One per fandom Melee

[zvi]

This is my thought for the Melee. I probably will not do it if I can't run it through the AO3, so this depends on how soon the next code push, with the prompt challenges, is available.

1) Authors submit stories they would like to have remixed. They may submit one each in up to five fandoms. (No crossovers!)

2) I number the list of all of the stories in each fandom. Using a random number generator, I select one story from each of the different fandoms. (I will do this sequentially, so that if one of your stories is picked, I remove you from the lists for all the other fandoms.)

3) I post all of the selected stories as prompts. So, there will be one Stargate Atlantis story in the melee, and one Leverage, and one Revolutionary Girl Utena, and one One Piece, and one RaPS, etc. etc. So that people who want to participate in the melee will select the fandom they want to work in, but then, as with participants in the Duello, they don't choose which author or which individual story.

Poll #7196

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 11

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Sounds like a

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good idea
10 (100.0%)

bad idea
0 (0.0%)

I will participate in this version of the Melee. (0 = Not enough DW points in the world; 100 = I will pay you DW points to do it!)

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Mean: 50.00 Median: 55 Std. Dev 26.08

0		0 (0.0%)
10		2 (20.0%)
20		1 (10.0%)
30		0 (0.0%)
40		0 (0.0%)
50		2 (20.0%)
60		1 (10.0%)
70		2 (20.0%)
80		2 (20.0%)
90		0 (0.0%)
100		0 (0.0%)

Obligatory

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ticky
9 (100.0%)

Comments

[sevendeadlyfun]

I'm confused - possibly because I've been doing homework all morning and have lost all ability to brain.

If I submit an story in the BtVS fandom, it will be the only story from that fandom to make it into the Melee? So I couldn't write in the same fandom I submitted for?

[zvi]

Potentially, it would be the only Buffy story.

Say twelve people were interested in having their Buffy story remixed. One of the twelve submitted Buffy stories would be selected as the only remix story in the Melee. If it was yours, if you wanted to remix a Buffy story for the Melee, you would have to remix your own story. If it wasn't yours, there would still only be one story in the Melee for you to remix in the Buffy fandom.

[seekingferret]

My problems with the last melee were technical more than structural, so my participation depends on not whether the prompts code exists in AO3 but in how good it is. The google docs did not work well for me in making it easy to browse stories for something interesting. In particular, I wanted more information about a story before clicking on it to actually read it.

I think this is at the least an interesting idea, and I like the idea of multiple writers attempting to remix the same story. The last year, though, the Melee was intended to be the rough equivalent of Yuletide Madness. If Melee is going to be operating on the same rough timeline as last year, I'm not sure that this level of restriction is necessarily attractive.

[zvi]

Browsing for the story you want to remix is the opposite of what this challenge is about, though.

The reason for the Melee was not, actually, to ape Yuletide Madness, but to address some of the accessibility problems people have with challenge fests. Specifically, it's no commitment, no deadline, no obligation to another person.

At the time I did this last year, there wasn't an open ended remix challenge. There is now. So, to me, the only reason to continue to do the Melee is if it more closely resembles the Duello, i.e. it restricts your choice about what to remix.

[seekingferret]

Begging pardon, but the reason I and at least one or two other people I've talked to did this challenge is not because it's so restrictive, but because it's a remix challenge like Remix Redux, but with much less onerous eligibility requirements. I mostly write in tiny fandoms, but have a few fics in large media fandoms. The kamikaze restriction is not to me the essence of what the challenge is about and making it less restrictive does not undermine what's important about the challenge. (Also, equally fundamental to the challenge is the greater control authors have over what stories of theirs are remixed. That can be preserved while giving remixers more flexibility than you're proposing.)

I missed the accessibility concerns. I don't think you made it clear that that was the function of the Melee (and if mitigating deadlines was a reason, I don't understand why you didn't open up the Melee until people had submitted their stories last year, rather than giving everyone more time to write a Melee fic), but I think those accessibility concerns are important.

If part of the point is mitigating deadlines, perhaps a greater commitment to posting notifications of new stories added to the collection would be valuable. I honestly have no idea if stories were added to the collection last year after the challenge deadline- as far as I was concerned the challenge ended when the challenge ended.

[zvi]

The reason that I have chosen to organize this remix is because of the restraint aspect. If it works for other people for other reasons, that's cool, but I'm going to evaluate all changes to the challenge by how well they do or don't support that mission.

By a similar token, when I do things for accessibility reasons, I don't slap a metaphorical wheelchair symbol on it, because it may be quite useful for neurotypical or currently able bodied people.

The reasons for having the Melee prompts go up after the Duello deadline submission last year is because getting to nominate a story for the Melee was a privilege reserved to those who had completed their Duello submission on time.

I'll think about committing to posting notifications of new stories this year. For the previous year, the point was moot. No one did post additional stories after Dead Dog.

[seekingferret]

That's fair enough. It's your challenge to run the way you want to. If that's the organizing principle though, I doubt I'm likely to want to participate in the melee. One constrained story is enough for me.

It's unclear to me why it was a privilege for those who completed their Duello submissions on time. The dead dog conversation suggested people were unaware that if they didn't do Duello they could participate in the Melee, and it's my impression that making that a privilege made it look like a game reserved for people participating in the Duello, a sort of round two instead of a parallel challenge run to address accesibility concerns.

The reason to stamp a metaphorical wheelchair symbol on something is to advertise that it provides value to people with accessibility needs. Otherwise those people are unlikely to magically guess that you're being accessible to them. I'd suggest it was moot because it was made to appear irrelevant, because if a community closes up shop until next year it doesn't look like an inviting place to keep posting.

If you don't want to make that commitment, I think I'd be willing to do it. Though it'd be easier if you could subscribe to a collection on AO3 already.

[zvi]

I am aware that the previous Melee structure did not perform well. That's why I'm going to either change it or scrap it.

I disagree with you on the best way to incorporate things for accessibility. I think that you should structure things in ways that are accessible and then let everyone know what's available, because some people will just prefer the accessible option. It's like whether restaurants should label the ingredients in dishes versus whether they should label some food vegetarian option. I think you should just list all the ingredients, and be happy if people who sometimes eat meat sometimes choose the meatfree option because it sounds delicious.

[seekingferret]

As someone who keeps kosher, my problem with your restaurant analogy is that for my needs, reading a complicated list of ingredients and individually matching it to a complicated set of requirements is a lot harder than just having someone check once that it meets those requirements. My nut allergic friends can testify that just because the ingredients list says it doesn't have nuts doesn't mean there won't be hidden nuts. There are times when there's no substitute for actually vouching for and properly advertising accessibility.

[zvi]

If people's cognitive and emotional issues clumped into easily recognized groups, I might feel comfortable saying, "This addresses your specific needs, people with cognitive and emotional issues." As it is, I'm going to implement the best practices of which I'm aware, that fall in line with the challenge I want to run, and make the rules as clear as possible to everyone.

When you run your challenge, feel free to do it differently.

[topaz_eyes]

For the fandoms, will story choices be limited to the eligible/participating fandoms in the main Remix Duello, or can they be from any fandom?

[zvi]

We are experimenting this year with not having eligible/participating fandoms. Instead, people will be required to nominate in multiple fandoms, and encouraged to encourage their co-fandom participants to participate.