Mod Post: You have GOT to be kidding me

[medie]

I'm not sure you guys realize this, but, um, I don't have time to be doing three and four passes through the rec categories every month, scooping up late volunteers and adding them to the list. We're hitting the busiest time of year at work, I am doing NaNoWriMo, I have a dozen other fannish commitments as well.

I am in the process of doing this month's list. I just finished the character prompts. We have, at any point, 17 character categories.

Do you know how many have volunteers for November?

3

I'm hoping things will look better when I hit the pairing categories, but I'm not holding my breath.

Whatever I find in those categories for November is it.

I will make NO second, third, and fourth passes through the categories. Any late volunteers we get will be put off until December.

This should not be a stressful process for me, people, but it is. It's frustrating. I look at the number of people watching this comm versus the number of people actually participating and I want to throw up my hands.

As it stands, we will NOT be adding any Stargate Universe categories. We may even start deleting categories out. Some of them haven't had volunteers in a year or more. The numbers just aren't there to keep them going or to add any SGU ones. Why should we? So I can comb through ten or fifteen more categories with no volunteers in them?

Communities like this run on the backs of its participants. Without your participation, there is no comm.

I like to pretend I can do everything myself, but really? I just don't have that much in me.

So, as they say, ball's in your court. What you choose to do with it is up to you.

Comments

[anotherdreamer5.livejournal.com]

How do I volunteer?

[medie]

http://community.livejournal.com/stargateficrec/146823.html our FAQ.

[anotherdreamer5.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[medie]

nooooooooooooo problem!

[danceswithgary]

You have my sympathy. I wish I read more than McKay/Sheppard so I could help. :-(

[medie]

*hug* thanks. That's the thing of it though. Doing that? Is huge for us. If more people did even just what they could do, it would help matters SO much. I just can't seem to get it through to people how demoralizing it is for me to constantly be chasing after people every month. I almost dread the end of the month rolling around because I know it's a nearly a week of it instead of what should be only an hour or two at best.

[tejas.livejournal.com]

I just put dibs in for Character Daniel Jackson. Thought I'd chime in here, to save you the time. I'll take November.

[hllangel]

Being relatively new to Stargate fandom in general, pretty much the only fic I read comes from this comm. Wish I could help more. I really do.

[medie]

In time, you'll find other communities and pairings and such and be able to pitch in. *snug*

[hllangel]

Half of it is that I'm really picky about what I read. And I read almost nothing that isn't recced, no matter what the fandom.

[reddwarfer.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the categories should be parsed down to something more manageable. Suggestion: nix the genre categories...and just have people use those when they tag other fics. How many fics are produced in some of the rarer pairs? If there's not much, that might explain why there's not so many reccers. Instead, there could just be a blanket "rarepair" category instead. If you need help with the behind-the-scenes stuff, I could help you.

[medie]

...I appreciate the suggestion, I do, but our genre categories are among the most popular ones in terms of volunteer numbers. Getting rid of those would pretty much cut in half the amount of activity we do get now.

We trim our categories, yes, but we do it on a yearly basis. In january, I think, people are going to be a bit shocked by just how much is going to be taken out.

We do have a blanket rare pairings category for each genre. The only time a pairing is moved out of that is when there's enough volunteer interest to warrant it. When there is no longer that interest to support it, we take it out as part of our january review.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

I read very little that both doesn't come from here and doesn't belong in a category that's oversubscribed, unfortunately. I've also tried to figure out the guidelines for reccing and for volunteering and have thrown up my hands in frustration more than once. I'm sure it works — it obviously does — but I find both difficult to navigate reliably.

I know you've got an established procedure, but it would seem to me to be a lot easier to do something more like a monthly rec sign-up post. (Admin post goes up, listing categories or not, and first commenter for a given category gets it — that sort of thing.) I find it hard enough to trawl through the layers of categories to volunteer to rec; I can't imagine going through all that to find who has volunteered.

I honestly would like to help, but I don't see how I can beyond making simplistic suggestions, unfortunately.

[sholio]

I've been thinking about putting together a how-to-rec-for-ficrec post (not really overlapping with the FAQ, but more like tips on what's useful for me). Do you think that would be helpful?

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Folks offered me advice over on your LJ, I think, and when I followed that closely I found accurate results; it just seemed like I never had been able to before, and I get confused when the "Rec Category" folks fill out doesn't seem to match what they've signed up for (or else I'm confused about something else). I dunno; some things just don't click for me (such as computer hardware), and until my brain decides to get it, I just don't. The way volunteering and checking for prior recs of a story work don't mesh at all with the way my brain organizes stuff, is all.

I do think that would be helpful, though, yes. I just sometimes find myself wondering if the ways that would make a lot more sense to me would be more navigable to anyone else, or if I'm just wired differently. It's usually the latter. Heh.

ETA: Though since I don't read SG-1; get my new stories from here, other recs, the finders comms, and the newsletter, and don't really go looking on my own; am new enough that I'm still catching up on classics; tend to be picky about odd things; have little interest in explicit fics; and tend to pay the most attention to McKay character stories or SGA Team friendship stories, which generally get better coverage than I could ever offer ... I'm not sure I'd ever be able to come up with four that haven't been well covered already, y'know?

[sholio]

I think that as long as a story hasn't been recced in the particular category you've chosen, it doesn't matter if it's a popular story or if it's been recced before. It's true that recs comms are good for finding lesser-known stories, but I've also noticed that a lot of times it takes seeing several recs of a popular story for me to go ahead and check it out. (I think that I often prioritize new or little-known fic higher than the "big" stuff because I figure that I'll always remember the popular stories whereas I have to jump on the other ones when I find them ... and then I forget about the popular ones.)

Anyway ... I'm glad you got useful advice; I will admit (as a good example of brains being wired differently, too) that I honestly had no idea what you were asking because I didn't know you didn't know about the memories thing. Of course, when I first started reccing I thought a story couldn't have been recced in *any* category, so I'd spend a bunch of time looking through every single category in the memories to make sure that it wasn't in any of them rather than just checking the category I'd signed up for. No one follows instructions perfectly all the time. :D

[margarks.livejournal.com]

Hi friendshipper! I remember you talking up this comm up at the keeping SGA alive panel at Writercon and thought about signing up then. I can tell you a "tip" sheet would be helpful for me because to be honest, I feel kind of intimidated (though I know that's silly) volunteering to rec for this comm.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that, though I read and write pairings other than John/Rodney including gen fic, I don't read *as much8 in all of the other categories as I do John/Rodney and I feel like all the stories I would rec have probably already been posted.

The other reason is I feel like you should have a lot of recs, if you sign up, but I may only have four or five, etc.

But, since it seems like they are running low on volunteers, I am going to go through some of the character recs and see what ones I might actually have recs for and try to sign up for one of those if I can.

But, a tip sheet would make me feel much better about the whole thing.

[sholio]

Hi! :) I'd forgotten that I'd talked about the comm at Writercon. I'm not officially associated with the comm, but it's a fantastic resource and I find so many new stories this way, especially dealing with characters and pairings that I don't normally read.

I do get the whole feeling-self-conscious thing because I feel that way too; I find it harder to write recs for a big comm like this one than to rec things in my own journal. Which was something I wanted to mention in my tips post ... that there's nothing wrong with just writing a few lines of "squee! I loved this story! and here's why!" -- a rec doesn't have to be a detailed review of the story. (Though I suck at taking my own advice.)

You actually only need four recs in a month -- that's the minimum that they ask you to rec if you sign up, and while you *can* certainly post more, I usually don't post more than 4-5 ... if I have more than that, I just carry them over to the next month, figuring it's better to spread things out than to inundate people with recs one month and then have nothing the next month.

When I remember, I save links to stories I want to rec as I go through my regular fanfic reading ... which is one of the tips I wanted to mention. It's so much easier to rec when you have a big stack of stories already saved aside to rec rather than having to hunt through your bookmarks and saved stuff, trying to find fics that haven't already been recced!

I guess I should go write that post rather than trying to summarize it here. *g*

[medie]

sounds good to me. Let me know when it's done. If it works as well as it could, we'll totally post it here and link to it in the faq. :)

[cyren-2132.livejournal.com]

I know you've got an established procedure, but it would seem to me to be a lot easier to do something more like a monthly rec sign-up post. (Admin post goes up, listing categories or not, and first commenter for a given category gets it — that sort of thing.)

I agree with this so much. I'm still only sort of sure I get how the volunteering works, and if I understand correctly (based on this line in the FAQ: "Pick the category you'd like to rec and leave a comment. When your month comes up, [info]medie will respond to your comment, letting you know that your month is coming."
), you volunteer for a category but the month you get it isn't necessarily certain. That seems almost as inconvenient for the reccers as it does the organizers.

Also, I think there's a link problem with the FAQ (or I'm just colossally stupid today) but the "Click here to volunteer to rec" link goes to the Memorable Entries page.

[cyren-2132.livejournal.com]

Nevermind on the broken link, further reading shows I WAS just being colossally stupid.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm in with you, if it's any comfort — that's just one of the several points at which my brain decided to take a walk the first several times I tried to figure the process out, because it just didn't fit what I expected to find. ::shrug::

[medie]

That rule pretty much exists for one reason.

When it didn't? We had people turning up in January wanting to volunteer in July,or showing up in April trying to book December which meant I spent time reading through all the comments trying to find whoever wanted that particular month.

It was maddening.

Saying no people can't do that pretty much was a sanity-saving decision.

Which isn't to say we're complete ogres about it. Take this month for example. It's NaNoWriMo. So if there's a line up of volunteers in, say, Jack/Daniel, and I come to a person who says "oh shit, I'd like to volunteer this month, but I've got NaNo, so I really can't!" it's fine.

We'd just come back to them in December and see if their schedule was any better.

[medie]

I, er, um...well, to be honest, the idea of a monthly sign up post? It might be an option for a smaller community, but this one would make it completely unfeasible. As it stands right now, I can open a category (and I do need to screen the volunteered comments. no need to clutter it up for the people who are coming in to rec) and see what kind of activity I've had for that category going back a year or more at a glance.

A general monthly sign up post would mean massive confusion. I wouldn't be able to track anything with any sort of reasonable clarity.

Beyond the yearly clean up of categories, we've debated formats on that before, but there really isn't any neater way of doing it. We're talking two shows (three if we include SGU) which means a metric ton of pairings, characters, and then the genres which stand apart from that and are not pairing specific. The format we use right now has the advantage of being largely familiar to fandom (it's pretty much a standard format for larger rec communities) *and* a lot easier for me to track and to check monthly.

But if you're confused, please ask. We'll do our best to clear up any confusion, but we can't do that if we don't know about it.

[delphia2000.livejournal.com]

I'll chime in too that I watch so I can find good stuff to read. This is just about the only comm I have that lets me know about what's out there. Otherwise, I don't read much and don't know of things to rec. I'm not trying to be unhelpful or uncooperative and I can understand the frustration, but for those of us with limited time, this place is much appreciated.

[medie]

*SQUISH* thanks! And yeah, I know for some people it's just not feasible. I just find it kind of hard to believe that in a community of a thousand, the best we can manage is half a dozen and most of those are regular repeaters from month to month.

But, as I said, we do understand that for some people it's just not possible.

[groovekittie.livejournal.com]

*sigh* I don't even read fic anymore. :( I have all these fic communities on my flist and I just cruise past them. I wish I could help out.

I barely write fic too, and I'm doing nano this year as well, so I feel your pain.

[medie]

*snug* thanks hon

[medie]

ohhhh Jack/Daniel is my favorite category EVER. At least in the sense there are always people there (or almost always) and I don't have to stress or freak or anything. I just nip in, grab the next volunteer, and I'm done. If all the categories worked like that, this would be COMPLETELY stress free.

And I'd appreciate you branching out, but I'm just grateful you're volunteering at all! No need to apologize :)