Creator reveals/feedback post

[worldbuildingmod]

The collection is no longer anonymous, and is also closed for posting of new works.

Huge thanks to everyone who has helped make this round such a success; I am absolutely thrilled by the fact that (with the addition of a few late treats) we have hit the 100 works mark.

As in previous years, do feel free to leave any and all feedback you may have about the exchange here. This round I do have a few specific areas, mostly related to the tag set, that I'd be particularly keen to hear participants' thoughts on:

Splitting up Original Works

In Round 3, "Original Work" was (as it had been in previous years) one fandom in the tag set, but I split it on the spreadsheet version for readability reasons, guided by the disambiguations nominators had provided. This year, some nominators ran with that general idea and nominated subfandom tags to the tag set itself; after further discussion revealed that this was a popular idea, this was implemented across the board. How successful (or not) do people feel this was? Is it something that you would want to see repeated? Is there a way to avoid getting bogged down in genre definition debates? (I genuinely loathe genre definition debates. Also, please note that "Well, if everyone just agreed that my definitions are the right ones it would all be fine" isn't a solution that appeals to me, at all.)

Allowing Group/Any nominations

The general rule to date has been that, beyond "Any or No Characters" and "Original Character(s)" (including "Original [Specific Type of] Character(s)", the character tag slots are for characters rather than groups. My main reason for this has been that the tag set is complex enough already without asking people to deal with using things like "group: A/B" in the character slot, but this year in particular there seemed to be quite some demand for this, and (related at least in my mind) "Any [Type of Character]" tags, which to me are "your choice from group: A & B & C & D & ...". I can definitely see an argument in favour of this related to improving the quality of matching, which has always been the driving force behind the way the tag set is structured. I also have a lingering feeling in the back of my mind that I've been nowhere near as consistent about this, both within and between rounds, as I would like to pretend to myself, so it might be better to embrace it fully rather than let it continue to be a grey area. (On which point, whatever decision I end up making, I will definitely make the guidelines post clearer on all this in future.)

If you have strong feelings either for or against such nominations being allowed, please let me know. (Follow up question: if you're in favour, do you think you would want more slots?)

Tag set efficiency

For a number of reasons, some within my control and others very much not, I found the tag set process (which has, in all honesty, always been my least favourite part) particularly frustrating this year. I think I can make a lot of difference to this by adjusting the scheduling so that I don't put too much pressure on myself - expect to see a significantly longer gap between the close of nominations and the opening of sign ups next round, possibly even a Yuletide-style no-approvals-until-noms-are-closed approach - and I'm also optimistic that AO3's Elastisearch upgrade will mean that overall server load has decreased so that the tag set script will cope better. However, I'm also actively considering ways to reduce the workload associated with it. The simplest of these would be stop making the spreadsheet - while I tend to think it's useful, it's clearly not essential, since nearly half of this round's participants signed up before I had managed to make it live. On the other hand, making it does help me catch tag set errors better than any other method.

Another idea I've been toying with is adapting Trick or Treat's "Eternal Tagset" concept and creating a new tag set that's a superset of all tags used in WBEx to date, to which new nominations could be added each year, but with no need to renominate things that have already been through the process. Creating this in the first place would be quite a lot of work, and there'd probably be some decisions to make along the way about how to combine (or not) similar-but-not-identical tags, but, at least theoretically, I could tinker with it slowly over the next nine months.

However, the biggest drain on my time during nominations is definitely dealing with tags that have not been nominated correctly. Many of you bend over backwards to accommodate my finicky desires for "Any or No Characters" without parentheses but "Original Character(s)" with, and so on, and I'm hugely grateful, but there are always a number of nominators who I'm uncertain have even glanced momentarily at the guidelines. One idea I've had is that it might be worth writing a much more step-by-step "how to nominate for worldbuildingex" post to go alongside the main opening-of-nominations one, with screenshots of how to format tags so that they will be approved easily, and also of some of the other types of nominations that I see most often that will never be approved, or require me to do significant adjustments on the back end. (Another thought I've had on at least some occasions is that I should be much less patient with nominations that linger without being fixed by the nominator after they've being raised in a queries post, and reject them once 48 hrs has passed.)

Any thoughts on the above, or suggestions for other ways to reduce the tag set workload, very welcome in the comments.

Comments

[isis]

Any [Specific Type of Character] would make sense, along with Original [Specific Type of Character]. I would also like to see Any Character(s) and No Character(s) separated, perhaps, since I can think of meta using no character I'd like to write/request but might not want to allow any character from canon to be central. With these things I think allowing more characters would make sense.

I do not want to see pairings (either / or &) in the tagset, as I think matching should emphasize worldbuilding, and adding this might really complicate things! I am totally onboard with pairing preferences in optional details.

Also, I am happy to help if you want a co-mod specifically for tagset approval and not for any other aspect of the exchange, a la Yuletide tagmodding.

I had a great time this year - thanks again for running this exchange!

[narya_flame]

Thank you for all your hard work! This is such a great exchange.

I would honestly prefer not to allow relationships in the tag set; I *love* that this exchange isn't focused on the relationship between two or more characters, and I think the current system keeps the focus nicely on the world/setting as character, which I'd always understood to be the purpose of the event. There are plenty of other fests and swaps out there which cater to relationships, gen or shippy.

I have no strong feelings on how you handle the tags; my view here is do what makes your life easiest. An eternal tag set could be fun but not if it creates undue stress for you.

[greerwatson]

One of the things that has made this exchange so rewarding has been the focus on worldbuilding. I fear that this might shift if matching were done on pairings. As a writer, I want my concern to be on the worldbuilding tags my recip has requested, not trying to shoehorn in a romantic encounter. There are other exchanges for that.

So my vote is to stick to character matching.

If you are intrigued by the "eternal tag set" idea, the ToT mod asked for help from volunteers. Quite a few people did their bit to add past nominations to the set; and it might make the job easier for you.

[bunn]

I am also instinctively against the group tag thing, it's nice to really focus on worldbuilding rather than character interactions in the matching.

Thanks for running this again, I had a great time.

[seal_nonnie]

Thank you so much for modding this exchange! It's my favorite of the year. I think splitting up original works worked really well this exchange, and an eternal tagset would be very useful. I'm pretty ambivalent on groups in the tagset; & groupings feel more in the spirit of the exchange than / pairings.

[sheliak]

I would be tentatively in favor of "Any [category]" noms, but am against having relationship noms.

[crantz]

Chiming in as also not wanting pairings. I also liked the split up for original fic.

[lirin_lirilla]

An assortment of thoughts...

I thought splitting up Original Works was good! I think it made things easier to read in both the tagset and in requests. As far as discussion of the genres/subtags, would opening up discussion next year prior to nominations perhaps be helpful, so that people could coordinate...or perhaps it would be more hassle for you than it would save, I don't know.

I think of "Any [Type of Character]" tags as being more similar to "Original [Specific Type of] Character" tags than to anything involving groups. They both involve only one character who fulfills a specific role but with the author's choice as to the exact character. (For example, say, Any Hogwarts Professor or Original Hogwarts Professor.) I am fully in favor of "Any [Type of Character]" tags being allowed if you want to allow them.

Group tags, on the other hand, I would really really prefer that we not include. I feel like the need to have to make multiple characters fit into one's story—and in the case of / tags, to include relationship elements as well—can only distract the author from a focus on worldbuilding, since now they have so many other things that they must include.

Just a few stats to show how much Worldbuilding as an exchange is much less ship-oriented than most other exchanges. This is the percentage of works in the gen category, as a percentage of the works posted. Including, for comparison, two other recent exchanges that also match on characters, not groups (though Yuletide's AND matching makes it a less apt comparison):
Worldbuilding 2020 - 87/100 (87%)
Worldbuilding 2019 - 70/88 (79.5%)
Worldbuilding 2018 - 59/72 (81.9%)
Worldbuilding 2017 - 60/75 (80%)
Yuletide 2019 - 837/2077 (40.3%)
Trick or Treat 2019 - 387/738 (52.4%)

Sure, some Worldbuilding fics will have shippy content (the lovely gift I got this year did), but I think that having the option to match on ships (and then to have to worry about whether one has included enough shippy content, etc.) could be detrimental. And even gen groupings (if you wanted to consider them separately from ships, which sounds like more trouble than it's worth to enforce) still give less flexibility to the author since they're then required to make multiple characters all have a role in their worldbuilding, though I don't think they're as big an issue as ships.

As far as the tagset: I don't personally refer to the spreadsheet so I can't comment on that. I'm open to an Eternal Tagset; my main concern would be that over the years the different permutations/subsets of some of the bigger fandoms (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc.) might get unwieldy when only being added to and never pared down or restarted. I think it would be entirely appropriate for you to state that you will reject incorrect nominations after 48 hours and then to do so. I personally would strongly prefer if you didn't do Yuletide style no-approvals-until-noms-are-closed, and I will point out that I at least—and I suspect I'm not the only one—find it easier to come up with worldbuilding tags when I'm able to see examples of all the other ones in the tagset.

But of course, you should do whatever you need to do to make your workload manageable...and thanks so much for all of the work you put in every year! This continues to be one of my very favorite exchanges. :-)

[fencesit]

I have no firm opinion on Original Works except that you should do what's easiest for you.

I am against relationship nominations (/ or &) because I agree with others that it would make it harder to focus on the worldbuilding. I think it would also make nominations harder for both you and us and lead to a decrease in single-character nominations, which I don't think I'd like. But I would really love to be able to nominate categories of canon characters because frequently I want to see worldbuilding associated with that category of character but have A) no preference which character in the category I recieve and B) do not have enough nomination slots to nominate them all. This kind of problem can somewhat be solved by the WB nominations, but not entirely...

For example, if I select "WB: Uchiha Clan internal politics" or something, I think we can all safely agree that I will get at least one Uchiha character of some kind in my gift. However, there's no way I can nominate all of the canon Uchiha characters without socking up, and even if I do I can only request 8 canon characters...or 7 if I want to include "Original Uchiha Character(s)". And one might think, "Well, surely you can pick your 7 favorite Uchiha..." but it might be in this hypothetical situation that I really don't have a favorite Uchiha! I might be interested in the Uchiha only for the sake of worldbuilding, and so my only concern is that my creator be able to pick literally any Uchiha they want, including the obscure ones from anime filler. I can give permission for that in my optional details ("Hi, I selected the 7 most popular Uchiha but I don't really care if I get them as long as there's an Uchiha!") but that's less likely to catch the eye of someone who wants to write an obscure Uchiha as well as being more complicated for you as a mod!

I feel there are also cases where a set of canon characters definitely exists, but we don't have names for them or they're almost-but-not-quite blank slates who just share a common trait. Something like...the characters who get helped in a monster-of-the-week show but who don't ever show up again? I could try to pick 7 or 8 favorites across several seasons, but if they all only get about 5 minutes of screen time I probably don't have favorites and don't care which one I get; I just want my creator to pick the one they think is most interesting.

So basically...I guess "Any [Type of Character]" are "your choice from group: A & B & C & D & ...", but I think that that's a good thing.

Finally, I think that rejecting incorrect tags that linger for more than 48 hours is fine. If you set up an eternal tagset, I'll definitely help you populate it but it does feel like it might get really unwieldy? Either way, thank you for your hard work!