In like Flynn

[zeitgeistic]

Okay, okay. I'm going to do it.

I am participating in therealljidolCrossing my fingers for the rest of this quarter to be manageable enough for me to stay in the game for a little while. I'm pretty sure I'm going to un-watch all of my non-LJ Idol communities while it's going on. Those of you who've participated before, do you think this is a good idea/

Comments

[rhetoricians]

lol to be honest, I am just checking the comm once a way and figure that if I miss that, a friend will post something related to the prompt relatively fast!

[zeitgeistic]

How do you manage to read all the idol entries? Do you just go through them all at the end of the week?

[roina_arwen]

Well, once we get to a week where there are polls, clauderainsrm or his minions will post the poll, and the poll will contain a link for every contestant and their entry. If you want to start reading before the poll is posted, you can do so by clicking on each person's link via the topic thread post, and it is HIGHLY suggested that you keep a spreadsheet or somesuch to keep track of the one's you have read.

All you really need for the spreadsheet (IMO) is the username and a Yes or No as to whether you will vote for it when the poll is posted. You can also add a field for commentary if you liked it enough to want to recommend their entry to others, or a ranking column (like a scale of 1-5 or 1-10) but that's up to you.

Honestly, some weeks - especially at the beginning when there are so many contestants - you just can't read ALL the entries, but you just do the best you can.

Welcome to the madness, and good luck!

[zeitgeistic]

A spreadsheet is a fantastic idea. I think that's what I'll do. I'd really like to make sure I read every entry, but it looks like the consensus is that that isn't possible for the first leg of the competition.

Thank you!

[liret]

Yay, ljidol! I don't think you need to unwatch other communities - there's only one post a day for general chatter, and then the topic posts about once a week.

[zeitgeistic]

I'm not worried about too many lj idol posts hitting my flist, more of trying to get through the REAL people on my friends list and still reading Idol entries every day. :P

[karmik]

How about making a separate friend group for lj idol only? Then you could watch it at /friends/ljidol or whatever you'd name it. I usually only check my /friends/people, but I used to have different groups for watching band communities and music upload communities too. It made my friends list far more manageable, because /people/ is the most important to me, /bands/ was interesting and I liked keeping up with bands I like, and /music/ was spammed so much it would have eaten my entire friends list if I hadn't had a separate group for it. XD

[zeitgeistic]

I considered that, but I'd really have to friend every single participant to do that. I think the best option for me is just going to be to unwatch all unnecessary communities so that I'll have time to go in and read the ~dozens/hundreds~ of extra entries. *breathes*

[karmik]

I don't understand, don't you need just the community to do it? Just put the community on the friends group and follow it there, and go to the individual journals from the links in the community...? I'm not sure how the whole LJ idol thing works though, haha.

Or do you mean that you have so many communities on your regular friends list that you would not have time to get through your friends list in addition to LJ idol? Why not just make a separate "people" filter and then a filter for the LJ idol comm, or checking the comm on its own?

[zeitgeistic]

Oh, I see.

I've already got the community friended, so I get the links to the entries already. I was more concerned about finding time to read my USUAL communities PLUS the hundreds of NEW entries from LJ Idol participants.

I thought a good way to prevent the stress would be to temporarily stop watching other communities so that I could focus on reading posts from actual friends/people on my friends list and the LJ Idol entries.

[unnecessary_]

You are going to do so well. :)

[zeitgeistic]

I will be happy if I'm not eliminated first round. :P Are you participating?

[unnecessary_]

Yup!

[lilycobalt]

Yay! I'm glad you're joining us!

[zeitgeistic]

:D I'm looking forward to it.