fandom5k

Creators are revealed! Thank you, again, to all our participants. The collection will remain open for late gifts, including those for pinch hitters, and of course you can continue to read and comment at your leisure!

Please remember that if you defaulted or were defaulted by us on a main assignment after the end of the check-in period, your makeup assignment for participation in 2023 is your assignment from this year. After that point, you can choose to complete a full-length treat or pinch hit instead.

Before we close the book on the 2022 round, we have two items to address. One is a clarification to our rules and expectations, and the other is a (hopefully welcome) change to our rules for the 2023 round.

Rules Clarification

This is a plea and a reminder that, aside from our other rules, participants should not:

• post a placeholder work that could not go live as a complete gift in its current state
• disguise an inappropriate gift so it appears to be a complete gift at the deadline
• edit a gift after the deadline so it no longer fulfills the requirements
• drop out of contact with us while we are working with them to resolve an urgent problem
• delete their posted work after the deadline or remove it from the exchange without mod permission.

This isn’t targeted at any one person. All these things have happened independently this year, and all of them have happened in previous years. Often, we all get lucky, and things work out smoothly. (Aside from some elevated levels of mod anxiety behind the scenes.) Accidental problems can come up, too, but please help us avoid the preventable ones.

In turn, our commitment as mods includes the following:

• When reasonable and on a case-by-case basis, we will give extensions to participants who request them before the deadline
• We will not ask pinch hit recipients to add fandoms or tags to their requests (though we are happy to add them if the recipient genuinely wants to and contacts us themselves)
• We will not ask recipients to accept gifts that don’t meet the requirements of the exchange
• The exchange will go live only when everyone who checks in and turns in their assignment on time has a gift

We think these expectations on both sides are reasonable and fair! We also understand if you don’t feel they’ll result in a fun exchange experience for you personally. We’ll repost this next year before signups to make sure we’re all on the same page.

Rule Change for 2023

Next, we plan to change the number of tags that are required or allowed for each participant.

In 2023, signups will require a minimum of 3 requested fandoms and 4 offered fandoms. We will also be increasing the number of fandoms and characters/relationships that each person can nominate.

Thank you all once again, and we look forward to seeing you next year.

Hey, everyone! Hope you’re as excited about this as we are. Nominations open on 7 February, just a couple of weeks away.

Before we kick things off, here’s a quick summary of how the exchange will work. We’ll give more information on each step of the process later on.

Questions can be left in the comments or sent to fandom5kmod@gmail.com.

Tags for Matching:

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Genre:

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Defaults and Mandatory Check-In:

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Explanations and Feedback:

Most of these decisions were made because 5,000 words is a big commitment, and we’re guaranteeing a story of that length for everyone who fulfills their assignment. We want to keep initial pinch hits low and, in the event of defaults, give pinch hitters more options to choose from.

To do that, we could either increase the number of fandoms required or the number of character/relationship tags per fandom. We’ve decided to try a slightly higher number of fandoms but only require one character/relationship tag in each. We’ve also instituted the mandatory check-in period to give pinch hitters as much time as possible.

We’ll see how the first round works with these rules, and then we’ll consider changing things up for the next round based on how smoothly this goes and on your feedback. Keep an eye out for a feedback post after reveals!

Note that we’re still finalizing the list of genre tags, though, so please review that section and leave a comment if you have suggestions!