White Dwarf Rabbit Hole: The SFF Literature Fic Ex

First of all, all authors whose names were previously hidden have been revealed...all five of them. But before this exchange closes for the time being, I have some matters to address.

This is not an apology but an explanation: You all probably wonder why the reveals were delayed three weeks past the original date. Well, the answer comes from indecision and lack of experience. The first delay was simply because my computer had problems that needed fixing, and I had no other computer access. When the trouble was resolved, I was all ready to reveal the submissions...except I had a family obligation that necessitated my not staying up until midnight (as I thought exchange moderators were supposed to do). So, figuring that the participants would rather have extra time to tinker with their fics than receive their gifts any sooner than later, I delayed the reveals deadline again. Now, you would think that that delay would be the end of it, and it would have been—if not for one detail.

I have never understood the point of anon periods. With Yuletide, the concept makes some amount of sense, given that the exchange is a kind of Secret Santa swap, but in all other cases, leaving the writers anonymous for an extended period of time fulfills no useful function, to my way of thinking. So, for most of this exchange's duration, I left the "[t]his collection is anonymous" box unchecked. The exchange had a low number of participants to begin with, so I didn't think revealing the authors at the same time as the stories would cause any problems.

However, toward the end of the exchange, I began to second-guess myself. Popular opinion appeared to tilt in favor of anon periods, and yet such a feature still did not seem at all necessary to me. So, once again prioritizing editing time over timely receiving of gifts—I would like to stress that I thought participants would care more about the former than the latter—I delayed the reveals again to make up my mind about what I should do. Obviously, I could have just created a delay of a day or two—but I also operated under the assumption that fic collections had to open on what would be, for the moderators at least, weekends. (Allowing for all time zones at once is not possible, but I figured that most participants lived in roughly the same hemisphere, though of course I could be wrong about that as well.) Finally, I chose to go ahead and make the collection anonymous at more or less the last minute. We all know how that turned out.

According to the reply that the AO3 support team sent me, making a collection anonymous partway through does not retroactively hide the user names of people who have already submitted to that collection. In other words, if I wanted to make the collection anonymous, I should have done it from the beginning.

Well, there you have it. If you do not want to participate in future iterations of this fest, I understand. Even if we have fewer participants, though, I still want to run the exchange again—but this time, I think I have a better idea of how to do it.

Changes that I intend to make for next year:

• Co-moderation, if anyone offers. Someone who far outpaces me in communication (which should not be very hard) would do the trick.
  
• Community posts on a fairly regular basis: check-ins, announcements, discussions about
  topics tangentially related to the exchange.
  
• An instruction that anyone who wants to contact me should send a PM, not an e-mail. I had forgotten how easy it is for me to overlook an individual e-mail in my inbox, especially if I'm completely unfamiliar with the name of the sender. Leaving that aside, sometimes e-mails just get lost or don't make it to my inbox (as I discovered rather frighteningly this past winter). If you send me a PM, though, I'm bound to see it.
  
• Less polling of the audience with regards to what directions the exchange should take. In my inexperience, I relied too heavily on guidance from others—whether or not to have an anon period, whether or not to even create a journal in the first place, etc. I wanted to satisfy everyone from the outset, but...well, you know the Aesop's fable.
  
• A proper anon period.
  
  Elements that will remain the same:
  
• The exchange will still be for fantasy and science fiction literature. No comics, movies, video games, TV series, games, or media tie-ins, though you might be able to use a movie's, TV show's, or game's parallel book canon, as long as the books are a separate continuity.
  
• The exchange will probably open at roughly the same time as it did this year (late April).
  
• Anonymous commenting will still be turned off to prevent spam. Do you remember what happened to some Journalfen pages (before what happened to all the Journalfen pages happened, that is)?
  
  

Thanks to everyone who participated, especially those of you who wrote treats and did advertising for the exchange!

Just as a reminder, I will not be changing the collection's opening date again. It will open on the midnight between August 21st and August 22nd. I apologize if this creates a conflict with other exchanges. I was not planning to have an anon period, since the exchange is very small and maintaining anonymity would be a farce in some cases, but if enough people want one, I may change my mind.

If anyone is wondering, I do plan to run the exchange again next year. However, I doubt that I will extend the deadline multiple times in future rounds— as Morbane said, it's not good for the exchange to keep dragging on.

Edit: There will be an anon period for one week after the collection opens (so handles will be attached to stories on August 28th).

Everyone has at least one gift now. The collection will open, revealing works and authors simultaneously, on Saturday.

Sign-ups closed about...fifteen hours ago. Believe it or not, everyone turned out to be matchable. I didn't even have to change character matching to OR instead of AND!

Assignments are scheduled to go out on the seventh, unless the community as a whole would rather have them sooner.