Fun Things To Do With the FF&W

Or: Jax Has Terrible Ideas (Again)

So, because I'm immensely lazy right now, you guys get the short of it. I'm thinking of fun things to do with the FF&W. No, I'm not proposing to run any of these; if someone wants to expand on these ideas in a new thread, go for it. b)'')b


Monthly Awards
What if we brought in some kind of awards thing-a-ma-jig to PC's fic forum? Yes, I know I've said in the shiny past where I was an asshat that awards = drama, but I'm sure if we worked on it, we'll hammer out all the oddities, right?

I'm thinking of two possibilities to be specific.

First possibility is Fanfic of the Month. Now, I know we've tried it in the past where we put a lot of responsibility on the mods for handling the entire voting process, and that sort of fizzled out. However! I'm thinking why bother the mods? There's two ways to do this: one being that we have an anonymous poll made on the first of every month containing titles of fics that were updated/posted in the month before it. That way, votes are anonymous, obvious, and easily counted. The other is that we send all the ballots to someone (or more than one someone) who's fair, not known for lying/cheating, and isn't necessarily a mod. Either way, we get those votes counted, and they're put on a shiny, shiny list of Fics of the Month that could be stickied or whatever. I'm not sure whether or not we should let fics be voted for that position more than once a month; I really haven't planned that much.

Second possibility is just bringing back the SWC full-time, only with more voting and shiny emblems.

Personally, I prefer the former because, you know, it'd be open to any fic posted within a month, not just those posted for a certain theme. But we could do both at once, too! If someone was willing to run it, that is.


Reviewer Profiles
I wrote this in response to someone else on my LJ, and I've suddenly had the itch to try it out.

Copypasta time! \o/

Well, for one, there is as you've said a profile system. It could be set up with both reviewer profiles and review requests – as in, people could submit profiles to state that they're happy to review X kind of story, while other people could simply submit their stories to be reviewed. It's sort of like the Beta Thread, as I've mentioned not too long ago. On the one hand, the word "obligation" is taken completely out because the people who post profiles don't necessarily have to respond with a review; they can deny any request that comes through to them for any reason with no social obligation or need to cite a standard of guidelines. On the other, yes, this also means that we'd need to implement a way to encourage people not to deny requests for no apparent reason. A feedback system could offer that kind of incentive (like, the more reviews you give out and the better feedback people leave you about the way you handled the exchange, the higher rank you get – or even something like just emphasizing that the more you do it, the more likely you'll be nominated for the Best Reviewer category come the annual fic awards). In other words, I guess you could say it's the exact kind of system that you were describing in the discussion thread, only with fewer strings attached (like the entire word "obligation" anywhere in the post). It's better to just say that it's encouraged to do something, rather than that someone must do something because, let's face it, some of us are intensely lazy.

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Tl;dr, reviewer profile thread, where we post our reading lists (i.e., whatever fics we've already reviewed/are currently reading), what we normally read, our kinds of reviews, etc. Also, potential feedback thread (incorporated into the same place?) where people stop by and say, "Oh hey! This person gave a really awesome review!" or "This person sucks at reviewing, and by the way, they completely blew me off for a long time." So, the more of the former you get, the higher you rank in terms of reviewers, and the more of the latter you get, the more your score gets knocked down.

Downfalls? Drama. Also, the fact that it might just be a little redundant, what with the beta thread and all. But mostly drama. Any thoughts?

If not, what if we brought back the reviewing chain? Or should we just stick to the reviewing challenge?


Writing Challenges
Hey, anyone remember An Exquisite Corpse? Anyone want to do it again? And while we're at it, what do people think about one-sentence fic challenges or ficlets written under obscene timeframes? In short, writing games. Awesome ways to stir activity in Writer's Lounge, y/n?


So, yeah, these are just basically quick sketches of ideas that've been bouncing around in my head for a bit. If anyone's got any feedback or ideas to pitch for things that would be fun in the FF&W, feel free to derail and commandeer this thread.

Meantime, the poll is only relevant to show how an anonymous poll thing would work.

Edit: "An orgy" is not a valid proposal.

Writing Challenges
Hey, anyone remember An Exquisite Corpse? Anyone want to do it again? And while we're at it, what do people think about one-sentence fic challenges or ficlets written under obscene timeframes? In short, writing games. Awesome ways to stir activity in Writer's Lounge, y/n?

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My mind is really fuzzy at four in the morning, so I'm just gonna reply to this bit because it's related to something that's been buzzing in the back of my head for months now, and I've only just stopped caring about how to make it work so that I can get some input for the idea.

So anyway,

Genre Challenge

I was thinking writers need to be flexible right? So what if we had a monthly contest wherein, instead of a random word prompt, we'd challenge ourselves to write in the chosen genre of the month, just for the lulz. And when we run out of archetype genres, we can move on to the more surreal like zombie apocalypse or something like that. The whole point is to diversify our skills. To not restrict ourselves to our fortes and show everyone that we can write a gory comedy with romantic elements if we wanted to.

Also, because I can't help myself:

If not, what if we brought back the reviewing chain? Or should we just stick to the reviewing challenge?

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I'm not too fond of reviewing chains because we've pretty much proven that most of us here are lazy bastards never get around to doing those because usually newbies use them to jumpstart their fic readerbase (nothing wrong with that) and nobody else wants to review them for some reason. Otherwise, some fics are just too long to be reviewed and we just gloss 'em over and leave the thread to curl up and die.

Also, also:
*Volunteers to do emblems if needed*

I do think monthly awards would do better because they would be so recent that it would be a better motivator to write a fic that gets chosen. Either using polls or some trusted member would work, but I think I prefer the polling system as it would take less time than needing to PM someone. To give newbies a chance, we should make sure that a single fic can't win a monthly reward twice in a row.

I'm actually really interested in the Reviewer Profile thing. It could be very popular and motivate people to review if they're asked directly by the author to do so. I can also see it being kind of fun, now that I think about it.

And about the writing challenges, personally, the ones you listed aren't interesting to me, though I'd probably parcipate in the Review a Day thing and the Genre Challenge Mizan mentioned. Maybe for the Genre Challenge, we give each month a theme and all the entries will be judged by the end of the month. That gives us a month to write an entry, though we might need to take steps that it doens't overlap with the Monthly Rewards (maybe, I'm not sure).

EDIT: If we do monthly genre challenges, we should get that set up soon so we can start it at the beginning of August. If no one wants to take it up, I won't mind heading it, though that also begs the question on how it's going to be judged. Maybe people who aren't going to submit an entry can ask to judge?

If there's going to be a Fanfic of the Month award, I think I would make it only apply to oneshots. That way we could expect more people to actually read most/a reasonable amount of the fics that are up for voting. And besides, I don't think we get enough one-shots around here precisely because they don't get enough attention. Making them the focus of Fanfic of the Month could potentially keep a given oneshot in the public eye for longer.

I'm lukewarm to the reviewer profile idea for precisely the reasons you've listed. As near as I can tell the beta thread has been a pretty lasting success, and of the ideas I think this is the only one where drama would be a reasonable concern.

Exquisite corpse is always fun, and I'm all for fun with crazy writing challenge parameters. So yes please, more challenges, reviewing or writing!

EDIT:

Mizan said:

To not restrict ourselves to our fortes and show everyone that we can write a gory comedy with romantic elements if we wanted to.

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Which sounds funny to me because I'm pretty sure anything that says "gory" in the genre is actually right up your ally. :P

I think Mizan should have to write a rhyming journey fic with no gore allowed. :D

icomeanon6 said:

If there's going to be a Fanfic of the Month award, I think I would make it only apply to oneshots. That way we could expect more people to actually read most/a reasonable amount of the fics that are up for voting. And besides, I don't think we get enough one-shots around here precisely because they don't get enough attention. Making them the focus of Fanfic of the Month could potentially keep a given oneshot in the public eye for longer.

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This is a possibility. Or limit to fics under X chapters.

For in general, though, should we have a yearly/seasonal/whateverly awards ceremony to cover all fics?

Going to second Mizan's idea. Challenging an author to break out of their comfort zone is a great means of practice, too. As MW once said in another thread on another forum (I SWEAR TO GOD, I DON'T HAVE A THING FOR YOU OR ANYTHING), sometimes, an author has no idea that they'd have a lot of fun/would be good at writing a certain genre until they tried. That's a good way to encourage people to experiment.

Also, to let us be entertained by the results.

And by that, I mean to let us laugh at genre fail.

I think Mizan should have to write a rhyming journey fic with no gore allowed. :D

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I also second this beautiful idea.

For in general, though, should we have a yearly/seasonal/whateverly awards ceremony to cover all fics?

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Maybe, but we don't have to decide right now. Let's wait and see how this monthly reward thing goes and then see if we need a yearly award ceremony.

Real quick guys, if going for the genre writing challenge, don't ask me to be the judge. I have been judging way too many times for the SWC and I wan to participate in a writing challenge for once. XD; I'm all for this, though!

As for whether we should have a yearly/seasonal awards, I also say wait and see how the monthly reward went.

I think many of these sound like great ideas, and I'll comment later when I have more time, but for now . . .

Going to second Mizan's idea. Challenging an author to break out of their comfort zone is a great means of practice, too. As MW once said in another thread on another forum (I SWEAR TO GOD, I DON'T HAVE A THING FOR YOU OR ANYTHING), sometimes, an author has no idea that they'd have a lot of fun/would be good at writing a certain genre until they tried. That's a good way to encourage people to experiment.

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Didn't I say that in the 'What do you hate to see in stories?' thread just over there? *points* Or are you talking about something else? *confused and lost*

I think a writing challenge (genre challenge/corpse/etc) is a fine idea although idk about the former needing judges or anything (maybe judging if that happens should be kept to the next challenge that'd be...sometime seeing it was previously discussed we'd try something other to the reviewing challenge a while back).

Also far more for the Fic of the Month thing (with people allowed to vote in a thread here/do it via PM to us mods) than the other awards thingy, and see how that goes I suppose.

Personally - not terribly for reviewing chain as I can't say I don't think it'd work too well here (partly because of how previous cases went). The reviewer profile thread seems a better idea to me though. But yeah, this quote from the other thread is something I agree with:

If we want to up activity, reviewing, I think, is the most important thing. It doesn't matter if we write good stories if no one will bother to look at them.

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Maybe an emblem should be introduced for people who consistently review decently/frequently (as in outside of review challenges and all)? I've never been really interested in emblems but maybe other people have interest in the such? But until that happens you guys may as well go for it now anyways, no point waiting for official events or whatnot (and hopefully when the judging is finished for the GT comp there'll be at least 10+ new fics to be posted!)

Good to see some old faces here though, certainly. =)

I like the idea for FF Awards. It would help writers feel that their work is well like around this section.

I rather like all of these ideas. I have to say that the Reviewing Profile looks like it could get very messy, un-updated, and forum-clogging--but if it takes off, could be especially fun.

So, if we are going to have a Monthly Genre Challenge, we should set it up now so it can start in August. I've been under the impression that it'll be some sort of contest, so that's why I said that we're going to need judges for it. Otherwise, if it's not a contest, I can't see many people having the motivation to take it up.

Dagzar said:

So, if we are going to have a Monthly Genre Challenge, we should set it up now so it can start in August. I've been under the impression that it'll be some sort of contest, so that's why I said that we're going to need judges for it. Otherwise, if it's not a contest, I can't see many people having the motivation to take it up.

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As much as I love a good emblem, feedback is much more appreciated. Having said that, I wasn't too keen on making this a contest for the sole reason that contests with prizes don't necessarily help encourage activity. Rather, people just focus on the contest each month but don't actually stay around enough to be part of our little community here. (Like the SWC and the PotW) It happens. On the other hand, no prizes means no incentive which is also a bad thing because it might just turn out like that Fanfic of the Month thing a while back that no one bothered with after a while. So I was thinking, right, can't we not use conventional prizes? Can we somehow integrate activity with involvement, that is to say, yeah we get more fic writers, but we want fic writers that stay. Stay and do stuff.

So I got this idea. Instead of an emblem, why not have prizes in the form of money! reviews? As in, every contestant agrees to do a review for the winner's chosen fic. And it doesn't even have to be the winning fic, maybe a piece the writer felt needed a bit more love. Hell, we could even throw in an emblem, despite what I've just said, just to bring in some newbies. The main prize would still be the reviews, though.

I reasoned that, not only does someone get a review, but people who don't normally do reviews can get encouraged to do it, just by having some sort of experience. It doesn't necessarily need to be something huge; just one paragraph will do. The main point is: the winner gets and emblem and some reviews and the FF&W gets some activity. If you're not worried about being a bit elitist we could have reviews offered by a small number of veteran reviewers, just to spice up the prize a bit.

Any problems/questions?

So I got this idea. Instead of an emblem, why not have prizes in the form of money! reviews? As in, every contestant agrees to do a review for the winner's chosen fic. And it doesn't even have to be the winning fic, maybe a piece the writer felt needed a bit more love. Hell, we could even throw in an emblem, despite what I've just said, just to bring in some newbies. The main prize would still be the reviews, though.

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While that could be an interesting reward, it says something about the community that we consider giving reviews a prize. If a fic wins, then it will be checked out anyway because it won. I don't think it needs more attention than that. The fact that the fic gets that winning attention should be prize enough. Emblems aren't really needed either, but maybe that's because I've never seen the point of them.

Besides, activity limited to one fic isn't really activity.

I dunno, the only way to get activity, I guess, is to just suck it up and go review something. Nothing fancy; all of us just need to stop being so lazy.

Dagzar said:

While that could be an interesting reward, it says something about the community that we consider giving reviews a prize. If a fic wins, then it will be checked out anyway because it won. I don't think it needs more attention than that. The fact that the fic gets that winning attention should be prize enough. Emblems aren't really needed either, but maybe that's because I've never seen the point of them.

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Well, technically, I consider getting reviews an honor for some strange reason I will never be able to comprehend. And I'm not sure if I wasn't clear, I'm pretty sure I wasn't, but it's not the winning fic that gets the reviews, it's the author's choice of fic. It could be his fic, it could be a fic he thought was good but was looked over. On the last part: Well... yes. Emblems are like trophies, really, but I've covered that. I don't like the idea of giving out emblems for this particular contest as much as you do, but then the people who actually care about emblems wouldn't really care to join. It's just an added incentive, really.

I dunno, the only way to get activity, I guess, is to just suck it up and go review something. Nothing fancy; all of us just need to stop being so lazy.

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Hahaha... This has been said so many times. xD
I just wish we could actually learn something from this repeated statement.

Maybe we should infract people for not doing a review a week, that's a different sort of motivation. ;p

Maybe the winning fic being stickied for a bit would be a reward people would like...?

If you're not worried about being a bit elitist we could have reviews offered by a small number of veteran reviewers, just to spice up the prize a bit.

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Wasn't part of the reason the FFL was shut down was because it was becoming too elitlist/cliquey? That and that's assuming the veterans are available to do it always as well which wouldn't be the case always imo... idk, seems a bit too iffy to me even if I also like reviews myself.

Agreeing with bits here and there, Dagzar. For one, yeah, the best way to get activity in a writing forum is to go out and review without any incentives, but we're mostly here to figure out how to have fun while doing it. I mean, while we could just be all srs bsnss and only write, post, and review, it'd be a shame if we didn't actually do stuff together like talk outside of fics and participate in events that force us to interact with each other beyond just the reviewer-writer relationship (and more as fellow writers).

But yeah, I also agree with Mizan's comment. It's kinda hilarious how every single one of us has said reviewing = activity at some point or another. Oh, writing communities.

Besides that, yes to Mizan's idea working best as a challenge instead of a contest. We tend to hand emblems out like candy 'round these parts, so it'd be nice to have a good old-fashioned, "we're doing this for bragging rights" kind of event. Otherwise, the novelty of emblems sort of wears off. And issuing prizes in general might cheapen the experience a little because all of a sudden, you're writing just for the prize instead of because you want to push yourself. I was sort of under the impression that the genre challenge would be more of a personal one rather than a competition, so.

If it helps at all, maybe instead of doing it monthly, we can do it every season/every so often. That way, we don't end up getting burned out by writing one fic after another to fill each challenge.

Also!

Fic of the Month: Continued
Fic of the Month! Awesome! So, scattering of ideas/questions I've had since then to help develop that one a bit more.

1. Instead of emblems (or maybe in addition to it -- whatever people prefer), we could have a stickied rec list. That way, people can go through the best of the best of the FF&W and find something else to check out and review (provided it doesn't break forum rules). Maybe equipped with summaries written by the authors once they win?

2. Anonypoll vs. PM votes. Which would be better? (Personally, I still like the poll because it's hard to dispute the results if you can see them. Also, it means we don't have to pester mods/third parties to have them keep track of votes and count them up at the end of the month. We'd have results in faster as well. Downside is there's a limit to how many poll options you can have, which means that if we get a whole bunch of fics in one month, we'd probably still have to use PM voting. On the other other hand, that maximum is twenty-five. Would we really get 25+ fics in one month?)

3. Eligibility. Should SWC fics count, considering they're already being written for a competition? Should the election only be for one-shots? Should we include all fics under X chapters? All fics, period? Personally, I like the idea of including chaptered fics because if one of them wins, that can serve as pretty sweet encouragement towards someone who's just started a fic. God knows we have plenty of people who just ditch their fics after a few chapters. Including all fics, period could go either way. On the one hand, it means we can direct attention towards a long fic that just doesn't get that many reviews/attention due to it being a behemoth. (Lookin' at you, Cutlerine.) On the other, it also means we'd have to push people into reading through tons and tons of material. Or, well, encourage them to do it because the whole point of this exercise really isn't to force them to do anything but instead mainly to get them to vote for what floats their boats.

4. If we do this, should we open a poll on the first of this month or on the first next month? Do we have enough entries to pull off a Fic of the Month this time around?


Also!

Reviewer Profiles Thread
So, I kinda have to agree with icomeanon by saying that there's no real way to get around the drama of a ranking system, not to mention it'd probably end up either being a mess in the same thread or an extra sticky we don't need. (We're not Bulbagarden, guys. We don't need five hundred stickies, amirite?) So, just straight-up profiles?

I'd imagine that if we make it clear that betas are sort of important, what with being the go-to guys for before a fic gets published and with being the go-to guys in specific fields (whereas reviewers should really be more general, if that even makes sense), we can still hand-wave enough to say that this is totally not another beta thread.

Sound better, or was the reviewer profile idea interesting because of the feedback/rating system? Should we keep the feedback-on-feedback system anyway? If so, where should we put it? Same thread or a different one?


And last random side note:

bobandbill said:

That and that's assuming the veterans are available to do it always as well which wouldn't be the case always imo...

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This.

(Also, yes to the cliquey bit.)

Imo:
- would if it was seasonal be an addiitonal thing to th stuff already done with the reviewing comp/etc?
- Yes to stickied rec list/list of winners rather than emblems
- Maybe a nomination thread followed by a couple of days for voting after the month is over/nearly finished with said nominations, in which case we can decide if it's to be the PM or thread with poll method on the number of nominations?
- I'd say everything should be able to be nominated/voted as long as it was posted/updated in that month and maybe last/this month for the first instance, idk.
- if everything can be sorten before then, then maybe a quick voting thread for this month...
- reviewer thrad akin the beta thrad could work and all imo, and have feedback be able to be posted in the same thread but that won't give any 'rank/rating' or the such beyond 'well this guy said I tots best reviewer!' or the like I suppose. But yeah if people want to say 'I liked this guy btw because _____' or make complaints in the thread I personally wouldn't be against it...

I love the idea of FF monthly awards thingy.

Also, the challenges sound appealing to me. I get too distracted to write a fanfic continuously, so a challenge that's a one shot would be perfect.

Also, wonderful ideas!

Fic of the Month: Continued
1.) I do like the idea of a stickied list. That way, the fics get a better recognition than a few days of glory and an emblem that's tucked away on the author's profile. It'll also help keep an organized record, and provide a good history for any newcomers.

2.) I prefer the polling option rather than PMing someone to count votes. Though part of this is because of my inability to count, I also like the quickness of the results and less of a possibility of human error.

3.) I'm going to say any fic that's posted in the course of the month, with the exception of SWC fics. The reason for that is because SWC fics already get additional attention than other fics just because they were entered in a contest. (I point everyone to the small burst of reviews given to those fics.) This way, it's all the fics that are active in that month that might not have received attention for whatever reason.

I don't have any thoughts currently on the reviewing profiles idea.

it'd be a shame if we didn't actually do stuff together like talk outside of fics and participate in events that force us to interact with each other beyond just the reviewer-writer relationship (and more as fellow writers).

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What if we want to stay away from people?

Actually, I want to do something to encourage discussion among everyone here. Kind of like those absolutely ridiculous bold questions from the FFL, only in a separate thread so they don't get lost and we can kick people for going off-topic. Topics like questions about fic-reading, or writing, or anything related to those. Because, honestly, the most fascinating thing about being in a community of writers is learning how they all work. With this, it would be either a random topic like the ones Dagzar posted, or maybe once a week (or whenever we need a boost of activity) about a topic floating around in someone's mind.

If something like this happens, we'll have an active sub-forum instead of two dead ones and one floundering one.

Another completely random idea I had is a quick answers thread, where questions that don't need a big discussion to answer can get asked. For example, I have a question about something small related to Pokemon canon that once I get my answer the thread isn't needed anymore.

If something like this happens, we'll look like a much more helpful community. Or something.

Dagzar said:

So, if we are going to have a Monthly Genre Challenge, we should set it up now so it can start in August.

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I'm unsure about starting another challenge so soon after the Get-Together. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm personally completely burnt-out when it comes to Pokemon fanfiction. I'd say that we take a little time to discuss our ideas and get the basics set for some of them while letting the SWC fics get reviews before starting more challenges. At least for now. Because my idea for the SWC was to bring over members who don't normally post in this section and welcome them in, giving them reviews and attention. But we won't be able to do that if we're already focusing on a brand-new challenge.

bobandbill said:

Maybe we should infract people for not doing a review a week, that's a different sort of motivation. ;p

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I like it.