(no subject)

[podmod.livejournal.com]

okay, as we are about to wrap up (though everyone has LOADS of time to record/post more. just saying), i have some preliminary poll results to share, and i can also tell you some of the conclusions the mods have already made about how this has all gone this year, and how we are likely to move forward.

1) early on in the challenge, i received a very nice, very helpful suggestion about fandom tags. i (me, general_jinjur) shot it down. i'm not sure why, in retrospect. tags are necessary. i think i was just being weird and defensive. :/ we are currently putting fandom tags into place, and we will add tags as we go next year. (credit goes to both twasadark and jadesfire2808 for this suggestion.)

2) we are working on a scheme of points for length. yes, we agree that it's necessary. but i want to make this very clear: short podfics are completely valid by the terms of this challenge. ficlets are awesome. my personal suspicion is that if we had disallowed or discouraged them during this iteration of the challenge, we would simply have wound up with fewer podfics, not more long podfics. we are working on putting together some ficlet anthologies to address the concerns of listeners who want something long enough for a commute. yes, i think we would all like to encourage longer recordings - but we really don't want to discourage new readers, and i think short fics are a way in for them.

3) after the challenge is over, we do have many ideas for moving forward, some from feedback, some from the hivebrain. we're currently consensusing about them, you'll hear soon. we do want to continue to encourage people to make recordings, and to discover rare fandom fic, and to build community, and to have stuff to listen to. on that tip, fish_echo mentioned the librivox project - it's not fannish, and wouldn't include unpublished original fic, but i think it does sound appealing. :) also, it's a way to create/find/share audiobooks that you can listen to while carpooling, which podfic might not necessarily be suited to. :p

4) the poll! it's still open. please fill it out - replies are all private, so feel free to say what you think (i promise that if you make me cry, i will keep that private, too. heh.)
if you said yes to a physical prize, please fill out the address answer! or email us, audmod at gmail. or email me, jinjurly at gmail.
if you volunteered to create an internet deliverable prize, expect to be contacted pretty soon. :)
if you have feedback you don't want to leave in a poll, please comment or email.

i am very grumpy today. my apologies if that comes across here. it's not you, it's me. y'all are awesome.

Comments

[general-jinjur.livejournal.com]

yes, exactly - anything longer than a ficlet is hard to do - the longer it gets, the more involved the editing is, and editing is officially no fun. a 15-20 minute podfic takes me 30-50 minutes to record, and up to an hour to edit. a three minute podfic takes five minutes to record, six minutes to edit. i do not want to kill people's joy in the process early just to make a point.

the way we reckon points isn't going to change this time. the people who did a billion short fics are SUPERSTARS. i love that they managed to be so prolific. it's awesome, and i wish they would do even more. we just need to alter the infrastructure a little so that no one feels that there's unfairness, and i need to alter the archive infrastructure a little so that it's friendlier to people searching for stuff by length.

you, ma'am, are a sweetheart. i'm very glad you decided to participate.

[cadeira.livejournal.com]

I was one of those who thought that IF you decide to give points than length of the podfics should definitely be taken into consideration but I really see your point about that scaring away new readers. So I´d rather have the points abandoned altogehter so we can bath in each others awesomeness fair-mindedly.
This challenge was the so awesome and I´m more than glad that there are people like you mods who come up with such things.

[podmod.livejournal.com]

:)

did you have ideas for what the challenge structure would be in the absence of points? all three members of podmod have been burned on exchanges in the past, so i think i can say pretty confidently that we'll continue to steer clear of that.

personally, i've found the points part kind of exciting, but i also know it's not perfect. i'd be interested to hear your ideas.

[cadeira.livejournal.com]

(with than I obviously meant then...)
I was all exited, too when I saw there were points to grab *g*
You could probably choose "winners" in different categories, like, "Most podfics" (this is how it is now somehow only that you managed to encourage rare fandoms and pairing by you point system - an aspect I really liked) or "Longest recording duration" (in which you could average out length and number of fics) or something like that.
Does that make sense to you?

[podmod.livejournal.com]

(isn't it weird how so many typos are homophones?)

well, we're already doing those prizes, too, so i guess i don't see what would replace the points system to drive things forward overall. perhaps it needs more thinking, but i know the weekly points update generated a lot of interest in keeping things lively as well. while we're doing plenty of side-awards, i'm not sure i see an effective way to make any of them central. hmmm.