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

[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.