While we wank of yuletide treasure
Another year, another Yuletide wank.

On November 8, a provisional list of fandoms and characters eligible for Yuletide went up. Some 4000 fandoms are listed.

Discussions about what fandoms count spring up pretty quickly. Discworld has too much fic on AO3 to be eligible, but rachaelmanija notes that it's mostly crossovers and Yuletide fills. P_zeitgeist argues that her fandoms should be included because even though there's a lot of fic, it mostly sucks. But the real wank starts when people start noticing the presence of huge anime/manga fandoms on the Yuletide list. Franzeska brilliantly tells everyone that to prevent megafandoms like Hetalia and Fruits Basket from being eligible for Yuletide, "go lure people from those fandoms onto AO3 so it properly reflects their non-deadness."

And so the annual celebration of internet arguments begins!
Let's talk about eligibility and large fandoms, says birchsalt.
Let's not, say the mods. "Frankly, for us, this is a non-issue. We aren't terribly concerned that some participants might be "getting away" with something or that some fandoms that aren't truly rare/obscure/inactive are slipping through, or even that all the corrections get done, especially if that lets us open signup earlier and keeps us relatively happy and as unstressed as possible...Note: I'm leaving comments turned on, but I will not be arguing, defending, or explaining our policies."

There is nothing fandom loves more than being told they can't argue. Cue grumbling about basing eligibilty on AO3 content, bnfs, and favoritism. 

ETA: The final list is up.  Some of the big anime fandoms are out (Pokemon is still in, for whatever reason), Discworld is back in, and all the comments thus far are very reasonable and helpful.  Alas!  Even fail_fandomanon isn't wanking about it.  

Looks like the frooforah is over.  I can't wait to see what happens next year!