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

[kanadka]

only my 2c, but:
- I thought the schedule worked really well, and I'd be okay with shifting things in the time from assignments to deadline ± a month if needed. I might advocate that one less month in the time between assignments out to assignments due, and adding that time to assignments due to works reveal - speaking personally, I really appreciated those extra two weeks for editing!! I also really appreciated the full two week period between works reveals and creator reveals; if this were much shorter I don't think I would have been able to comment as widely.
- I'd be perfectly happy having fewer noms next year; I seem to recall the tagset had been reopened for signups as well for a few extra noms! That helped me too.

Thanks so, so, so much for this exchange, mod :D It was a lot of fun, I had a blast writing and reading, and I'm really happy to see so much appreciation for longfic. 💖️ I hope whatever stress it might have been for you as mod was ultimately worth it, because I'd dearly love to see this exchange back next year!

[kinetikatrue]

- I thought the schedule worked really well, and I'd be okay with shifting things in the time from assignments to deadline ± a month if needed. I might advocate that one less month in the time between assignments out to assignments due, and adding that time to assignments due to works reveal - speaking personally, I really appreciated those extra two weeks for editing!! I also really appreciated the full two week period between works reveals and creator reveals; if this were much shorter I don't think I would have been able to comment as widely.

My modified suggestion on this, as a PHer, is that we keep the adjusted versions of this year's work reveals and creator reveals times, and shove assignments due back to mid-January, to give at deadline PHers a full two months in which to do canon review, plot, and write 10k or more. I don't think pushing it back any further than that would be great because that would just mean running up against all kinds of things due right at the end of the year, but two months seems like a viable window that might PHs for more unwieldy canons less likely to linger!

[kanadka]

I like your suggestions! A big draw for me for this exchange was the possibility of picking up a new canon for my assignment; I would've been 100% more likely to also pinch hit/pick up a new canon for an at-deadline PH, if there were two months to work in.

[modzilla]

Thanks for the feedback - and for pinch hitting, of course! I definitely want to smooth the way for pinch hitters when I can.

Some of the schedule constraints are fixed by other commitments and events. Late December and early January are not great times for me because of Yuletide and Chocolate Box, and similarly, although everyone was very gracious about the delay to fffx this year & it had benefits for some, those reveal dates weren't ideal for me because they overlap the start of fandom5k, which fffx is meant to be complementary to. There is also a chance that I would set the official reveals time to mid-March, and then outstanding pinch hits would cause me to delay the reveals so that they really overlapped with fandom5k.

I also suspect that if works are due, say, early Jan, and works are due to go live in March, the deadline becomes unreal to many - it's essentially another check-in, but a check-in where people have to show proof of work. Since showing proof of work at a check-in is unpopular, I'm reluctant to build it in, even if it's under another name.

I would like to stretch the time between deadline and reveals a little, since it seems there's more willingness for that than I thought. Maybe deadline either Jan 15 or Jan 22, and reveals at the end of February again.

[modzilla]

I'm glad you had a great time! Thanks for the feedback too (edit: and for beta-volunteering!). More detailed reply to the scheduling suggestions under kinetikatrue's comment below.