I was dreaming when I wrote this...

I realize that I am an enormous exchange geek, so I sit around and ponder things that other people probably never even notice... but I think it's interesting how different exchanges choose to word their rules and setup.

In the HP fandom, there are a bunch of exchanges that have essentially the same setup, all based off the Smutmas model. Mine is definitely one of them. Fests of this type are very popular -- obviously something about this setup works well for the HP fandom. But because I'm a geek, I think that one of the most interesting things is the slight differences in the community rules.

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The way a moderator chooses to format their rules is interesting to me, and I always try to browse around and check out other community rules before revising my own each year. Some rules are very casual, in a "hey, guys, let's have a fic exchange!" way, and some (like my own) are much more formal and rigid. For me, I hoped this would signal to participants that the rules are set and not to be messed around with. Other mods may be hoping to send the message that they are friendly and available in case of problems -- which I usually try to convey later, after everyone is suitably cowed. ;)

Overall, of course, every mod has to make the rules that work best for their personality, their participants, and their specific exchange theme. There are not a lot of big variations in these fests, so little things become the difference-makers. Every once in a while, though, someone will come up with a breakthrough concept and I'll have to snag it and incorporate it into my own fest. :)

I have a pretty new JF layout and it makes me want to update. *pets it*

I'm currently working on editing and fine-tuning the rules and FAQs for smutty_claus... I'll post them tomorrow, which should give everyone a chance to read them and then forget about them totally before signups start. ;)

Anyway, I thought I would write about one thing in particular here before the rules go up.

In 2004, the first year of the fest, I did not limit participation numbers at all and had about 65 participants. In 2005 and 2006, the fest was limited to 100 people. Last year, I reduced the number to 80. I had a couple of participants tell me that they'd love to see a bigger fest this year, but after listening to them and weighing all the factors, I've decided to keep it at 80 participants again.

First, the decision is selfish. I had a very difficult time managing the fest with 100 people to keep track of, and things slipped through the cracks that shouldn't have. It took a LOT more of my time to run, especially at the busiest times when collecting submitted works and emailing people about extensions, etc. But reducing the number of people by 20% made the numbers much more manageable, and I think I did a better job of modding, especially during that crucial period.

Secondly, there has been a lot of discussion in fandom lately about how there is a glut of fests and it's impossible to read all of the fic produced. OK, a lot of those complaints are bullshit but they do make a good point. With 100 participants, I was posting 3 stories every day for the entire month. With 80, I was able to break up the posting by putting up 2 stories a day on the weekends and during the last week of posting -- when feedback is typically lighter. ...only, last year it wasn't. I think that with fewer stories, readers were not so overwhelmed at the end of the month.

I've already had one participant IM me and say she's super excited for smutty_claus 2008... a new slash fest (hp_yule_balls) has sprung up in the attempt to replace smutmas. (But how can they, really??) Yes, it's 100 degrees outside but it seems to be fest season again.

I have a whole bunch of ideas for this year, and so I need to work on them in the next month or so before SC signups start. Need to draft an updated set of rules and FAQ's, get everything set up...

And I just realized that I'm going to be at Dragon*Con on September 1, our traditional signup day. Oh well, it's a holiday weekend anyway, I guess it'll be better to push it to another day. Haha, I'm already getting my mind in shape for all those spreadsheets and notes and scribbled-down reminders.

Here we go again...

How hard is it to just read the damn rules of the community?

Too hard, apparently.

I meant to post about this a couple months ago when it was all going on, but... I didn't. Ooops. Anyway, it's never too late for some modly navel-gazing, right?

This spring, after smutty_claus had been so successful, I decided to run a Harry/Ginny exchange. The proposed exchange was to be smaller and more low-key, and of course the format would be a little different because it would be pairing-specific. The unifying theme of smutty_claus is well, smut, and that fest was based off of Smutmas's format from the very beginning, but this time I was setting up the rules and format on my own, so I actually had to give thought to what I was gonna do and why. :P

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Overall, the fest was a lot of fun but I think it might've been nicer to start a comm and keep everything there. There is already an H/G exchange fest comm, but it's been inactive for a long time. And really, this low-stress format was so easy that it would be pretty simple to do again. For an exchange that ran to multiple rounds, a community would be a good choice. But ugh, do I really want to mod another community? That would be a big NO.

There are several fest-modding-related things I want to write about here... a friend of mine is thinking of starting an exchange fest of her own and I have been advising her which has provided some food for thought. And for some unknowable reason I am running a Harry/Ginny exchange. I've done things differently with that exchange than I do for smutty_claus. It'll be interesting to see how those changes work out, if the fest is successful.

But anyway, this is not that post. There will be another time for that post.

I just heard from the mod of another exchange fest that a participant had recycled an old story for the fest. Turned in a story written for a different fest and posted elsewhere, as a gift for a new person.

There are multiple problems with this situation:

- a fest is an opportunity for readers to discover new writers and find new fic. Readers are guaranteed that the fics will share a common theme, subject, or pairing -- so they can feel comfortable that they will find something they will like, and they can take a chance on unknown authors without stepping too far outside their comfort zone. But the point of a fest is to produce new fic. Turning in something old and previously-posted is going against the entire idea of a fest, and it's a slap in the face to the mod.

- a request-and-gift based fest requires the writer or artist to create something based on the request, crafted specifically for their recipient. Reusing a fic written for someone else is like regifting your aunt Mabel's fruitcake. It's tacky, and it's not a compliment to the fruitcake or to the second recipient. It sends the message that any old fic will do for this occasion; special effort was not required.

- Regifting Aunt Mabel's fruitcake is tacky, sure, but no one ever has to know, right? Well, the metaphor only sort of fits. This ain't fruitcake. It's the internet, and people remember that fic you posted 6 months ago. People know that you didn't make an effort for this gift. And how does that affect the recipient? It can't feel good to receive such a half-assed gift.

In past years, when the community was on lj, I would convert the smutty_claus gift posts to "comments: do not email" when I edited posts to do the reveal, but because there had been a few spam comments on JF, I decided not to do that here.

Good call on my part.

There have been some --I wouldn't say a lot, but some-- spam comments and now, a charming set of anonymous flames. I've edited a few posts that have had especial problems, to change the settings so that anonymous comments are screened, hopefully that will address the problem.

Maybe this is dumb, but I find the flames more irritating than the spam comments that are just a list of porn keywords and a link to another site. At least those spam comments are there for a freaking REASON. No matter what the flamer thinks, anonymous flames accomplish nothing. And saying "your whole genre concept is awful" will never convince the author to write something different, whether it's fluff or slash or darkfic that the person is criticizing. Does anyone really think that an author will take anonymous advice delivered in four-letter-words, from someone who clearly doesn't get what they're trying to do at all?

I think I'm actually more offended by this than when my own stories get flames. Good grief.

Author and artist revelations are up! I hope I didn't make some horrible mistake, haha. :P If I did, please send me angry emails so I can grovel and more importantly, fix the problem.

This was the best year of smutty_claus so far, but as always I welcome suggestions and constructive criticism to help improve the fest in future years. Please feel free to email me or comment with any ideas or things you feel could be improved.

bethbethbeth tabulated some basic statistics for smutty_claus here, along with a more detailed report on our sister comm, merry_smutmas. She included statistics on the total number of times each pairing appeared, and the percentage of appearances per total number of stories for the most popular characters. Definitely check out her post for the details if you're into fest statistics.

Beth points out that Remus did not appear in a single story or piece of artwork this year! Actually, as she put it, "JKR may think Remus Lupin is straight enough to marry a woman, but apparently fandom doesn't, because he wasn't part of a single pairing in this year's Fest." I tend to think it's more a reaction to his fate in Book 7, especially since he appeared in 9 different stories in last year's fest, and was already with Tonks at that time in canon. But running away from your pregnant wife tends to make you less appealing to a het writer, IMHO. So Remus, shape up and maybe 2008 will be the year of the werewolf at smutty_claus!

I also compiled some quick-and-dirty comment averages, which I found interesting. Of course, people are still commenting so this is not very scientific.
December 1-7: average of 21.4 comments/entry
December 8-14: average of 14.5 comments/entry
December 15-21: average of 13.7 comments/entry
December 22-31: average of 14.7 comments/entry
all stories: average of 16 comments/entry

YAYAY! I made the last smutty_claus post today! The end of the tunnel! The finish line of a marathon month of posting! *dances the victory dance*

Anyway, making the last post got me to thinking. Last year, one of my favorite stories of the year, Death and Taxes, by i_octopus (Neville/Ginny, Neville/Luna, Remus/Ginny) was posted at the total tail end of the exchange. Because of that, it never got the attention that (IMHO) it deserved. And every year there are stories and artwork that get overlooked for other reasons that may have nothing to do with quality.

So, a question for anyone who may be reading -- what story or piece of art do you think deserved more attention than it got this year? What was the hidden gem of the fest?

(Crossposted to my LJ)

Some ideas for changes or things that could be done differently next year... Just brainstorming here. Post has been edited repeatedly since original posting.

• Post only December 1-25 instead of through the 31. Actually, I thought people commented less at the end but statistics show that's not really true. Better to continue posting through the end of December and give people more time to read and review while on vacation.
  
• Move entire fest to November when people are all excited about fest fics? (ok, probably not realistic given Christmas theme)
  
• Some kind of 'chatter' or 'OT discussion' community -- but would people use it?
  
• Maybe one or two group chats on Y!M? During November and/or December?
  
• Measures to encourage reviews/discussion -- maybe some kind of awards at the end, w/ voting, like favorite Snape fic, favorite artwork, favorite rare pair...?
  
• Or maybe some recognition of people who reviewed 10 stories in a week, 15, all of them... like FA's "order of the reviewer" back in the day?
  
• Stress reviewing in rules?
  
• Emphasize to readers that anon comments are ok, or that they can leave signed 'anon' comments. (Where to put this so people will see it when they browse to the comm?)
  
• Encourage reccing amongst participants & readers?
  
• tagging by author and/or character in addition to pairing -- JF would have to support the /tag page first to make this useful.
  
• promote the community more to artists?
  
• recruit helper to be in charge of promotion?
  
• More systematic way of collecting recs to send in to DS, and promoting stories to ship-specific newsletters? I did this this year, but in somewhat haphazard fashion.
  

Other suggestions are always welcome! I'll update this list as I think of more things.

Five things I did this year that I think I did well this year:

• The assignments. Of course I can never know for sure, but I think that I did a pretty good job with them this year. I did have to switch one person around because of a straight-out mistake, and I'm pretty sure one of the dropouts was poorly-assigned, but overall I think I did a good job.
  
• sent email reminders to participants at one month before the deadline and one week before the deadline. I think this was good. I hope it wasn't too annoying for the participants. :)
  
• entered lots of information on my spreadsheet as I corresponded with participants, so that I was more able to keep track of them and not let anyone slip through the cracks.
  
• rejected a former Smutmas dropout who tried to sign up! I probably shouldn't admit it, but I'm very happy about this. Doing it brought me great pleasure. Also, this year I finally made the decision to announce names of dropouts at the end of the fest. I've always wanted to do this, and even though I won't make the post until Tuesday, I'm very happy with the decision.
  
• uploaded artwork and prepped art headers and stories for posting at the beginning of the fest, prior to posting. This saved me SO much time during posting.
  

Five things I did this year that I need to improve on in future:

• Need to get the assignments out faster. This year it took me nearly 3 weeks to get them out, due to a) procrastination, and b) a surprise, week-long work trip to Florida.
  
• Apparently, posting an author/artist's work near the end of the fest two years in a row. Will have to pay more attention to this in future.
  
• spacing out of long fics -- I spaced out the long stories okay, but didn't distribute them evenly by pairing throughout the fest, which I need to do in future. Also, I should try to distribute them so that there are more long fics toward the beginning of the fest, and then there is more time between them toward the end, when people have less time to read.
  
• distribution of art assignments. Although I think individual people were happy with their assignments, I think it was probably an oversight on my part that resulted in FOUR Snape/Hermione artworks and only two fics for this pairing. Everyone loves art, but I should try to spread it around more than that.
  
• I need to examine the assignments turned in more closely -- I checked to make sure they conformed to the request, but I need to check the artwork to make sure that it doesn't have a signature (!), and check the fics for improper coding. Fixing coding is a pain in the ass and it's something the participants should really do, assuming that I notice the problems before I'm 5 minutes away from posting.

Anything else you think could be improved in future years? I would love suggestions or concrit, either here or at smutty_claus @ yahoo. Feel free to also wait until the fest is actually over for suggestions. :P

Imitation is the sincerest form of... something, right?

OH, GOOD. Because some genius has copied and pasted BOTH of today's stories and posted them under their name on adultfanfiction.net. One story could've been the author jumping the gun, maybe. Although, okay, I am pretty sure that given the secret identities of these authors, they wouldn't do that. But would any of my authors steal someone else's story and post it along with their own? NO.

I have left a nice review for this big STEALING STEALER and emailed the AFF TOS team, along with letting the authors know. But aaargh!!

Thanks so much to Inell, who has eagle eyes and recognized the titles of these two fics. She deserves some kind of medal.

ETA: The stories are now gone! Hooray!!

cupidsbow has a post here where she asks for "the truth about story exchanges." One of her questions is whether writing or receiving a gift is the most important part for people.

Of course everyone who's commented thus far has said, oh, they love creating a gift for someone, the writing is the most important part. But then, that's the "right" answer, isn't it? And fandom is all about correctness. I wonder if anyone will comment and say, I'm in it for the presents. *cynical*

What's sad to me is that a bunch of people are commenting to say that their favorite part is getting a comment from their recipient. It's sad because I am just hyper-aware that there are some number of people who don't comment on their gift stories in every exchange. How sad if the comment is your favorite part and you don't get one. :(

In that way, I suppose that it's good for participants who love writing (or drawing in the case of SC) the gift best -- that is, after all, the part that you have the most control over. The recipient's comment is probably the part of the fest that you have the *least* control over.

From here on out, I'll be posting 2 stories a day instead of 3. Hopefully this will mean more time to read!

I've run into a weird technical issue -- a few of the long stories that have been posted off-site have had dashes inserted randomly into the middle of words. Like this: "Harry settled into a squishy chair in the Gryffin-dor common room and stared into the fire." or "I'd expect a bit more from a Potions Mas-ter, she said saucily." or you know, whatever. It's really distracting when you're reading the story, and it looks weird and sloppy. I've managed to address the symptoms (by going through and deleting the offending dashes), but not to identify the cause.

Only the long stories are affected, not the ones posted on the community, and even then it's only some of the long stories. My guess is that it's some setting inside of Microsoft Word, that maybe the individual participants had on their own computers, or else maybe they are running the updated version of Word in Vista, and it's an incompatibility with my older XP word..? Dunno, but I am on my laptop right now, which is a Mac, so I can't check it out, and my husband has been glued to the desktop ever since he got home with his new iPod. I probably won't be able to get to that computer for a few more days at least. :) In the meantime, constant vigilance will have to be enough.

Well, we've come to the slow time of the month. Everyone's overloaded on fic, and running around the mall with no time to read and comment. Reccing has trailed off, too. :( This is where, if I ruled fandom with an iron fist, I would force people to comment and rec more.

I made a posting schedule for the rest of the month (usually I just decide what to post on the spur of the moment), and realized that I'm going to drop down to 2 posts a day in a few days. Hopefully a slightly smaller volume of stories will give people a chance to catch up on the good stuff they've missed. *crosses fingers*

Before this year, I had talked about exchange rules and policies pretty much only with gmth. She's given me advice, and our fests are sister communities, and when I originally wrote my rules back in 2004, I did it with an eye to the Smutmas rules (although I didn't just use her rules verbatim). Gina and I have different personalities and different RL schedules, but overall our approach toward modding seems to be pretty similar. Given all that, it's not that surprising to say that we don't usually have huge differences on how to run a fest (except for that smart quotes thing, but don't mention it or she might get violent!). So, you know, "discussion" is more of a "hey, you might want to try this," "oh yeah, that's good" or "OMG, I hate it when XYZ!" "Me too!"

This year, though, I've gotten a chance to talk about modding with other people, and I've noticed that hey, not everyone is like me! Also, since I started doing this I've participated in several ficathons, challenges, exchanges, and so on (although never in one of those Olympic-themed thingies), and have had a chance to observe firsthand the different mod techniques.

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I'm sure there are other differences, but those are the ones I can think of now. Readers? Anything else you've noticed that's different between my fest and others?

I have my final numbers in: of 80 original participants who signed up, 5 dropped out, representing 6.2% of initial signups.

Of course in a perfect world, there would be no dropouts. I'm always frustrated when people drop out, and especially when the people just cut off contact as a couple of them did this year. Also, one of this year's dropouts was a previous pinch-hitter, which is bitterly disappointing. Four of the five were repeat participants. One had medical problems.

However, overall these numbers are an enormous improvement from last year, when 102 people signed up and 17 dropped out (16.6%). I have talked to other moderators and found that their dropout numbers vary anywhere from 10% to over 30%, on average. (I was stunned at that -- no WAY would I keep doing this with 30% dropouts!) In the first two years of smutty_claus, dropouts were at about 10-12%, so we have been doing well overall. Still, last year's dropout rate (along with extremely late turn-ins that year) were too much for me. Had this year's dropouts even approached those numbers, it would've been the last year for the fest.

2007 has been the best year for smutty_claus yet, a MAJOR contrast to 2006. It's convinced me that I definitely want to run the fest again in 2008.

Often, participants thank me for being patient or understanding. But am I really? I don't know.

I already talked about how sometimes, participants' stories can make me cynical. But then sometimes I think I'm not cynical enough. I wait and wait and wait and people eventually send in their stories, or don't. I'm not quite sure how to speed up the process. But I'm not sure that "waiting due to lack of options" is the same as "patient."

I do threaten people, sometimes. But my threats don't have a lot of weight behind them. This year, they're at least a *little* weighty, because I am going to announce names. But before this, all I could do was say "send me the story or you're out, and I won't let you back!" There's only so many times I can use that threat before there's no fest left, you know?

Anyway, I still have 2 assignments left outstanding, and I emailed both participants today and told them that I think I've waited long enough. Either they send me the stories by Wednesday (1 month after the original due date for both), or they're out. Hopefully they go for what's behind door #1. Especially since it's a little late to find a pinch-hitter. :\

It might've been better if I was less of a Hufflepuff and more of a Slytherin. A contingency plan would be good right now.

worked 60 hours in 5 days. am now horribly behind on commenting on smutty_claus fics. Oy.

Time to buckle down and read, read, read.