on yuletide

[glass_icarus]

Nota bene: I love Yuletide, and I like the AO3; there is no need to defend either to me.

However.

This is how I personally define Yuletide: a rare fandom fic exchange, where rare fandoms are "rare to the best of my knowledge and google-fu" as opposed to "on AO3/ff.net/archive of your choice/LJ/DW/IJ/JF/etc.", and keeping in mind that I am only a part of English-language fandom. To me and to many others, this is what we understand to be the purpose of the Yuletide challenge- to write and receive fic in fandoms that we (members of English-language fandom) cannot otherwise find, or find very little of. This is what we love about Yuletide.

The AO3, on the other hand, is a tool. Yes, it is very shiny, and yes, I do like it there- as behind on my uploading as I am- but it is not the end-all and be-all of Fandom Everywhere. If the parameters and purpose of the Yuletide challenge are indeed supposed to be what I have laid out above, I find the sole use of AO3 statistics to be disingenuous*. It is illogical to claim that the AO3 is any more than a subset of fandom, or that it can, will, or should be the One Heart of Fandom to anyone and everyone, when our individual needs and preferences are so varied. (I don't have the time or words to express this properly at the moment, but if you're curious, my thoughts are along the lines of wistfuljane's here and troisroyaumes's here.)

Obviously, the parameters of Yuletide are the sole decision of the mods, but in my opinion it would be to everyone's benefit to have a clear outline of what the parameters are, if only so we can make informed decisions about whether or not this challenge is for us.

* If you're wondering why I'm "only bringing this up now," well, I'm not the first. Many people brought it up before this Yuletide season began (I seem to remember a round of questions in August?), and also suggested that the rarity of fandoms could be confirmed by some organized crowdsourcing- with two thousand-odd members of yuletide, not to mention their flists, there is a very large pool of potential volunteers. I don't know of any response to their concerns.

Comments

[sarashina]

Well said! I adore Yuletide, I look forward to it all year, and I know the mods want to make things easier, but I totally agree that the AO3 method is a bit skewed. I would be happy to volunteer to do some fandom-checking or something next year.

[glass_icarus]

Yeah. And I get that volunteer-wrangling is also work, but, you know, Elyn & astolat could always pick another mod or two to oversee the crowdsourcing? These are things people would be happy to do for Yuletide!

[lady_ganesh]

I have said before, and will say again, I don't understand why they don't come up with a simple formula to help people check. # of fic on ff.net, # of comms on LJ, # of delicious tags, and then run that by the AO3 number. Anyone could do that, you could still have an appeal process if things got screwed up, and it'd be incredibly simple.

[littlebutfierce]

Yeah, this totally came up in August in comments to this post (& the crosspost on the YT comm). Concerns were met w/vague responses if any at all. :/

And yeaaaaaah, maybe my opinion doesn't count as this is the first year I am considering YT, but I definitely agree w/your post, & me agreeing w/it is part of the reason I am considering not doing it after all. /o\

[glass_icarus]

I am trying to be understanding! but augh, my conflicted feelings are conflicted.

[lorax]

I agree, and I think that's probably also the mods' criteria, however, there are what, 4500 fandoms nominated? That's a whole lot of time spent google-fuing. From what I've seen, doing it through A03 is being done not because they believe it should be the mecca of fandom, but because that's how they can code a way to automate that process, and then from there they are, this year, tweaking the list.

From what's been said and how it's being presented, I think this year is a test of the code, and if for next year they can expand it to include a scan of other archives, they might - they even said in the post if there's someone who can code that kind of thing reliably, to come volunteer.

Given the time constraints, I think they just went for the option that made their lives easiest, which - with the incredible size of Yuletide - I can't fault, you know?

[glass_icarus]

Yeah, but the mods don't have to be the ones doing the google-fu. They can, just by asking, gain huge numbers of willing volunteers to help them figure out the relative rarity of fandoms according to whatever criteria they decide to set! I know if there had been such a post in yuletide I would have been happy to help out, at the very least by pointing friends more familiar with certain fandoms than I am toward the request. Elyn and astolat don't have to be the ones wrangling volunteers, either; they could just ask someone (or maybe a couple of someones) to help them organize that.

I don't have a problem with running the fest on AO3; I will be the first to admit I don't know much about the automation process, but it's a very shiny system. My concern is more for the confirmation process of the actual rarity of Yuletide fandoms.

[sophinisba]

I don't remember if they did it this year, but in the past Remix Redux has had volunteers checking every participant's fic index to make sure they have the required minimum number of stories so that the challenge will run smoothly. Since it's a large challenge there's a lot of checking to do but there's also a large pool of willing volunteers.

I would think something similar or shinier could happen with Yuletide, since they also have so much of the power of the AO3 to work with. Maybe they'll consider something like that next year. :)

[lorax]

They did, I was one of those doing checks. I think it'd be good to look into for yuletide future, too.

[lorax]

But they have to be the one figuring in the results of where the google-fu came from, and coordinating who looks up what, and all of that. They chose to focus on getting the bare bones structure of how it works running, from what I've read, and in the process possibly let some fandom noms slide, and in the future when the barebones is done, they can adjust and then possibly organize some volunteer labor and things to aid the process.

But that's really just my take on things. And I admit, they could have worded things more clearly.

[pseudo_tsuga]

Yes, exactly.

[glass_icarus]

:>

[sophinisba]

♥

[glass_icarus]

&hearts!

[silverflight8]

re: the crowdsourcing idea - I think it'd work beautifully. I mean, there's thousands and thousands of fen who are enthusiastic and willing to do anything to get Yuletide to work/work faster, etc.

in from metafandom <3

[dechant]

See, from the outside, Yuletide was always a "cool, fannish holiday treats" thing -- but then, I never participated in any way except reading the results! Was that ever made clear to non-participants?

AO3 has a ton of larger fandoms now. I'm turning to it more and more when I want good fic in one of my favorite fandoms, because the odds are greater that I'll find it there than, say, ff.n.

I'm popping onto LJ between homework assignments, by the way, so the two are mixing and melding, and your footnote reminded me of the idea behind defining terms in the middle of a legal document: so everyone's on the same page regarding meanings and won't be working at cross-purposes! (Imagine what would happen if, say, OSHA totally failed to define any of the terms it used...) The trouble with the "it's on OT3" definition is indeed that it's too broad, and I think your outsourcing is a good idea at least to come up with a few numbers. What numbers would you use?