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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

I'm not sure I like the idea, to be perfectly honest. It sounds to me like it would devolve into a petty popularity contest and create tension between people, especially if the winners get to pick the next character. People would just pick their friends' characters, and new members/characters wouldn't have good chances of being selected.

I mean, it's nice that people get recognition for their work, and I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't give credit to the people who have written good characters, I'm just not sure if this is the best way to implement it. These types of contests, in general, tend to cause more harm than good, and I don't really like them. :/
 
I think that is a fair point, but it is not going to be solely free reign for the interviewees; it would only be one interview per author and you would not get a second interview when there are so many stories and authors to pick from, so you could only choose someone who has not been done before. It would be a few months before we get to the general public as we will go back and give the past Best Character winners a chance to shine, and I also think that most people here would know not to abuse or misuse the system. They are valid concerns though, and if we do go ahead with this then we will find a way to address and safeguard against them.
 
Why not just cut out the middleman and pick the next interviewee yourself, then? Seems to me like, as more and more people get involved, more and more decisions are going to be...well, token. "Oh, I really like this character and would want to see an interview about them, but this person's already been interviewed, so I guess I have to pick...uh, you? Even though I don't know anything about your story and would have no reason to pick you otherwise?"
 
That is a very negative way of looking at it. Its not as if we only have 10 stories active on the site; there are more and more new stories and new authors added every week, and there is a plethora of content people are able to choose from. When you consider there will only be 12 a year, 2 of which will be decided by the Awards, there will be a lot of options for people to choose from, and in a years time who knows how different the Fairground will look. We have managed to cover a very large variety of authors and stories with Fic of the Month, so I do not think it will be an issue for people to find someone to pick that has not been interviewed before.
 
That doesn't change the fact that I can seriously see that process happening in someone's head. We may have a lot of active stories, but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is completely invested in all of them. But hey, I'm not the one in charge here. If you don't see a problem, then don't mind me.
 
I agree with Feli. There are a lot of stories, but there aren't a lot of stories that are popular and have a following. This seems like something that could devolve fairly quickly into a popularity contest or a way for friends to scratch each other's backs.
 
I appreciate all comments about it, and I can see where you are coming from, but I believe that the people on this forum are not as petty as that. We had a very wide range of stories getting nominated last time; I should know as I am the one everyone messages, and I could see the variety with which people were nominating. The people doing the interviewing will still need to discuss things with us, and the four of us moderators will be able to stop things if they get too out of hand. This issue will be taken into consideration and written into our guidelines and rules. We are letting it be user done so that we can have some variety in the choices and the variety of questions; this is not the same forum of five years ago when Rival's Story won every Award and was the most popular story; I would not say that there is even a most popular story as there is no one story everyone is obviously reading/commenting/reviewing/voting on. It is a legitimate concern but one that I feel could be easily avoided.
 
My only concern is that this becomes another mysterious mod thing. The Awards rules are decided by mods and run by Ace, Fic of the Month is apparently chosen by mods but to unknown criteria ... I don't have a problem with that per se, I just think that when it comes to community threads like this then they should be more open to the community
 
Exactly; we do want it to be more member-generated and such, and I do have confidence that the people here are not merely going to choose their friends or what have you, and that with only one character a month we will be able to get through quite a lot without having to risk double-ups or something. I am raising the issue now to get peoples responses and feedback and we will incorporate all those things into the final product.

And with terms of the Fic of the Month, we are largely just looking at stories that different, interesting and well written, there is not really any secret criteria to it.
 
I can see your point Ace. The people here on the Fairground, and really on the forums in general, are usually really good-natured about these types of things. Maybe I'm just being too pessimistic, as I have a tendency to do.

I'm just a little wary of these types of contests because they can cause tension between the community, and I really like the community here. I don't want to see it turn sour because of some silly little contest. If everybody else is on board with it, then by all means, continue.
 
That was a dark time for all the fics that weren't those two, no offence to Legacy or Gama for it though. I don't know whether things might devolve into the worst case scenario or not but at this point wouldn't it be better to just have some trust in it? I mean we haven't even given it a try.

Also if you want there to be a variety of characters that get asked then that depends on the people too doesn't it? if you want large variety then read more fics with more characters. Also like Ace said there isn't ONE or TWO stories that take over every review at every moment and there certainly are more people now that bother more with reading a large variety of stories.

Frankly my main concern is whether enough people will actually take notice of this. It's a good idea but the issue is whether it'll actually take off.
 
I can see the concerns regarding the quality of the contest (in terms of the selection process, mainly--moderator selection does seem like a bit more of a direct approach), but I don't really think it would cause "tension" or anything of that ilk. In general this fanfic community seems to be very open minded, supportive, and slow to jump into middle school drama and petty rivalries and whatnot (there's a reason we can have awards/FOTM/etc. on here) when it comes to such things. I would be all for the idea.

On a slightly related topic, I am a bit concerned by the last point Flaze made. It does seem like there's a certain widespread ignorance among readers of things like the awards... I was shocked by how inactive the awards topics were, for instance, in comparison to the amount of authors/readers we see active on this subforum. I'm not really sure what a possible solution would be, but it seems like the special events in this section are overlooked by many despite being stickied and whatnot, and that's a shame.
 
Lysandre said:
I can see the concerns regarding the quality of the contest (in terms of the selection process, mainly--moderator selection does seem like a bit more of a direct approach), but I don't really think it would cause "tension" or anything of that ilk. In general this fanfic community seems to be very open minded, supportive, and slow to jump into middle school drama and petty rivalries and whatnot (there's a reason we can have awards/FOTM/etc. on here) when it comes to such things. I would be all for the idea.

On a slightly related topic, I am a bit concerned by the last point Flaze made. It does seem like there's a certain widespread ignorance among readers of things like the awards... I was shocked by how inactive the awards topics were, for instance, in comparison to the amount of authors/readers we see active on this subforum. I'm not really sure what a possible solution would be, but it seems like the special events in this section are overlooked by many despite being stickied and whatnot, and that's a shame.
Click to expand...

I think a lot of people do look at the thread and see what the fuss is about, but I think there are, at times, feelings that their stories are not going to win or anything just because there are a lot of other stories out there. I simply think the only thing we can do is just try; you get at least two reviews out of it, and there is always the chance you can win. I would recommend merely recommended the contest to friends/readers and get them to know about it and enter.
 
I concur on all accounts, I just wish there was a slightly more invasive way to advertise such events. I know I personally lurked a long, long time on this subforum before ever really posting in it and I overlooked such things in the stickies because I was so used to just having outdated stickies up top that I began to look over them all as a part of the scenery, as I expect is the case with several others. I didn't even realize I had been nominated in the awards until I was tagged in the main topic on it a while later.

I'm certain mine is not the case across the board, and I realize there is no simple solution, but if there were some way to make such things stand out more it would be an excellent thing for the section.
 
Thinking back, my problem with the Awards is that community enthusiasm isn't reflected in the judging round. It's all very well encouraging people to enter, but once more than three nominations are voted through to judging the list gets whittled back down again. I know that it's down to time considerations but it doesn't mesh well with the "Give it a go!" message
 
Pavell said:
Thinking back, my problem with the Awards is that community enthusiasm isn't reflected in the judging round. It's all very well encouraging people to enter, but once more than three nominations are voted through to judging the list gets whittled back down again. I know that it's down to time considerations but it doesn't mesh well with the "Give it a go!" message
Click to expand...

This is good point, but now that we're doing awards only twice a year we have more time for judging. Time constraints will hopefully be less of a problem.

On the topic of a lot of people not really knowing about the awards, try to use your nominations to spread the word. If you read a good fic by someone who doesn't seem terribly active, nominate them in the awards and let them know you did so.

As for the Character of the Month stuff, we want very much for this to NOT be another mysterious mod-run thing. We understand your concerns, but what we really need are your suggestions for how to circumvent those concerns.
 

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