treading on dangerous ground?

[0dense]

hello world! 

so here's the sitch - I really want a secret santa-style event to exist for Chernobyl, but I haven't seen one around yet. so I figure I'll give it a go! But, I have never participated in a fic exchange in any capacity. I assume that the majority of the mod's responsibilities go along the lines of promotion, coordination of prompts and fillers, accountability check-ins, and final dissemination, but what really goes on behind the scenes? Are there any mods out there who could advise?? I think there's still time to get the ball rolling for a new year's day unveiling (no there's not), but I don't actually know what I'm doing!

so far, I'm thinking it should have: 

• base on DW for archiving, mirroring on tumblr for promotion
  • fills optimally also hosted on ao3, I assume; anon is an option or folks can chat me up for add codes
    
    • imgur pathway for art
    • vimeo or unlisted youtube pathway for vids
  • anon on for folks who don't have an account and really don't want to make one for some reason? as long as everyone picks up a callsign? is this asking for trouble? idk
• all deadlines operating in GMT
• registration through a google form
  • including option to pitch-hit
  • communicate by email, I presume? if not everyone has a DW, and seeing as tumblr's comms Suck. is this how it's done?
  • I expect a lot of admin will happen in gsheets
  • assign every participant a number that only they and the mod/s know and keep a public sheet of "# is assigned [prompt]" for anonymous reference as necessary?
  • should mod/s match people up, or do people claim on a first-come first-serve basis? how does this work best??
    • claim-style: everyone submits two prompts that they would be equally interested in, with differing tones (one ship, one gen, or within a ship, one angst or kink and one WAFF) and their hard nos. Everyone goes by a pseudonym. Everyone picks two that they would be equally interested in filling. Mod/s match by interest, not history. At the end, the announcement goes out, Nickname aka Realname wrote Fic/Thing for Nickname aka Realname
  • because some folks can prompt for adult materials, I think it'd be best to ask for everyone's ages, to keep from matching those prompts to anyone under 18 
    • 18+, keep things simple
  • fills can look like: 
    • ≥1,000 words
    • ≥10 minutes of fic, not including intro/credits
    • flat colors or shaded drawings, or equivalent in other media
    • open to crossovers, aus, etc
    • any rating, any ship
      • hard no on incest, pedophilia, etc; I can't imagine what would bring that here but just, hard no.
• I know it's not standard, but I want to include some sort of HHA. I haven't turned it into official terms yet, but along the lines of: all participants, regardless of role, make no assumption of historical accuracy / all events and characters present in exchange materials shall be taken as describing the 2019 miniseries and not the 1986 disaster / the good old boilerplate "the characters and events in this event are fictitious; any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by participants regardless of role" / consumption of exchange materials is taken at the reader's own descretion and no exchange participant shall be held for any subsequent offense on another's behalf
  • I know the line between fic and rpf is hazy as anything and I haven't worked out clearer terms yet, but let's keep our noses clean
    • I don't mean to be slamming rpf, I'm just picking a battle at a time
    • if folks do want to integrate historical materials, that's of course fine, as long as the result is based more on the show than anything else
    • 'exactly what constitutes rpf' is such a mess, let's hash that out some time
  • also, I know that this won't make a real difference if someone wants to start #drama, and that none of this requires a waiver, but it doesn't hurt to be clear, right?
  • as any sort of contract, this obviously doesn't hold up for peanuts, but specificity is my best friend against general anxiety, so why not throw it in
• standards based on flyingcarpet's writeup
  
  • no fills released until they're all in

Also. I know I'm bringing this to the table, but my current schedule is already pushing me to the brink. If this happens, I wouldn't want it to fall through because I'm overwhelmed by life things. I don't even know what an admin's job looks like yet, but if anyone wants to chime in on modding, that's probably the only way I could commit to it. I'd really like to see this happen! Let's give it the best shot possible! 

For now, I'm putting a pin in chernobyl_fic_exchange and fingers crossed that this can bloom!


potted_music , brewsternorth , gwinny3k , thoughts?? 


edit: adding the media pathways, striking and attempting to streamline age limits and the selection process. Also, I'm not tabling this forever, but the new year's deadline is out; if this does happen, I can't put myself on a crunch. Maybe brainstorming will help! I do certainly appreciate the warnings before I fling myself off the deep end lol! it'll just certainly take more consideration.

Comments

[yuuago]

I've never modded an exchange, but I've modded fests, and participated in several exchanges. So, here's my two cents based on that.

1. You should be fine as long as Ao3 account is required for posting assignments. For DW, turning anon commenting on is how it's usually done, yeah. Generally this is not a problem. You can screen anon comments if you think there will be issues, but this is not necessary in most cases.

1A. Since images can't be hosted on Ao3, you might want to include instructions of where to host and how to post them - imgur is best in my experience, but some people won't know about it, or won't know how to embed on Ao3.

2. Communication by email is best if you're using google forms as signup. If you're using the Ao3 exchange tools for signups, then the assignment will be sent from Ao3 to the person's email + it will also appear on their assignment page on Ao3, and questions to mods can be sent via email (or DW). Sorry if this repeating things you know, but I don't know if you've been in an exchange that uses Ao3's exchange tools before.

3. assign every participant a number that only they and the mod/s know and keep a public sheet of "# is assigned [prompt]" for anonymous reference as necessary? - I'm not sure what this means. Are you planning to have the prompts visible to everyone? Most of the exchanges I've been in that use Google signups don't have visible prompts, but most of the exchanges I've been in that use Ao3 signups do have visible prompts. There are advantages/disadvantages to both options.

4. should mod/s match people up, or do people claim on a first-come first-serve basis?
In exchanges, it's mods who match people. The only exchange I've participated in (out of like, 25?) that had any form of prompt claiming was NiF Exchange, where you picked your top three assignments and then the mod would assign one of those to you.

5. Age - yeah, include this in the signup form if you want to allow underage users to participate. Most of the ones I've been in don't allow underage users. (Is this even a problem in Chernobyl fandom?? It doesn't seem like the kind of canon that would be popular with kids.)

6. One problem that pops up with exchanges is that some people never receive a gift. This is obviously pretty crappy, so it's important to make sure that you're firm with deadlines, pinch hitters, and not opening the collection until everyone has a gift. I know this is all obvious, but it's an issue that pops up pretty frequently.

6A. How will you handle initial pinch hits? (These are ones that are left over at the beginning, rather than being PHs because somebody dropped.)

7. Will treating be an option in this exchange?

8. I notice you mention check-ins - the only exchange I've heard of that uses them is Fandom5k, and that's because it has a 5k minimum length. If you want to have them, there's no reason not to, but if your minimum is 1k then I don't think it will be necessary.

There are probably a lot of other things that I'm forgetting, but this is what I can think of right now.

holy cats, thank you

[0dense]

oh man thank you so much, I hadn't thought of so many of these things (treating hadn't even occurred to me) and I'm absolutely revising the plan accordingly

1 and 2) oh good, I'm glad Ao3 has ways to do this! but I'm not familiar with them either aah gotta find that faq. def adding imgur as a pathway though!

3) I'll strike that, then. I think I'd rather use a system I'm more familiar with / can get my hands deeper into (gdrive) than mess something up in a more powerful system that I'm still not adept at.

4) ok yeah I gotta think about this. NiF-style makes it simpler to match specific preferences, but that's also an extra step to factor into a process that I'm baseline not familiar with. General-style is more variables to deal with on the mod's end, and probably more complicated to pick compatible personalities. I wonder if people would mind going NiF-style, for added odds of getting what everyone wants?

5) if it's usual, then yeah I'll just make it 18+, it'd be a lot simpler. There could well be teens out there who saw it, but yeah it's not all-ages media!

6) retention is def one of my biggest fears. Not opening it at all until everyone has something is a great rule, gotta do that yes.

6A and 7, showing my naivete) ...what usually happens with initial pitch hits? I picked up the assumption that pitch hitters signed up to pick up slack if someone drops out, is that right? and I had been thinking that treats were somehow for pitch hitters, but obviously that's not right.


...I'm going to have to think about this as a project. It's a lot more complicated than I had thought!

Re: holy cats, thank you

[yuuago]

:D Glad you found this helpful!

3. Ao3's exchange system is easy to use as someone who's signing up, but I've heard it's a pain in the ass on the mod end. It can be really convenient for large exchanges, but since this is a single-fandom exchange and will probably be small (under 25 people?) GDocs seems like a good way to go.

4. Preference-based claiming is indeed an extra step for the mods, but it does seem to make it easier for people to get an assignment they're happy with. :) I think with NiF exchange, everyone was assigned a number.

6 Sometimes not opening until everybody has a gift means that there are delays in gift reveals so that the pinch hits all have time to get in. But usually this is only a day or two, so it's not a big deal to wait.

6A. Initial pinch hits are something that happen a lot in multifandom exchanges, but they do happen in small single-fandom exchanges too, especially if someone has uncommon preferences or there are an odd amount of signups.

Example: User A's offers are matchable, so they have someone to write for. But they requested X and Y, characters that nobody offered to write (& nobody offered to write "any character" either). Then depending on what criteria you're using to match people, User A's requests might be considered an initial pinch hit. In larger exchanges, the initial pinch hits are usually posted on the DW comm, and they usually get claimed by pinch hitters right away, sometimes by people who didn't even sign up. In smaller, single-fandom exchanges, the mod has a few options - claim the signup themselves, ask a friend, or open pinch hits right away and go from there... It tends not to be a big problem in single-fandom exchanges, but it's good to have a plan in advance.

7. Treats for pinch hitters do happen, but it isn't the most common use of the term. Treats are extra gifts for people participating in the exchange. If I like more than one of my assigned recipient's requests, and I decide to write them two fics, then one will be the official assignment, and the other one will be a treat. And if all the exchange requests are visible, I can write an extra treat for people other than my assigned recipient too. If someone requested my favourite character, but I didn't get assigned to them, you better believe I'm going to try to write them something. ;) In some exchanges, people try to make sure that everyone receives two gifts :D but this isn't always possible to achieve.

With exchanges that do signups on Ao3, it's possible to see the Ao3 usernames that go with each request, so people who write treats for users other than their assigned recipient just upload as normal and add the relevant username in the gift field. If you're keeping Ao3 usernames a secret in the signups by using nicknames/numbers/whatever, then if people want to do treats for users who are not their assignment, they will have to ask you for the Ao3 username so that they can put it in the gift field. Not all exchanges allow treats, so it's not something you HAVE to deal with if you don't want do.

I hope that makes sense? '3'

Re: holy cats, thank you

[brewsternorth]

Makes a lot of sense, thanks so much! I'm glad someone who actually knows from ficathons can step in and say how they work - I'm a little out of the loop and was hoping someone could weigh in with expertise.

Re: holy cats, thank you

[0dense]

:D that does make more sense, thank you!

6A) I think the scope of the fandom means filling the odd ones out would be the mod/s responsibilities, and that might be a lot to ask of people. I know I'm busy up to my gills already, and like you said about there not being many younger people around - my perception is that most folks are also working and holding down responsibilities.
Who knows, maybe there're a bunch of lurkers who'd jump at the opportunity to add some fic to the world! But someone also mentioned that polling through discord or such would be a good way to raise publicity, and I'm not on any chernobyl servers. And that makes me wonder if I'm not properly in touch with fandom to initiate something like this. I also have a host of time commitments, and couldn't stand it if I let people down through well-intentioned incompetence. I want us to do something! But I think going for a full fic exchange right out of the gate might be biting off more than I can chew.

I'll keep mulling this over! Thank you so much for the advice, I really appreciate it and I'll bring it to fruition one day! But I'll see about the stars aligning a little more closely, first!

Re: holy cats, thank you

[yuuago]

Yeah, running exchanges can be really demanding when it comes to mod time and responsibilities, which is why I've never done it myself. If you're already busy in real life, adding that on can be a Lot.

Maybe a prompt fest or a theme week would be something to consider? I've always liked those (and enjoyed running them too) because they provide the structure of deadlines and prompts without the gift-related issues that exchanges bring.

Good luck, regardless of what you end up doing. <3