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

[modzilla]

I'm excited that you're excited to sign up again! Thank you.

In jumbled order -

I wonder if it would be helpful for potential offerers willing to check new canons, to get a post where they can ask canon/ship/character recs based on their preferences (space canon with a shippy enemy m/m dynamic requested; f/f with age gap smut requested canons; etc.), so that people requesting canons can rec the stuff they are requesting if it hits similar notes. - You could do that on the canon promo post, and one person asked for recs that would lend themselves to interactive fiction! But I think I could be clearer about that use of the post, and encourage it a lot more.

I’ll admit that outside from drafting an outline for my story (that I’ve even scratched later) I wasn’t able to work on my assignment until a lot after the check in, so I agree that a late December/early January check-in (or second check-in) could be useful? Especially for people who need the early period to canon review or other and don’t have a clear idea about what they're going to do yet.

Could you expand a little, please, on how you would find that helpful? I'm not sure I understand how you would be using it. If I had multiple check-ins, I would still want no-penalty defaulting to stop at the first check-in. Check-ins also cause pinch hits, which is one reason I don't want to have a check-in too close to the deadline, which of course also causes pinch hits.

I feel cautious about making the deadline as early as some people have suggested in comments, as I think that the greater the distance between deadline and reveals, the more people treat the deadline as a check in rather than a hard deadline. But I would like to make it a little earlier than it was this year, since people seem open to that change.

All of of the last pinch hits in this exchange actually had short accessible canons that could be easily consumed. So including a safety fandom policy wouldn't have affected the first fffx round - but might affect it in future. For now I'd prefer not to have one but hopefully I won't be eating my words next February.

I'm glad the art minimum requirements worked! Thanks for all your detailed feedback.