More new posts over on LJ

[graycardinal]

A brief flurry of activity from the new mods over at both yuletide_admin and yuletide, with a new schedule and a (now in flux) new set of nomination protocols in admin, and a new fandom-promotion post in the member comm.

FWIW, I am not particularly up in arms over the now-in-review (and I suspect almost certain to be dropped) proposal to require seconding of nominations; I think this was a classic example of getting so excited by the perceived technical advantages that the philosophical implications were totally overlooked. [I am also mildly amused, because I more or less predicted the 'tag bloat" phenomenon two years ago when the nomination process was first tightened....]

Comments

[elf]

Two noms is a disaster as Yuletide currently stands. If it were rearranged so people could see what's been nominated (and accepted), it could work, but the idea that you could nominate 4 fandoms and have all of them rejected for being too small... ugh. (I am ignoring the "but there's a spreadsheet!" option. Last 2 years, I haven't participated in the spreadsheet because LJ's coding problems made it almost impossible for me to reply.)

If they implement "must have 2 noms," Yuletide is quickly going to switch from "tiny fandoms, including that book you loved in childhood and that weird commercial you think deserves a backstory," to "fairly small fandoms, with a lot of spinoffs of larger fandoms." (I suppose it's my chance to see lots of DC comics in Yuletide.)

Either way, I suppose I won't fret; Ghost Soup is a shoe-in.

[graycardinal]

I will be astonished if the "must have two noms" thing flies after the initial (and entirely reasonable) outcry against it -- not least given that they were telling folks two years ago that we should nominate our fandoms-of-heart despite smallness/obscurity.

The "tag bloat" problem is, I think, essentially unfixable; it's less a problem of obscurity than it is a function of just how big Yuletide has grown. There will always be way more fandoms in play than can possibly be used; it's inherent in the model. It is also, to some extent, a function of how long Yuletide has been around; as the veteran players continue to participate, they are of some necessity looking around for increasingly more obscure fandoms to play in.

[elf]

The only real fix to tag bloat is to restrict people from nominating fandoms that don't already have tags (whether that's outlawing them entirely, or keeping the number down) and that really isn't going to work.

Any "must have multiple noms" rule would effectively kill Yuletide; whatever came of it wouldn't feel like the same fest at all. One of the joys of YT has been *not* having to justify the tiny fandoms of your heart. Setting aside all the issues with coordinating with someone else before the fest, cutting in half or lower the number of available fandoms for stories, and the clusterfuck of character nominations with the reduced fandoms (8 characters in every tiny fandom is not going to make it easy to say "any" when offering bucket lists)... Requiring a second nom means making it a team effort, whether or not you know your other team member(s). It changes the whole flavor of participation.

It could make things simpler--but the fandoms we lose will not be M*A*S*H* or Calvin & Hobbes (both awesome Yuletide fandoms), but "Octopus Stole My Camera" and "Ode to Billie Joe."

I could cope with the two-noms thing. (Although I expect they're going to scrap it; there's not time to come up with a reasonable substitute. Maybe having it and allowing 6 noms would work; people wouldn't mind teaming up with a friend to offer 3 fandoms they each love. But that wouldn't reduce the tags, which was the problem.) My One True Yuletide Fandom is a shoe-in, and I could honestly cope with not nominating anything else for myself and just aiding 3 other people's noms. But not everyone is going to feel that way; I'm severely polyfannish and there isn't an Ultimate Fandom Of My Heart that I'd worry about losing.

[kabal42]

I think you may well be right about the oversight of the more philosophical implications of this new (probably already dead) rule. We'll see what happens. As it is now, 'tag bloat' definitely is inevitable. Taking nominations off-site is probably the only way to avoid, but that would highly complicate everything.