Trek Reversebang 2011? Poll!

[ileliberte]

It's about that time of year again. I'm not sure what people's thoughts are about a new round of the Trek Reversebang challenge, so before zippitgood and I launch into a huge production, here's a poll to gauge interest (the timeline will be similar):


[Poll #1665028]

ETA: Slight misstep on the "I want to participate" option, there's no maybe option. To get around that, since these are not official signups, so even if you're just sort of considering signing up but aren't really sure, please fill out the "I would like to" option so we at least know how many people might consider it.


Important links:
trekreversebang | FAQs for last year | Masterlist 2010

ETA: Please link this around if you can. Thanks!

Comments

[heeroluva.livejournal.com]

Erm oops. Trekmas_mod was me.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was wondering :) Thanks for letting me know.

[velvetmouse]

I am a writer who participated last year and thought it was AWESOME.

Here is my one complaint/suggestion, from having gone through the process last year:
The Claiming.

I know there was something of a kerfluffle with whether or not the artists could see the claims post (and I do understand both sides of the argument). I also know that as an author doing the claiming, I felt really really rushed. I knew that if I wanted ANY chance at getting my top choices I had to put my claims in super fast, which meant I felt like I didn't really get to look at all the art as much as I would have liked.

So here's my suggestion:
Post all of the art thumbnails/sketches in an UNlocked post with comments DISABLED for, say, a day. That will let all the artists see what everyone has done, and let the authors (no matter what time zone they're in) get a chance to browse through the art and see which pieces twig their muses.
Then, after 24 hrs, lock the post down so that only authors can see it, and enable the comments again, and let the claiming begin.

I think doing that way might help solve both issues from last year...

I really enjoyed it last year, and I'm definitely looking forward to it again! :) If you want me to clarify anything i've said, let me know, and I'll certainly try :)

[3whiteroses.livejournal.com]

I've always liked that option for any bigbang or reversebang, to be able to see the options ahead of time so you can look through them properly :)

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Somehow it hadn't occurred to me last time, but it's a very good point and we'll definitely keep that in mind :)

[zippitgood.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the feedback. This is definitely being tweaked this year. We'd been considering 30 minutes ahead of claims but you make a valid point as to be fair to all time zones.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

That hadn't actually occurred to me last time, but it makes a lot of sense. My co-mod mentioned having it open for an hour before claiming when we were talking about it just this morning, and I agree, that does make sense. We'll probably end up having it posted open for all participants to see for a day like you mentioned with the actual claims post itself only be visible to authors.

I'm glad you enjoyed it last time and hopefully there will be as much interest this year too :)

[ariadnechan.livejournal.com]

i'm agree with this!!, it is better!

the other thing was that like there were more authors the second claim was like a little unfair for me at least because if i was there i could have the art i wanted in my first choice

idk if other have this problem

and there was artist who have no author for a lot of time, that was bad too i think! it is sad be an artist that no one choose

and particularly me had problems with the time, and finding a beta so i think it is needed a better beta source and maybe some extension??

[claudia-nic.livejournal.com]

I like this suggestion a lot. Last time I really had to rush through the options and by the time I picked my favorites where already gone. This will also give people in other timezones a better chance to have a look and decide during day time and will limit the amount of time they have to be up and out of bed in the middle of the night :D

seconded!

[(Anonymous)]

Or thirded, fourth'd... whatever.

That's a GREAT idea! As an artist, I can totally understand why the mods decided to NOT let us see the claiming posts (even though I would've been fine with seeing them), but not being able to see the art the rest of my fellow artists had done at the same time the authors got to see them was really disappointing :(.

Plus I can only imagine that giving the authors a bit of time to let the magic inspired by the art happen in their brains would be to the benefit of everyone!

[chaosraven.livejournal.com]

No real complaints, but I like velvetmouse's idea. I've had this problem, as an artist not an author, where the claiming is taking place at a time that I don't have good web access and I haven't had any opportunity to plan ahead. It can be really hard for people who aren't in an ideal timezone, too. Knowing what your faves are early enough to ask for them, as well as having a backup plan, is pretty important for a good BB experience, I think.

Also, not positive that I'll be able to participate since I'm modding my own Big Bang at roughly the same time (our posting is mid-May)... maybe if we moved the due dates a litle further into summer?

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid our dates are co-ordinated to not run into the star trek big bang. We're extending initial artist submission time, but posting will start on the 15th of May since ST Bigbang starts signups in May. I hope you'll be able to participate anyway.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

The claiming bothered me as well -- it was a free-for-all, which resulted in a lot of split-second decision-making on the claims, and I for one wound up claiming an artwork which I was ultimately unable to write for because of the first-come-first-serve basis of the claims. I also dislike the one-author-per-artist policy, because it limits the total number of authors who can participate and fandom collectively has a larger number of authors than it does artists.

So, I'd like to see first-come-first-served get chucked out the window in favor of something like: every artist who submits a finished work will receive at least one story. Once every artist has been claimed, any author can write for any artwork. (So ... some artists may receive more than one story. No one receives less than one story.)

This takes away the favoritism for people in the comm admins' timezone, as well as evening the playing field for people who for whatever reason (school, work, health, deployment, other travel, whatever) cannot be around when claims go live.

[zippitgood.livejournal.com]

Valid points all especially in regards to claiming and the time zone favoritism.

I have a concern about the multiple authors per artists. I know in the last round some artists found it a bit difficult to juggle multiple authors when they submitted multiple art pieces and if we did implement what you're suggesting that problem would only increase. Do you have any suggestions on how we'd overcome that?

[velvetmouse]

Do you think there would be a problem with having multiple stories for the same piece of art? That way the artist would only be committed to one piece, but multiple authors could have completely different takes on that one piece. I think that might be kind of fun, actually. *shrug*

[zippitgood.livejournal.com]

Aside from not every artist getting the same number of additional stories, some artists might want it to be more of a collaborative process and wouldn't want to juggle multiple authors writing different ideas.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

Allow artists who don't want/don't have the personal resources to juggle multiple authors to opt out at the beginning and/or limit the number of authors they're willing to take on is first to my mind.

[zippitgood.livejournal.com]

Yes, that could very much work. We'll think it over.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

I am a little confused. I might just be misreading it, but we did allow multiple authors per artist since there were more authors than artists. The reason why we did not allow double claims straight off the bat was so that every artist could have at least one author first. As for the first-come-first-served thing, I agree, it can be unfair. But what would you suggest as an alternative? Do you mean that we would be assigning artist to authors? Because otherwise, there isn't necessarily any guarantee that all artists would get claimed since multiple authors could want one piece while another piece could get overlooked completely if it was just general unlimited claiming. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying to understand what you mean so please do elaborate, we're totally open to all suggestions.

[boosette.livejournal.com]

You didn't make it clear that you would allow multiple authors once every artist had been claimed from the beginning. Allowing multiple authors (once all artists are guaranteed one story) eliminates the issue of first-come, because it only requires that the authors be patient for the first round of claiming to pass before they can sign up for the art that they want/are able to write for.

So, with less rambling, my suggestion is: Authors sign up to write for an artwork. Once every artist has had at least one author sign up for each piece of art submitted, any author be allowed to write for any artwork.

This needs to be clear from the beginning.

The presentation of the claiming as it was, with multiple claims allowed presumably* as an afterthought, much more stressful than it had to be. (In my own experience, I skipped class to be at the computer when claims went live. Claims post shows up on my friends list: 0 comments. Load the post; search through the art, pick ≈15 or so that I really like. Scroll down to the comments [there are now many comments]. All of the art I had picked out was already claimed -- I may have shed a single literary tear of "Oh Fuck NOW What Do I Do?" And that was with being in the idea timezone. I finally wound up picking the art I did on a basis of Oh Thank God No One Has Claimed It Yet -- and wound up defaulting (with notice given). [So did the artist, IIRC.])

*to the best of my recollection; if it wasn't an afterthought, I apologize; I don't remember much of the last year.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see what you mean. No, you're right, we hadn't made that very clear. It all got a little jumbled up there. We'll be much clearer about it this time, thanks for bringing it up :)

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Hey there, we just received an email from your gmail address on the Reversebang email account. The url looked suspect, was it something you needed us to see or did your account get hacked?

[boosette.livejournal.com]

Account got hacked; I'm working on resetting all my passwords now.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that. Thanks for clarifying, and hope it didn't do too much damage :(

[yalegirl03.livejournal.com]

I second this option. I found that artwork I really was inspired by was snapped up really fast. If we allow authors to write for any artwork after each artist has at least one author, that would eliminate the problem.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Yes, we're going to emphasize that multiple claims are allowed, so that it's still going to have to be a "everything needs to be picked up" at first, but people can pick up another piece once everything's been claimed.

[framlingem.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything constructive to say in terms of suggestions and whatnot, but I'm really, really happy to see this. YAY.

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I was wondering if people were at all interested, so it's nice to see they are :)

[moonfoot-gamgee.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this matters, but I only half way participated in the 2010 Reverse Bang, but only because my author had a head injury and opted out, poor dear. ;P I would love to participate this year!

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

We look forward to you getting to participate this year!

[paleogymnast.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed participating last year, especially the collaborative process with the artist I claimed. I thought there were some hiccups and missteps, but they were largely minor, and the whole thing was really well run for a first-round bigbang.

There were a few things that were learning experiences, and I had some thoughts about how to smooth the process.

Since there were some hiccups with the claiming process last year, maybe this year we could have author claims on a weekend (starting on Saturday in the Western Hemisphere and Sunday in the Eastern Hemisphere so it's a weekend for everyone when claiming goes up? This wouldn't be perfect, clearly some people work weekends or don't have LJ access at weekends, but I think more of us would be on computers where we can actually look at the art and claim on weekends than during the work week. Maybe have a poll?

As an aside, maybe also post schedule on the time frame for art claiming (start & end time for first round of claiming).

Keep up the great work!

[ileliberte.livejournal.com]

Yes, we're working on the faq post before we open signups very soon, but signups do start on a weekend and emphasizing that multiple claims are allowed so hopefully every artist gets an author on the first go round and every author can claim the piece(s) they want as easily as possible if they didn't get the piece they were most inspired by in the first round :) And we'll have the claims post open for a few days.