofexchanges for cool stuff!) That will not include anyone whose work is orphaned or anon or anyone who has not commented on their gifts. So if your work is anonymous (the TCC have other ways around that too, you can talk to them rather than me) or you have reservations about commenting on your gift(s), you're welcome to get in touch with me at mod.modzilla@gmail.com.

More Triple Crown

Editing to add the reminder that prize claiming for Triple Crown starts on April 2! Enjoy the fruits of your labors, magnificent completionists. triplecrownofexchanges

Much love.

Comments

[lalamorn]

This was probably my favorite exchange of 2020! Thank you so much for running it <3

The schedule worked very well for me, and I probably wouldn't have been able to participate in a shorter time frame, due to rl busyness around the holidays. Check in and swap weeks were useful, but I could see them working well at other times.

I found the deleting letter links very useful, in that it gave me a set date where I could stop worrying about a recip updating and just focus on canon review until then - honestly, I'd be happy to have it moved up some!

Overall, it was an amazing exchange and I'm looking forward to doing it again!

[modzilla]

I'm so glad you had such a great time! And thanks specifically for the feedback about letter link deletion. I had more thoughts about that in a reply here. To be super clear since this sometimes trips me up - when you say moved up, do you mean more time after assignments go out, or less time?

[lalamorn]

I meant less time after assignments go out! And also specifically, as a person whose recip didn't update their letter, I found it useful as having a hard date where I didn't have to worry about it being updated anymore and could just move ahead with writing. Without the policy, I have to make that decision by myself which feels more stressful, but it is absolutely something I can do, so if it's too much effort, dropping that rule makes total sense.

Re: working it into swaps/check-in... I think check-in is too late, especially for anyone who wants to start writing earlier, and swaps would be good, timing wise, but not everyone swaps their assignments. Honestly I'd be fine with a rule/guideline that was honor based, but since letters already aren't binding, I'm having trouble thinking of how to phrase it.

I just liked having a hard date to stop checking for an updated letter!