2017 KuroFai Olympics: Moderator Team!

[cloverfield]

Guys, gals and nonbinary pals, please put your hands together for the 2017 KuroFai Olympics Moderator Team:

flowerspeaks , animangod , blue_phoenix_tears , aquarius_galuxy , and mikkeneko !

Now, these lovely folks have volunteered to be our team of friendly moderators and get this fantastic fic event off and running. I'm going to sign off and leave you all in the capable hands of our brave mods here, so please direct any enquiries towards them - either by leaving a comment on this post with your question, or sending them a message - and I am sure they'll get back to you as soon as possible!

Just please keep in mind it may take a little while for our mods to get themselves organised; they need time to plan before the event can get started, and I'm sure we all know that patience is a virtue.

Mods, if you would be so kind to do a quick little intro about yourselves in the comments down below, I'm sure that would be really appreciated!

Thanks everyone who volunteered, and thank you all for being so excited about the 2017 KuroFai Olympics!

Comments

[mikkeneko]

Hello Mods,

If everyone is tracking this post, then perhaps we can use it as a general "mod chat" post going forward.

Here are the next few things for the Olympics that need to be done:

-Someone to track the people signing up on the Author Sign-up page, keeping a tally of how many people prefer Phoenix and how many Dragon and how many are flexible, and balancing the teams with those lists

-Someone to hash out a list of prompts (we can have a discussion here if we want to brainstorm the prompt themeing)

-If possible, someone to track down art we can use for header images (optional, but desired)

Please reply to the thread if you can pick up one of these tasks!

[animangod]

I'm no good for tracking down art but I can do any of the other tracking and prompt generating.

[mikkeneko]

Awesome. I would suggest using Google Sheets to track people, and then you can share the sheet as needed. :)

[animangod]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1843JxEqMw2oAWvHQmrugxBhNAMnFJT7ggkuvnHyndaM/edit?usp=drivesdk

Set it so anyone with the link can edit it

[mikkeneko]

Awesome. Looks like we just hit 7 people per team today, which just happens to be the day signups closed anyway. :) I've edited the author sign-up page to Closed.

[animangod]

And for the Prompts, same settings.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aQ2B5VTmvNad9gOd65G19ScgqqKk1Dl8Y2XzbYrHibA/edit?usp=drivesdk

[flowerspeaks]

I'll see tonight if I could find some art for us, when do we need it by? I might have to commission someone

[mikkeneko]

It would be nice to have it by friday, so we could start adding it to headers and such; but if that's not possible we only really need it by the first week of august when people start posting!

[flowerspeaks]

I reached out to an artist and am waiting for a reply. Let me know what else I can do in the wait time!

[flowerspeaks]

Just to keep you updated, I do have some art coming in! I saw the line art and it looks great! All that is left is for them to be colored!

But once I have the final pieces I have no idea what to do with them....I have no idea to how to format or edit them into headers for this site.

But once they are done I will let y'all know!

[mikkeneko]

Once it's done, post it somewhere and link it here, and we'll figure out where to go from there. :)

[blue_phoenix_tears]

If you need these or anything else to be edited (team names etc.) I can help out.

[blue_phoenix_tears]

I'll try to come up with prompts too or at least I can help pick them^^

[flowerspeaks]

So I have noticed some people mention on dw and on tumblr that a 2 week writing period may be too short, is it possible to maybe extend it for a week more?

[mikkeneko]

As a veteran of many Olympics past, I'll weigh in with my observations from experience here:

1) Two weeks should be long enough. The original Olympics period was only one week, and that was long enough as well. The majority of Olympics writers in every Olympics have been able to make the deadline. Honestly, I used to run Iron Fic events, and for the authors in those events, one *hour* was enough. It's not about how much time is really, truly needed to write; it's about managing expectations and self-discipline. Those are part of the challenge -- and the fun -- of the event.

The caveat of course is that two weeks will be enough *if* the author picks and devises a story short enough to be written in that time according to their own writing speed. Some people *cough Reikah cough* can write 22k words in twelve hours. Others might need the entire week to write 1000 words. That is why there is no minimum word limit. Authors should pick a word target that they can meet within the deadline.

Conversely, it's been my experience -- both my direct personal experience and my observation of others -- that longer deadlines do not actually translate to more time. Instead, they just allow the authors to put off their actual writing time until the end. Shorter deadlines are more successful at keeping writers on task, because the deadline is more imminent. Longer writing periods also encourage writers to come up with longer, more complex story ideas, which a) make it even more difficult to finish on time and b) make it more difficult for the readers to get through all the stories in the voting period. We do not want that; thus shorter stories are encouraged. If a writer is inspired by an idea which would be better suited to a long epic, that's fantastic! -- but maybe better tackled over a longer period of time, at their own pace.

2) Two weeks is technically only the timespan given to the unlucky soul that has to post on the first day; the luckiest writer will have a full three weeks to finish, and we compile the schedule to accomodate (where possible) people who say they need more time.

3) I have never, ever participated in an Olympics where the writing deadline was not extended at least once. But for the reasons described in point 1, it's better not to give the writers that expectation up front.