Something I've been thinking about

[covenmouse]

So for the past few weeks, during the wonderful world of hell-week stress I was experiencing, I've also been taking part of a lot of activity going up from my other major fandom--sailor moon.  Summer time is always an active time for us, especially when it comes to massive group projects, and I got the strange notion that I wouldn't mind seeing

Comments

[terravayne]

As someone who just finished running a Darkfic Exchange at gw_dark and used to how smoothly things go in HP fests, let me tell you...it is much, much, MUCH easier to let authors post the fics themselves. The prompts themselves and the assignments can be anonymous but trying to track people down and hand out extensions and extending extensions and having people email ME fics (which annoys people who aren't used to HP and SM, which is most GW writers) is not worth it.

I think a ficexchange is a brilliant idea. I loved to pieces the wonderful work that came out of the Darkfic Exchange...BUT the single biggest thing I regretted is not allowing people to sign up for a day they plan to post their fic and then do it themselves. If you're planning on running an exchange, this is my advice to you.

[monalisaofpasta]

The reason a lot of exchanges do it where you email the mod is because they are secret santa in nature and thus the point is for fic to be posted anonymously and then you get the reveal of the author later, but if that isn't a big thing then it wouldn't be that big of a deal, but you would need to spread out dates for when people have to post, and that can be hard, it is easier for people to claim dates in a ficathon model as opposed to an exchange model.

[terravayne]

Yeah, I know. I tried to model the Darkfic Exchange after how anonymous ficexchanges work (to great success) in HP which includes emailing fics to the mods. But it didn't go over very well with the GW crowd. Many of them aren't used to the Secret Santa nature of it. I'm a big supporter of this format, but it just isn't worth it when people would rather you didn't do it that way. Even with the exchange model, if you assign two or three weeks for posting and ask people to sign up for a specific day/week, they're more committed and likely to post that fic (especially if they'd rather not have someone else handle THEIR work, a concern that was raised). Plus, they'll have the ease in editing it afterwards (this also turned out to be an issue and I ended up giving the sockpuppet mod account password out to everyone so they could edit) and it also gets rid of the need to "track comments" which turned out to be another issue

[covenmouse]

I think it would depend, here, if the people interested in doing the fic exchange wanted everything to be done secret-santa or not. One reason for keeping track of who turns in what and when is whether or not pinch hitters would be needed, and making sure that everyone who participated does get something in return--but you're right in that if it isn't secret-santa style, then allowing everyone to post their own fic (on assign---

Wow, i'm a moron. If you have everyone that is finished email you to find out what day they want to post, then technically you do know who has finished what. That IS a good method.

*facepalm* sorry, I can be incredibly slow sometimes.

Anyway, i think it comes down to whether or not people would want this to be a secret santa. I personally love secret santas, because they're just plain fun, but I think that's more of a majority rule issue.

But thank you for pitching in with that ^_^ It's always good to hear advice from people who have done this before.

[terravayne]

You're very welcome! I'm eager to share the smidgens of wisdom I've gained from what works/doesn't work to spare anyone else having to go through the experience again. If you need a co-mod or someone to help out, I'd be more than happy to be that person. I think there's actually already a gwficexchange comm floating around somewhere so perhaps there's no need to create a new comm?

For a resume of sorts: I'm currently running a last-drabble-writer-standing contest, a fic fest, a Big Bang fic fest and co-mod of gw_dark. Haha, we can continue this convo via PMs if you'd like. ;)