and ask forgiveness for future mistakes
I said last night I wasn't going to share my thoughts on this particular go-round of yuletide wank, because taglines are way more fun, but there are a couple of things that kind of rub me the wrong way.
1. Yes, yuletide belongs to the mods and they can run it however they like, and the rest of us can participate or not as the spirit moves us. That is true, and determining eligible fandoms has always been a murky, arbitrary process, and one can avoid having large-fandom stories in yuletide by not requesting or offering to write in those fandoms. Absolutely. I don't think that's really the issue at hand, at least, not for most of the people I've spoken with.
When the work is too much for the mods and the small group of friends they have helping out, there is a vast well of people who have offered to help, especially with sorting out fandoms the mods are unfamiliar with. Believe me when I tell you that there is no ficathon admin task so unpleasant that you can't find volunteers to take it on, because lord knows, I would never do the qualification checks in Remix myself, but thirty people volunteered to handle it for me, and I sent everyone a short list of participants to vet and said, "godspeed."
So the juxtaposition of "We're doing this for fun and we're volunteering and we're only a couple of people and it's so much work!" vs. the knowledge that there are many, many, many people ready and willing to help makes me look askance. Yes, the mods are doing it for fun and at some personal cost etc., but there's help available if they're willing to take it, and from what I personally have seen, it appears that they are not. I understand wanting to keep tight control over your baby - believe me, no one understands that better than I - but I also understand that at a certain point, some things are too big to fail to handle without getting more help and I can't see a reason not to take it when it's offered.
Automation is great, but there's always going to be a need for human oversight, and if there are parts of it that are too much for a couple of people to handle (without even accounting for life and its vagaries getting in the way) - and with something the size of yuletide, there will be - there are always fans waiting and willing to volunteer.
2. I think if the mods were better at PR, there would be a lot less grousing. The poor communication and the fact that non-mods were policing the comments exacerbated a situation that could have been ameliorated with better communication. It's great to rule with an iron fist, but it's best not to forget the velvet glove.
Obviously, mileage varies. That's just my feeling after eight years of running remix, and my own share of modding foibles.
***
In less fraught news,
roga just mentioned to me that apparently Dick Grayson worked (and had a secret lair?) at the Cloisters! I have been talking about going there for a week and no one thought to mention that to me? You are all FIRED! Um, but not until after you tell me ALL ABOUT this situation.
***
After an endlessly long download, I stayed up to watch last night's Fringe.
Astrid! ♥ You are the shiniest and smartest!
Nina Sharp! ♥
Marshall! ♥ Sadly underused, but still, Marshall! (When will The Grunberg appear? Huh?)
Fauxlivia is starting to slip up badly - she did it with Nina and she did it with Astrid and she did it with Peter. She's also seeing that not everyone views the escalating problems between the universes as a zero-sum game. I wish she were as sympathetic as alt!Charlie and Lincoln Lee are. I still want to see her interact with Ella! Why is the show denying me this? WHY?
So okay, either William Bell or the Observers buried bits of the Machine around the world and used that first people book as a cipher to break the code of their locations, yes? I mean, Fringe has posited some truly wacky SKIENCE but I can't imagine them trying to sell this one seriously.
This week's ep wasn't quite as awesome as the others this season have been, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/243651.html.
people have commented there.
1. Yes, yuletide belongs to the mods and they can run it however they like, and the rest of us can participate or not as the spirit moves us. That is true, and determining eligible fandoms has always been a murky, arbitrary process, and one can avoid having large-fandom stories in yuletide by not requesting or offering to write in those fandoms. Absolutely. I don't think that's really the issue at hand, at least, not for most of the people I've spoken with.
When the work is too much for the mods and the small group of friends they have helping out, there is a vast well of people who have offered to help, especially with sorting out fandoms the mods are unfamiliar with. Believe me when I tell you that there is no ficathon admin task so unpleasant that you can't find volunteers to take it on, because lord knows, I would never do the qualification checks in Remix myself, but thirty people volunteered to handle it for me, and I sent everyone a short list of participants to vet and said, "godspeed."
So the juxtaposition of "We're doing this for fun and we're volunteering and we're only a couple of people and it's so much work!" vs. the knowledge that there are many, many, many people ready and willing to help makes me look askance. Yes, the mods are doing it for fun and at some personal cost etc., but there's help available if they're willing to take it, and from what I personally have seen, it appears that they are not. I understand wanting to keep tight control over your baby - believe me, no one understands that better than I - but I also understand that at a certain point, some things are too big to fail to handle without getting more help and I can't see a reason not to take it when it's offered.
Automation is great, but there's always going to be a need for human oversight, and if there are parts of it that are too much for a couple of people to handle (without even accounting for life and its vagaries getting in the way) - and with something the size of yuletide, there will be - there are always fans waiting and willing to volunteer.
2. I think if the mods were better at PR, there would be a lot less grousing. The poor communication and the fact that non-mods were policing the comments exacerbated a situation that could have been ameliorated with better communication. It's great to rule with an iron fist, but it's best not to forget the velvet glove.
Obviously, mileage varies. That's just my feeling after eight years of running remix, and my own share of modding foibles.
***
In less fraught news,
roga just mentioned to me that apparently Dick Grayson worked (and had a secret lair?) at the Cloisters! I have been talking about going there for a week and no one thought to mention that to me? You are all FIRED! Um, but not until after you tell me ALL ABOUT this situation.
***
After an endlessly long download, I stayed up to watch last night's Fringe.
Astrid! ♥ You are the shiniest and smartest!
Nina Sharp! ♥
Marshall! ♥ Sadly underused, but still, Marshall! (When will The Grunberg appear? Huh?)
Fauxlivia is starting to slip up badly - she did it with Nina and she did it with Astrid and she did it with Peter. She's also seeing that not everyone views the escalating problems between the universes as a zero-sum game. I wish she were as sympathetic as alt!Charlie and Lincoln Lee are. I still want to see her interact with Ella! Why is the show denying me this? WHY?
So okay, either William Bell or the Observers buried bits of the Machine around the world and used that first people book as a cipher to break the code of their locations, yes? I mean, Fringe has posited some truly wacky SKIENCE but I can't imagine them trying to sell this one seriously.
This week's ep wasn't quite as awesome as the others this season have been, but I still enjoyed it a lot.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/243651.html.
people have commented there.