A hypothetical question for you all....

[corilannam]

Just because I'm really curious as to what kind of reaction this would get in various parts of greater fandom....

A quick poll --  Let's say....

You belong to a hypothetical LJ fan fiction community of approximately 200 people, which if left to its own devices would get between 1-3 posts a day including stories and chapters of WIPs.  There are several different pairings represented (this may or may not be relevant, depending on your opinion on how fan fiction should be read).

The moderator implements a courtesy "suggestion" which requires that only one story or part of a story can be posted on the community each day.  If one author posts something, everyone else has to wait for the next day in order to give the first author her "moment in the sun" and to keep readers from being overwhelmed by too many stories.  This limit is not enforced except through peer pressure and occasional pointed reminders from the moderator.

My questions, based on your previous individual experiences with fan fiction communities:

1) Have you seen this kind of thing in fiction communities before?

2) Are these people on crack, or is this a reasonable and considerate means of increasing feedback, promoting community, and helping the readers?

I'd make this into a proper LJ poll, but my account ran out while I was off being a hermit last month.  Oops.  But if this goes well, I'll try a proper poll on OTP reading tomorrow.  Whee!

Comments

[minnaleigh.livejournal.com]

1) I don't hang out in fiction communities so I can't answer that.

2) I vote CRACK! That seems totally insane to me.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes! Crack! Thank you! The logic of it just completely escapes me!

[slb44.livejournal.com]

1) Never heard of anything like this in any of the fic communities I hang out in and there are quite a few.

2) I'd say crack or megalomania. Power can be a terrible thing in the wrong hands, as we all know. ;-)

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Probably mostly crack, since I think this particular mod is mostly well-meaning. She just needs to lay off the pipe for a bit.

[musesfool.livejournal.com]

1. I have never heard of that at all. Even comms devoted to ficathons where the fic is posted in batches have more than one story posted per day, though there are sometimes hours between postings (see merry_smutmas).

2. They are on crack.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, ficathon organization is one thing, and I can understand wanting to do it that way, but I've never seen one that extreme, either. And of course, the very point of a ficathon is to produce a whole lot of fiction in a short amount of time....

[prillalar]

1. I have never seen this sort of thing before.

2. Crack. And poor judgement. This will only make people resentful and cranky. It seems *way* too controlling for a comm that small and quiet.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

It definitely makes me cranky.

And that's the best icon ever.

[thalia]

(1) No.

(2) On crack. (a) Practically speaking, it's just ridiculous--it gives priority to whoever happens to be online whenever the moderator decides the "day" starts. (b) If someone decides to post a story one chapter a day, if their timing is good, it means that everyone else in the community has to wait until that story is finished before they can post at all, which is completely unfair to the other authors.

Now, I can see the point of limiting each writer to one story post per day, but the whole community? Insane.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, those are all excellent points. And people in this community love to post multi-part stories in daily increments. Which is nice, but either they dominate the community for days or even weeks, or their flow gets interrupted, which isn't fair to them, either.

It's all just very silly.

[sidewinder.livejournal.com]

1. No.

2. No just on crack, but that's just plain batshit and utterly impractical.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

I agree completely. But I was starting to think I was the crazy one, after getting whapped on the head enough times with the rationales.

[marycrawford.livejournal.com]

1) New to me, too.
2) Of course they can run their comm however they want...but yeah. Crack. The idea that less stories a day means more feedback for each author is completely wrongheaded.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The people who get less feedback are still going to get less feedback. You might get more readers if you're the only game in town for the day, but that's not going to translate into more feedback. The same people will comment who were going to comment anyway.

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

1) Never seen it - but if I did, I would'nt be seeing it for long.

2) Not only are they on crack, but it's the bad stuff - power has gone to they tiny haids.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

I think they really believe it's the best thing for the community, and they don't understand why anyone would have a problem with it unless they were mean bitches. And mostly, they just don't understand that they're... just wrong!

[maygra.livejournal.com]

1) never heard of it.

2) crack. Although that may be giving them too much of an excuse.

I think I'd be backing away from that comm quickly.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

I wish I could, but it's the only game in town for this fandom. It's not badly meant, it's just... well, stupid.

[aeshna_uk]

1) Never heard of that approach before!

2) Crack. Definitely. Have these people never heard of timezones?

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the timezone issue has definitely been raised, since there are writers from all over the world in this community, and it's already the next day for one person when it's still afternoon for another. It was pretty much just handwaved away in a rather embarrassing display of US-centrism. *sigh*

[movies-michelle.livejournal.com]

Cracky, definitely cracky. I've not seen something like that before, either. I don't understand how this would generate any sense of community OR fiction. I mean, if the point is to give the author a place in the sun--isn't that what the author's own lj is for?

Oh, wait, right. We're all special.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, we are all unique snowflakes who deserve our time in the sun... wait. Doesn't that mean we're going to end up evaporating? Shoot.

[lanchid.livejournal.com]

1) Never heard of it.

2) Horse-hockey. Utter crap. Crack-tastic. Stupid to boot. ::nods firmly::

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

All excellent, excellent ways to describe it. *nods back*

[jacquez.livejournal.com]

That...seems cracktastic to me. 1-3 posts a day is not excessive and won't drown out anyone's posts, is the first thing, and second thing, it's likely to mean lots of unpleasant collisions ("I was going to post the last chapter of my story, but someone else just posted! This has happened three days in a row! I'm never going to be able to finish this damn thing!"). And I won't even go into the time-zone issues.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the timezone issues are a bitch, and the moderator has never given any guidelines on how we're expected to deal with that. And it can't help but cause way too much paranoia and frustration in the long run. Not to mention authors just hurriedly throwing their stories up, because they're afraid if they take the time to look it over one more time, they're going to miss their posting window.

[kimberlite.livejournal.com]

What everyone else said. *rolls eyes*

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

*rolls eyes along with you*

[reginagiraffe]

1) Nope.
2) Crack. And a really good way to drive people away.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, seriously. They're just lucky there aren't any other communities, or they'd have lost half their writing populace by now.

[semielliptical]

1) No. 2) Crack.

Sometimes I wish mods had to pass some kind of "reasonable person" test before starting or taking over a community. Or at least understand that asking for input from members before imposing crazy new rules would be best for the community in the long run.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that be nice? A logic test or something, at the very least, to make sure they understand the basic concepts of cause and effect.

And the problem is, there's a vocal group of members who love this rule, because they want to make sure they get the maximum amount of attention and they think this will solve their lack of feedback problems. They are, of course, also stupid.

[sithdragn.livejournal.com]

If one author posts something, everyone else has to wait for the next day in order to give the first author her "moment in the sun" and to keep readers from being overwhelmed by too many stories.

Please tell me this is a My Little Pony fan fiction community. Just please don't tell me why you're there.

Crack. The good shit.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

*dies*

Oh, you rock. I needed that.

And at least they'd have an excuse then! (though I wouldn't)

[improperlydone.livejournal.com]

I know of which community you speak of and I think it's so childish.

I belong to a NUMBER of fiction communities and believe me, there's nothing abuot 'giving the author their time to shine' bullshit. This is not kindergarten. This is adults (hopefully) participating and sharing fiction online.

So what if I post and then you post. Are you saying that the reader is either 1) too stupid or 2) too overwhelmed where they have to make the monumental decision of which story am I going to read?

Please... I think it's stupid as all hell and very ridiculous. And I, as a reader and writer, do not appreciate to be treated with such stupid kid gloves.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured you'd see through the "hypothetical" smokescreen. *g*

And yes! That's exactly what's bothering me. We're being treated like small children who all need to be praised equally and kept in line. Thank you, but I graduated from pre-school quite a few years ago.

And yeah, it cracks me up when some of them complain that as a reader, they find two stories being posted in a day to be just too overwhelming to cope with. How on earth they manage to clothe and feed themselves every day, I do not know.

[meyerlemon.livejournal.com]

1) No.
2) That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you! It's just *stupid*. And their failure to understand that is making me *crazy*.

[batagur.livejournal.com]

1. That kinda thing is new to me.

2. The crack pipe is wearing thin over there. People read what they want to read. It's silly to put a limitation on postings like that. That will only cause resentment.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah. The idea that we should all be reading every single thing posted, and that the community must be regulated in such a way as to make that happen, just shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how fandom works. So silly.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

1) Never seen any such thing.

2) It sounds well-intentioned, but ultimately destructive, so I vote for "on crack."

-J

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

It is really very well-intentioned. As many narcotics as I'm implying they're on, it's a sincere effort to make the community a happy place.

But it's just... dumb.

[margueritem.livejournal.com]

1) I've never seen such a thing.

2) Soooo much crack, they'll probably need rehab soon. ;)

3 stories per day isn't that much. And if the community is multi-pairing, it means (possibly) having the reader wait for days until their preferred showing shows up. And if you're a writer, who wants to wait days before you can post your story?

I'm an avid fanfic reader. I don't like to wait for my stories. And such a "suggestion" wouldn't change the fact that of 100 readers, maybe 10 will comment: so their moment in the sun thing might not work.

*adds her 0.02$CAN*

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and there are a *lot* of pairings on this community. Of which I only read one. But of course, that's another heated topic, since only reading one pairing is supposedly also hurtful to the community....

And I definitely think that the same people will comment or not that were going to do it anyway. So what's the point in making us wait to do so?

[ndannais.livejournal.com]

Crack. Lots and lots of crack. That makes no sense. I'm not even going to say the logic is faulty, because that would mean there was logic there. And there isn't.

I want some delusional crack like that.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it be nice? See, I think that would solve all the problems -- if they'd just pass around the crack pipe and share, we'd all be one happy family!

[jdgreybraid.livejournal.com]

Chiming in late, but with a hearty:

Mahhhnnn...

JD Greybraid

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hear ya!

[mzcalypso.livejournal.com]

I watched the best fanfic list I'd ever been on strangle itself with nicey-nice regulations, and got thrown off as a moderator for suggesting they might be making a mistake... scuse me, telling someone HOW to ask for feedback? Instructing the ignorant on how feedback must be phrased? So I took my ideas elsewhere... last time I looked, my own list had more posts in one month than the other list had in the previous year.

You can't order people to give feedback, either. If you tell everybody to SHUT UP UNLESS YOU WANT TO SAY SOMETHING NICE ABOUT SUZY Q's STORY, what you will get... is people shutting up. When a story doesn't deserve praise and a reader is too kind to express an unwanted criticism (it seems even concrit is now called "flaming," in many circles) you get a great staring silence, which is a kind of feedback in itself.

CREATIVITY CAN'T BE REGIMENTED. WTF is wrong with more than one post? When ideas spark, you get the hell out of the way.

I don't know what community you're talking about, and I'm glad.

[marzilla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I really don't get that. You just can't make people read, write, or comment exactly the way you think they should. And when you do manage to regulate that, you end up with a very boring place.

There's a fine line between requesting that people observe basic courtesy and politeness with each other and stifling all conversation because people are too afraid of giving offense to actually post anything.