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Creator names are now revealing at the FFFX 2024 collection. You're welcome to share what you drew or wrote widely. Congratulations, everyone who took part!
I especially want to thank the co-mods who helped me sort tags and check letters at the start of the round - there would not have been a round 5 without their help. Then there are so many other people who deserve thanks: pinch hitters, beta readers, treat creators, commenters, prompters, nominators, and anyone who said anything cheerful anywhere about this exchange. (Or pointed out an error.)
Thank you, all of you!!
I hope to run another round on a similar schedule, and will again reach out for help with tag sorting.
General feedback; letter completion; check-in period
Before next round, I will review the rules for recursive fandoms (ie, what can be nominated, is it okay for recursive fandoms to be your whole sign-up). These questions arose last round and while a case-by-case approach has worked okay so far, clarity is useful.
I will also put up a franchise post for discussing how we split/merge some fandoms where this is often a question (Marvel TV/cinema, DCU, etc).
Letter completion
FFFX has a rule that if you link an external document ("letter") to supplement your prompts, that letter MUST be available and complete by a set date after sign-ups close. The idea is to make sure creators can get started with confidence and are not wondering indefinitely if a letter will appear or gain content.
While I think the overall principle is sound, implementation is a problem. I have been really grateful for help checking letter completion in the past, but it's a lot of work and can be hard to get right. Then there's the question of what to do if a letter misses the deadline. I can remove the link - but that feels more like a punishment than a constructive result, and I'm not sure it actually helps a creator. Sure, your recipient didn't complete their letter, but now if you want to refer to their half-finished thoughts or check for previous letters, you have to do a lot more work.
Because of that, I have two proposals:
1. Requiring FFFX participants to put either a date at the top of their letter to say when it was completed, OR a statement that this is a general likes list. This would make letter checking much easier, but might be burdensome for participants. What do you think?
2. FFFX allows creators to swap their assignments nearly-at-will for a short period after assignments go out, and then at any later time before the deadline as long as you're swapping to a pinch hit. Instead of checking letters and imposing a penalty, maybe I should offer creators an option: you can swap to another assignment of your choice all throughout the creator period if your recipient's letter is incomplete. This seems like it might give creators more flexibility (if an incomplete letter is causing difficulty) and be more constructive overall. What do you think?
Check-in period
FFFX has a very long creation period, and so creators are required to check in roughly halfway in, during a week-long period that is set at the start of the exchange. This helps me seek pinch hitters "early" for recipients whose creators withdraw at that time or appear not to be involved at the exchange. It's fun for me to see (voluntary! optional) snippets from people who share those at the time. But you aren't required to give a progress update - this is the equivalent of me saying Marco and you saying Polo.
However, every year there are people who forget that this was a thing, and turn up months later, which is nice (extra gift!) but awkward - it can mean I recruited a pinch hitter when one wasn't necessary, and technically, the first person defaulted, but they may not realize they aren't getting a gift. Additionally, some people are unavoidably away from the period during check-in week, so checking in is burdensome - and not being able to check in in November doesn't mean you're unable to post a work in January.
I don't feel as strongly about changing the check-in period because I think it does work for many people. But I'd be interested to know how you feel about it. Maybe I should make the check-in completely optional, send an email at the same time, and keep the default deadline, so instead of "if you don't check in, you're defaulted", it becomes "here are several warnings, but I assume you're still participating unless you default".
Thanks for your thoughts! If you have feedback on other topics, that's welcome too! You don't have to be logged in to comment.
I especially want to thank the co-mods who helped me sort tags and check letters at the start of the round - there would not have been a round 5 without their help. Then there are so many other people who deserve thanks: pinch hitters, beta readers, treat creators, commenters, prompters, nominators, and anyone who said anything cheerful anywhere about this exchange. (Or pointed out an error.)
Thank you, all of you!!
I hope to run another round on a similar schedule, and will again reach out for help with tag sorting.
General feedback; letter completion; check-in period
Before next round, I will review the rules for recursive fandoms (ie, what can be nominated, is it okay for recursive fandoms to be your whole sign-up). These questions arose last round and while a case-by-case approach has worked okay so far, clarity is useful.
I will also put up a franchise post for discussing how we split/merge some fandoms where this is often a question (Marvel TV/cinema, DCU, etc).
Letter completion
FFFX has a rule that if you link an external document ("letter") to supplement your prompts, that letter MUST be available and complete by a set date after sign-ups close. The idea is to make sure creators can get started with confidence and are not wondering indefinitely if a letter will appear or gain content.
While I think the overall principle is sound, implementation is a problem. I have been really grateful for help checking letter completion in the past, but it's a lot of work and can be hard to get right. Then there's the question of what to do if a letter misses the deadline. I can remove the link - but that feels more like a punishment than a constructive result, and I'm not sure it actually helps a creator. Sure, your recipient didn't complete their letter, but now if you want to refer to their half-finished thoughts or check for previous letters, you have to do a lot more work.
Because of that, I have two proposals:
1. Requiring FFFX participants to put either a date at the top of their letter to say when it was completed, OR a statement that this is a general likes list. This would make letter checking much easier, but might be burdensome for participants. What do you think?
2. FFFX allows creators to swap their assignments nearly-at-will for a short period after assignments go out, and then at any later time before the deadline as long as you're swapping to a pinch hit. Instead of checking letters and imposing a penalty, maybe I should offer creators an option: you can swap to another assignment of your choice all throughout the creator period if your recipient's letter is incomplete. This seems like it might give creators more flexibility (if an incomplete letter is causing difficulty) and be more constructive overall. What do you think?
Check-in period
FFFX has a very long creation period, and so creators are required to check in roughly halfway in, during a week-long period that is set at the start of the exchange. This helps me seek pinch hitters "early" for recipients whose creators withdraw at that time or appear not to be involved at the exchange. It's fun for me to see (voluntary! optional) snippets from people who share those at the time. But you aren't required to give a progress update - this is the equivalent of me saying Marco and you saying Polo.
However, every year there are people who forget that this was a thing, and turn up months later, which is nice (extra gift!) but awkward - it can mean I recruited a pinch hitter when one wasn't necessary, and technically, the first person defaulted, but they may not realize they aren't getting a gift. Additionally, some people are unavoidably away from the period during check-in week, so checking in is burdensome - and not being able to check in in November doesn't mean you're unable to post a work in January.
I don't feel as strongly about changing the check-in period because I think it does work for many people. But I'd be interested to know how you feel about it. Maybe I should make the check-in completely optional, send an email at the same time, and keep the default deadline, so instead of "if you don't check in, you're defaulted", it becomes "here are several warnings, but I assume you're still participating unless you default".
Thanks for your thoughts! If you have feedback on other topics, that's welcome too! You don't have to be logged in to comment.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-03-09 12:52 pm (UTC)I love seeing recursive fandoms in exchanges, and I also appreciate umbrella fandom posts that clarify how they should be split up, so I'm looking forward to seeing those posts this coming year! (Star Wars hasn't been a huge issue, but it'd be nice to have it codified anyway.)
Letters:
I think that ether of those options is better than deleting letter links. I personally prefer option 2, simply because I think that option 1 will result in you needing to email people like "hey is your letter complete/a general likes list?", because no other exchange I can think of has that requirement and people will forget to make that note even if their letter is complete!
Check-ins:
I have no real feelings about the check-in period, but I think it being "here's a reminder that this event is happening! if you don't feel confident in your ability to finish, please default now to allow PHers more time!" is likely going to be easier on people than needing to remember to post a check-in on dw, a site that not every participant even has an account on/would have an rss feed from, and therefore might not get a reminder about the check-in week existing.
(big bangs and other events like that get around "will everyone look at the place where the check-in is?" by having email as a primary contact method and/or requiring all participants to be on a discord server where they can get pinged, and therefore are able to directly contact all participants and remind them about it. I do not think fffx should do that! but I think it's part of why a mandatory check-in period for an exchange might not work as well as with other events that take place over such a long time.)