Creator reveals!

[chocolateboxmod]

All creators should now be revealed! Congratulations everyone on another successful Chocolate Box.

A reminder to those we had to default at deadline, you are required to complete your assignment before you can sign up next year. If you're not sure whether you were defaulted by us at deadline or not, please email us at chocolateboxmod@gmail.com so we can check.

Now is your opportunity to provide feedback! We will not be commenting (unless we are asked a direct question), but we will be reading!

One of the things that came up during nominations was that some of the relationship tags were, in the eyes of some people, potentially in bad taste. Our default position is (as it has been in all years) that we are not going to be rejecting relationship tags unless the tag includes the nomination of a real life child in a RPF fandom. That said, given the sheer number of complaints we got this year, we thought that we should open this for discussion. Should we continue to allow essentially all nominations? And if the answer is "no", what criteria should we be using?

Talking about nominations, it's looking like the change in numbers worked for the better - we went a lot longer this time before the admin console started to break down, and we didn't get the complete shutdown from the previous round. If you have suggestions for nomination numbers, we're interested to hear them.

Finally, we remind you all that anon comments are screened by default, but will be unscreened if you include your AO3 name.

Comments

[florianschild]

Thank you for running such a great exchange! I really enjoyed the whole experience. :)

I do have some feedback on nominations numbers: Currently, someone can nominate a fandom with just one pairing and then go on to offer that one pairing only, even though the offer form on A03 is actually requiring a minimum of two relationships for each offer. I was able to get around this by doing bucket offers (which I'm assuming others had to do? There were MANY approved fandoms with just one pairing nominated) but it's really strange to be creating an offer and get an AO3 error that says you HAVE to offer two relationships where there literally are not two available in the tagset.

Another issue that this could cause: someone could nominate a fandom with a single relationship, and assume that they will be able to create an offer with just that ship. However, if someone later nominated a bunch of other ships in that fandom that are all outside the first writer's wheelhouse (possibly even a legit squick/DNW for that writer) then they can no longer offer in that fandom at all, because their one pairing (which would have been completely legit and allowed if no other nominations had been submitted) is suddenly not enough and they have to pick of the squicky ships or drop than fandom.

I hope I'm explaining this clearly enough? I'm not sure what the best solution would be. Maybe requiring at least two relationships in any nomination. I know the mods don't want to go back to allowing single relationships in offers, so maybe that would be the next best option?

Thanks again!

[(Anonymous)]

For the fandoms with one ship tag in the tagset, you just offer "any", it means you're offering one ship but you won't get an error message.

(nova)

[florianschild]

Yeah, I do understand that. I think I may have messed up the terminology between offering "Any" and bucket offers, but what you described is what I eventually figured out. :)

I'm just suggesting that the process or requirements could potentially be improved. For me, it wasn't clear until I filled out the form and got a bunch of error messages and had to go back and redo it. I eventually figured it out, but I definitely had a "huh??" moment, since I was getting errors for not offering two pairings when there was only one available.

[meretricula]

Not A Mod, but in the situation where you have to offer two things out of a set of one (which is, as you say, not uncommon) you just offer "Any". "Any" of a set of one is just the one thing. the second situation is just a risk you take if you only want to write one ship (or, in a character-matching exchange, one character) -- you never know what someone else might nominate and request!

[florianschild]

Yeah, I might be mixing up the terminology between bucket offers and offering "Any", but I did eventually do what you're describing. It just seems like a workaround that might cause confusion so I figured I'd bring it up. I think it's worth considering a requirement to include at least two ships per fandom in the nominations process.

[meretricula]

I see what you're saying, but that's the procedure for literally every AO3 exchange that runs on matching where there's a minimum for offers. the mods could definitely link to the signup tutorial the yuletide mods do every year if there are people who are confused, but I don't think it would make sense to change the nomination rules. the tagset's already huge -- I can't imagine we want to start requiring that people add relationships that they don't even want to request!

[jain]

Another issue that this could cause: someone could nominate a fandom with a single relationship, and assume that they will be able to create an offer with just that ship. However, if someone later nominated a bunch of other ships in that fandom that are all outside the first writer's wheelhouse (possibly even a legit squick/DNW for that writer) then they can no longer offer in that fandom at all

As someone who nominates/requests/offers a lot of single relationships, I don't think this is an issue worth stressing over. The tagset is visible and continually updated throughout the nominations period. Anyone who's concerned about additional ships being added to their single relationship fandoms can keep an eye on the tagset and add ships to their own noms as necessary.

Alternatively, some people choose to nominate both the romantic and platonic versions of their ship from the beginning, just to be safe. Or they nominate their OTP and an unrelated ship they can tolerate, despite the fact that it's not required by the signup form.

Or they do as I typically do, which is to drop certain fandoms from my offers if I really want to avoid offering my NOTPs. Chocolate Box has a huge number of nominated fandoms each year, and it's no big deal for me to drop some of my fandoms from my offers and to add others, if that's what suits me best in the end.

tl;dr; The current system gives participants more flexibility while still providing them with plenty of options to avoid their NOTPs. It also, as mentioned in an above comment, helps keep the tagset to a more manageable size, which is really important for AO3 exchanges.