Signups Open
After months of discussion and planning, we are thrilled to announce that Yuletide 2014 is now open for signups!
You can find Yuletide sign-ups here. Signups will remain open until Sunday 26 October 6pm UTC. (Remember this is not EST - check the links if you are not clear on what time it is for you! What time is that for me? And here is a countdown). You will be able to edit your sign-up up until then.
There is a screencast guide to signing up for this year, but no transcript for it yet (coming soon). There is also more info and tutorials linked in the faq about how to sign up.
When you input a fandom name, all characters available for that fandom should come up in the autocomplete. There is a known bug where some characters don't appear in the autocomplete. If a character listed on the tagset does not come up under the appropriate fandom, you can copy & paste it from the tagset to make sure it's entered correctly.
Please remember that for requests, the character matching is AND. You will match on every character you request, and your writer will be expected to use all of them in your gift. If you request 0 characters in a fandom, you could be matched with someone offering any combination of characters.
For example, say you request Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold with characters Elli Quinn, Ezar Vorbarra, Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan, and Sergeant Taura. Then you'll only match to someone offering ALL of those (or offering Any), but not to anyone who offers only some of these characters, for instance, Ezar Vorbarra and Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan. (Your choices could be rather worrying for your writer, as it might appear that you want major timeline shenanigans - instead of being happy with two different pairs of characters who did canonically interact - you'd have to specify in your optional details if you didn't want all of them).
However, for offers it is OR. You may be matched to someone who requests any combination of the characters you have offered, or 0 characters.
For example, if you offer Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold with characters Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Duv Galeni, Ekaterin Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, Elli Quinn, Ezar Vorbarra, Gregor Vorbarra and Helen Vorthys. You could match with someone who requested:
.
Requests
You can make 3-6 requests, all in different fandoms. Please try to vary your characters/prompts, even if they appear in multiple fandoms in the tagset.
You can request 0 characters in a fandom, but this means you can be matched with either to someone who offered Any nominated characters or someone who offered specific characters, so only do this if you are sure you'll be happy with stories about any of the nominated characters. You cannot request 0 characters and then use your optional details to ask instead for characters who were not nominated.
Optional details are optional! You are not required to provide them, and your writer is not required to adhere to them, but they are useful for letting them know what you like/would prefer to avoid, and/or to give a variety of suggestions of the types of story you'd enjoy. It is a good idea to warn your writer of any triggers in your Optional Details - if you say clearly that you don't want something your writer is expected to abide by this. However, you may not use the optional details to demand your writer include characters who were not nominated or you didn't request; nor to demand your story includes any other fandom. Consider how someone receiving your assignment will feel.
You can use html in the optional details, but please limit it to formatting text as anything else causes problems.
More about optional details
Offers
You can make 4-10 offers with 2-8 specific characters. It will look like you can add more offers, but don't try to submit with more than ten or else it won't work! However, if you go in to edit and delete one of your offers, you'll then be able to add another for a total of ten.
If you want to offer a fandom that has 0-1 characters available, tick the "Any" box instead of specifying characters (or add it to a bucket list).
If you have multiple fandoms in which you want to offer to write Any nominated characters, you can do nine specific offers, and make the tenth fandom a "Bucket List".
How to do a bucket offer tutorial.
The additional tags field is only used for bucket offers. Putting any tags other than fandom tags in their field won't do any good - please don't try.
Signup Summary
The list of requested/offered fandoms will be available after five people have signed up. Bucket offers do not show up in the list (sorry, this is a known limitation of the AO3 code). Checking this to make sure you have people you may be able to write for is a good idea - although a lot of people do sign up at the last minute.
Edit: Reminder that there is a calendar for Yuletide
Edit: Tagset Problems: We know some people are having problems getting to the tagset. There is a plain text version for reference - thanks to Kaesa.
You can find Yuletide sign-ups here. Signups will remain open until Sunday 26 October 6pm UTC. (Remember this is not EST - check the links if you are not clear on what time it is for you! What time is that for me? And here is a countdown). You will be able to edit your sign-up up until then.
There is a screencast guide to signing up for this year, but no transcript for it yet (coming soon). There is also more info and tutorials linked in the faq about how to sign up.
When you input a fandom name, all characters available for that fandom should come up in the autocomplete. There is a known bug where some characters don't appear in the autocomplete. If a character listed on the tagset does not come up under the appropriate fandom, you can copy & paste it from the tagset to make sure it's entered correctly.
Please remember that for requests, the character matching is AND. You will match on every character you request, and your writer will be expected to use all of them in your gift. If you request 0 characters in a fandom, you could be matched with someone offering any combination of characters.
For example, say you request Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold with characters Elli Quinn, Ezar Vorbarra, Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan, and Sergeant Taura. Then you'll only match to someone offering ALL of those (or offering Any), but not to anyone who offers only some of these characters, for instance, Ezar Vorbarra and Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan. (Your choices could be rather worrying for your writer, as it might appear that you want major timeline shenanigans - instead of being happy with two different pairs of characters who did canonically interact - you'd have to specify in your optional details if you didn't want all of them).
However, for offers it is OR. You may be matched to someone who requests any combination of the characters you have offered, or 0 characters.
For example, if you offer Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold with characters Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, Duv Galeni, Ekaterin Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, Elli Quinn, Ezar Vorbarra, Gregor Vorbarra and Helen Vorthys. You could match with someone who requested:
- Duv Galeni, Gregor Vorbarra
- Ekaterin Vorsoisson Vorkosigan, Elli Quinn, Ezar Vorbarra, and Helen Vorthys
- 0 characters
- etc
.
Requests
You can make 3-6 requests, all in different fandoms. Please try to vary your characters/prompts, even if they appear in multiple fandoms in the tagset.
You can request 0 characters in a fandom, but this means you can be matched with either to someone who offered Any nominated characters or someone who offered specific characters, so only do this if you are sure you'll be happy with stories about any of the nominated characters. You cannot request 0 characters and then use your optional details to ask instead for characters who were not nominated.
Optional details are optional! You are not required to provide them, and your writer is not required to adhere to them, but they are useful for letting them know what you like/would prefer to avoid, and/or to give a variety of suggestions of the types of story you'd enjoy. It is a good idea to warn your writer of any triggers in your Optional Details - if you say clearly that you don't want something your writer is expected to abide by this. However, you may not use the optional details to demand your writer include characters who were not nominated or you didn't request; nor to demand your story includes any other fandom. Consider how someone receiving your assignment will feel.
You can use html in the optional details, but please limit it to formatting text as anything else causes problems.
More about optional details
Offers
You can make 4-10 offers with 2-8 specific characters. It will look like you can add more offers, but don't try to submit with more than ten or else it won't work! However, if you go in to edit and delete one of your offers, you'll then be able to add another for a total of ten.
If you want to offer a fandom that has 0-1 characters available, tick the "Any" box instead of specifying characters (or add it to a bucket list).
If you have multiple fandoms in which you want to offer to write Any nominated characters, you can do nine specific offers, and make the tenth fandom a "Bucket List".
How to do a bucket offer tutorial.
The additional tags field is only used for bucket offers. Putting any tags other than fandom tags in their field won't do any good - please don't try.
Signup Summary
The list of requested/offered fandoms will be available after five people have signed up. Bucket offers do not show up in the list (sorry, this is a known limitation of the AO3 code). Checking this to make sure you have people you may be able to write for is a good idea - although a lot of people do sign up at the last minute.
Edit: Reminder that there is a calendar for Yuletide
Edit: Tagset Problems: We know some people are having problems getting to the tagset. There is a plain text version for reference - thanks to Kaesa.