Nominations open!

[ishie]

Nominations are now open on AO3!

We're so excited for this year's exchange, we're getting started a little early: you will have until July 15 @ 11:59 PM PDT to nominate up to 8 fandoms you might want to request or offer for Crossovering. (What time is that for me?)


Don't worry, we'll give warnings here and on Tumblr multiple times before we close nominations, and we'll make sure everyone has plenty of time to get them in.

Now, here's how it works:

• If you've done nominations for Yuletide or another exchange, this will be very familiar. You'll go here under your AO3 account and select up to 8 fandoms.
• If the Archive provides you with a fandom tag while you're typing, please use that. It will make the process run much more smoothly.
• Once you've filled all of the slots, just click on submit at the bottom of the page and you're done! (Of course, you aren't required to use all 8 slots.)
• For fandoms with multiple continuities, you have the option of using the umbrella fandom tag (Fandom X - All Media Types, or Fandom Y and related fandoms, for example), or nominating each continuity separately (Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy VIII, &c.). Please check in at the Brainstorming Post to see if you have any overlap with another participant. 
• Nominating fandoms is not a commitment to participate in the exchange itself! We'd love to have you, but if you just want to make sure the bases are covered for friends or to make sure there is something you're interested in if you do sign up, go right ahead! No one can write it or request it if it isn't nominated.
• If you're still unsure about how the exchange works, make sure you take a look at our FAQ page.
• If you need to let the mods know information about your fandom that will help it get approved or tagged properly, please leave that info in the comments so we can refer to it when we review nominations. Any other questions or comments or discussion of nominations can take place here as well.

As always, if you have any questions or need any assistance, do not hesitate to ask! Happy Nominating! 

Comments

[ishie]

The tagset won't be visible before nominations close. But, since we are no longer requiring 2+ nominations, we anticipate that nearly all nominated fandoms will be accepted. If you're concerned about a fandom you want to request or write being included, people have been discussing what they're nominating in the brainstorming post as well as here.

[(Anonymous)]

I find this to be a really disappointing and needlessly complicated choice. Rather than allow us to check what's been approved in one location we have to check for new comments across two posts and wonder about what people who don't bother commenting have done? I can't think of a single exchange I've seen in the last year that hid nominations.

I was excited to try this exchange this year but I don't think I'll be participating if you're deliberately making it harder to maximize request and offer options.

[weasleytook]

Yuletide? I'm sorry, I don't have a list of other exchanges that might also do it or have time to figure out which ones do or don't, but I know Yuletide doesn't and they are a lot bigger exchange than we are.

It's not about us "deliberately" trying to make things harder. In fact, we deliberately made rules changes to try to make things easier for people. However, while we are accepting all nominated fandoms (unlike previous years where we capped them off), we do want to keep the tagset at a reasonable size. Making the tagset visible during nominations means people may nominate extra fandoms that eventually won't get used. We also feel the 8 nominations spot we give each AO3 account is more than enough to get plenty of your wanted fandoms in, along with what others may be nominating. (Also, we weren't born yesterday, we know people have ways of making more than 8 nominations.) So if we can do ONE thing to help keep the tagset down, then we'll do it, especially when we've opened the process up even further this year.

Also, as we do not generally approve fandoms until the end of nominations (so we aren't double approving fandoms under slightly different tags or non-canonical tags), there wouldn't be much point in making the tagset visible this early anyway.

If that keeps you away from the exchange, then that's unfortunate. As evidenced by our rules and format changes this year, we always listen to the feedback of our community. However, we cannot change everything to suit everyone's desires nor can we please 100% of the people. We hope you do participate, but if not, thank you for your input. :)

[meatball42.livejournal.com]

Not to beat the dead horse, but I'm really confused here. I also can't think of a single other exchange that has blocked out the tags (except for one which did so on accident, then corrected it), so I've been rereading your comments trying and failing to understand the motivation.

It sounds like you're trying to keep the total number of fandoms down by making it so that multiple people nominate the same fandom, thus using up one of their nomination slots. Considering the popularity of certain fandoms, a significant number of nominations would, in that case, be left out. I guess it works, I just think it seems kind of underhanded?

I'm also not entirely sure what the problem is with a large tagset in the first place. Does having a fandom that ends up not being requested a bad thing? Is this an exchange where the mods sort assignments manually, rather than using AO3's algorithm?

Also unsure why you wouldn't approve nominations as you go, that seems like it's just making more work for yourself all at once, and not necessarily more conducive to preventing errors, and also means you can't query the nominators for confusing things as you go, thus slowing down the fest at the end of noms. If this process has worked for you in the past, more power to you, I've just never seen this before so it kind of seems like an excuse to keep the tagset not visible.

This one's probably just me being ignorant, but I don't know what you mean about people having ways of getting more nominations in? A) how would that even work, and B) again, is more nominations a bad thing for some reason?

Last confusion, if you're keeping the tagset hidden, then why are you recommending people to use the brainstorming post? Isn't that the exact same thing, just less efficient? Where people can post what they've nommed so other people don't duplicate?

[meatball42.livejournal.com]

I hope this doesn't come across as sounding mean, sorry if it does, I'm just thinking about doing a fest of my own next year so I'm doing a lot of thinking about the processes currently. Love this fest and super grateful for all the work you guys do!

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah I want to browse the fandoms and tagset and let it prompt ideas for what I can nominate myself.

I guess I should take this as a sign I already have enough exchanges to focus on. :/