19 November 2016 @ 05:36 pm
the king is dead, long live the king  
As promised, here is the feedback post, intended for you to voice anything good or bad about your experience of the exchange and suggest what I can improve for next time. I am particularly interested in hearing any opinions about:

1. Timing. Did the time of year that I picked for this work for people? I somewhat randomly chose it so that it was between the Histories ficathon and Yuletide and wouldn't overlap with either. However, we hit NaNo planning time with the end date. Any opinions on this? Is there an alternative time of year that you'd like to suggest for next time?

2. Reveal & anon period. Again, my executive decision was to not have an anon period due to the small size of the exchange and the attached assumption that you'd be able to tell who wrote what anyway. Was that a sensible thing? Or would people prefer an anon period next time? If so how long?

3. Minimum word count. Was 1,000 words okay? Would you prefer a smaller word minimum so it's less of a commitment?

4. Mechanism of signing up and matching. I tried to make it so that the sign-up form was more or less in letter format but would you like a letters post in addition to the sign-up form? Anything about the sign-up that chould change, for example would it be useful to have a mandatory field for preferred characters/pairings in addition to requested play?

5. Medium. This time around this was a fic-only exchange. How do people feel about opening it up to other types of fanworks?


I have already had some feedback to suggest that we need a "find a beta" post next time so that is one thing that I will provide next time!
 
 
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mific[personal profile] mific on November 21st, 2016 01:17 am (UTC)
My 5 cents worth!

1. Timing. Fine. Any later would be a problem.

2. Reveal & anon period. Fine. Agree no anon period needed.

3. Minimum word count. Was 1,000 words okay? Yes, and usual for challenges.

4. Mechanism of signing up and matching. It can be hard to get people to do Dear Writer letters, so anything that replaces that in the sign-ups is good.

5. Medium. Dunno. It's likely to stay a small challenge numbers-wise. Depends if anyone would be just as happy getting art, or a vid, or a podfic. I'd limit it to those, if you try it to see if that brings in extra players. But might be too small to add that in.
Ardy[personal profile] ardyforshort on November 25th, 2016 06:07 pm (UTC)
Thanks mific, that's very useful.
[identity profile] meatball42.livejournal.com on November 22nd, 2016 07:50 pm (UTC)
1. The timing was great for me, but I don't do NaNo.

2. Personally I like the anon feature of exchanges, and I don't spend a lot of time in Shakespeare fandom, so I would like it if there was one in a future exchange, but I'm not picky.

3. I think most people are used to 1k wordcount requirements, and personally I think it's a good size for an exchange, but you if you think lowering it to, say, 500 or 750 words would get more people involved, I'd still participate.

4. I pretty much just wrote my letter in my sign-up form, but I think perhaps others thought there would be a letter post? I would appreciate if there were a letters post. In lieu of that, maybe encouragement to put some prompts in the sign-up form? I don't think characters/pairings needs to be mandatory, because some people really are okay with just anything, but even like 'I like romance but not scary things' or 'Don't change the ending!' are very helpful.

5. Considering the small size of the fest, and the difficulties in creating art for book fandoms, I wouldn't create an actual section of the fest for it (i.e., registering as an artist v writer, option for requesting art specifically), but you could just say that anyone who wants to do art can do so, copy-paste som art requirements from other fests, and let participants know that matching will be opt-out for art rather than opt-in. Low key is best, I'd think.

I didn't see anything wrong with the way you ran this fest! I had a lot of fun :D Thank you for your hard work!
Ardy: Billy[personal profile] ardyforshort on November 25th, 2016 06:06 pm (UTC)
Thanks Meatball, that was all really helpful!