worldbuildingmod: visualisation of the Riemann zeta function in the complex plane, showing both trivial and non-trivial zeros (black dots) (riemann)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
I've heard back from everyone I needed to re: matching very swiftly (thank you!), so assignments are now being sent out. You should get an email to the address associated with your AO3 account, and you'll be able to see it via your AO3 assignments page directly as well.

If there are any issues with your assignment, please do get in contact either via email to worldbuildingmod@gmx.com or via dreamwidth direct message. Please note that I do give people a few days' grace before passing on any requests to update or unlock placeholder letters (since the official schedules say assignments will be "out by" the end of the week).

Initial pinch hits will follow within the next 24 hours.
worldbuildingmod: The Nebra Sky Disc (nebra)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
I have had to contact a small number of participants about matchability. If your AO3 username starts with b, g, or t, please check the email associated with your AO3 account; you may need to check your spam/junk folder. (The email will come from worldbuildingmod@gmx.com)

If I don't hear back within 24 hours, I will have to delete any remaining unmatchable sign ups to be able to proceed with running matching for everyone else.
worldbuildingmod: Bablyonian map of the world (babylon)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Sign ups are now closed!

I'm hoping to be able to provide an update on progress with matching before midnight UTC.
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Sign ups are due to close at 1955 UTC, or in other words very imminently. If you're still working on your sign up, please comment on this post (comments are screened) with your username so I know to watch out for it appearing before I close them. (I can't hold it open indefinitely, though!)

ETA 2020 UTC: holding sign ups open for one person whose internet went down.
worldbuildingmod: detail from xkcd's "Map of Online Communities 2 (2010)", showing "The Bay of Drama", including fanfiction.net, LJ and DW as a tiny island (xkcd)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Hi, everyone.

My work schedule for tomorrow has become very tight, such that, although I could close sign ups on time, I wouldn't have time to perform any of the checks I need to do before running matching for several hours afterwards. I've decided that I may as well give that as a bit of extra time to participants to finish signing up, rather than it simply being idle time for the exchange.

Sign ups will now close at 1955 UTC, 12 hours later than originally intended. I've amended the AO3 collection settings and the sticky post here on dreamwidth accordingly; please ignore any old posts etc. that still display the original time.

I don't anticipate this being an issue again, so all other times will remain as originally scheduled.

Here is a revised countdown.
worldbuildingmod: The Nebra Sky Disc (nebra)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
There are 72 hours from the time stamp of this post before sign ups close - countdown here.

Please note that sign ups close at 0755 UTC on Monday. In other words, you've definitely got the weekend, but do check how that works out for your time zone before relying on being able to finish off on Monday.
worldbuildingmod: The Nebra Sky Disc (nebra)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
This post is for participants who are open to receiving works in different formats to those covered by the freeform tags used for matching. In particular: podfics, vids and interactive fiction (IF).

Please use the template below to indicate that you are such a participant, deleting sections if they're not needed.

worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (thule)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Letters giving details of your requests/prompts/etc. are not required (requests will be visible throughout sign ups), but if you do write one, you can leave a link here so that other people can find it easily. Treats are very much encouraged in this exchange, and letters are often a good way for potential treaters to find potential treatees.

If you want to advertise your letter, leave a comment on this post with at least:

  • Your AO3 username
  • A link to your letter

And (optionally but helpfully):

  • Which fandoms you are requesting
  • Which types of fanwork you are open to receiving

If you wish, you can cut and paste the template below into your comment:

NB Please don't link to placeholder or locked letters here; if I spot any I will screen the comment in question until you message me to say that it's finished.
worldbuildingmod: Bablyonian map of the world (babylon)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Sign ups are now open!

Here is the tag set on AO3 and in autoAO3app form. (I don't know who had already scraped it, but thank you! I've updated it to make sure that the very final version of the tag set is on there; I will rerun at least once every 48 hours during sign ups to keep requests current, but anyone can do so if they wish.)

Don't forget that because of the way fandoms are defined for this exchange, many are classified under "Uncategorized Fandoms" on the AO3 tag set interface, including some very popular ones.

As in the last round, I have enabled the "Description" box for Offers as well as Requests, and relabelled it "Matching Notes". You can use this to express any preferences about matching that can't be captured by AO3's automated approach. This method of communication is just as private as sending an email - the contents of offers on AO3 can only be seen by the individual participant and the collection owner - though you are of course welcome to communicate in other ways if you feel more comfortable doing so. Of course, you do not have to fill in the "Matching Notes" box at all - simply leave it blank if it's not relevant to you. (The box will appear for all fandoms in your offers, but if you do want to use it, you only need to fill it in once.)

Other than that, some key points about signing up:

  • Requests: 3-10 You can use more than one slot for the same fandom, but there must be at least three different ones overall. (In terms of fandom tags in the tag set. It's OK if they're different versions of the same canon.)
  • Offers: 4-10 As for requests, you can use more than one slot for the same fandom, as long as there are four different fandoms overall.
  • For each request and offer, you have 8 character slots and 8 worldbuilding slots (in the "Relationship" section), and you can request/offer one, two or all three of the "Fanfiction", "Fanart" and "In-Universe Meta" freeforms.
  • The "Any" tickbox is disabled for requests (but remember that you can use multiple slots for the same fandom), but it is enabled for offers. Please make sure you are confident about creating for any tag in the tag set for that fandom if you are using it. (Please note that this is not quite the same as a "bucket offer" as found in Yuletide and some other exchanges, in that you can't add additional tags to represent further fandoms you are happy to offer Any for.)
  • OR Matching You are only guaranteed to match on one character and one worldbuilding tag, in one fandom. Your requests should not rely on the idea that people have signed up to create for all your requested tags. Your offers should all be for things that you would be happy to create for even if that's the only tag you matched on.
  • "Any or No Characters" is used to indicate a willingness to receive/create works where the focus is on the worldbuilding to the point that which, if any characters appear is secondary. This is not the same meaning of "Any" as the AO3 tickbox (where it means "any tag in the tag set"). Requesting the tag means you are open to receiving any canon character, any character implied to exist by canon, any original character dreamt up by your creator, or no characters at all. (It is OK to DNW characters you don't want to appear if using this tag.)
  • Requests will be visible throughout sign ups.
  • DNWs Do Not Wants (DNWs) will only be enforced if they are in the Optional Details box on the AO3 sign up form. As a creator, you should avoid including your recipient's DNWs in the work you create for them. However, please do not use your DNWs in an overly restrictive way to box your creator into a corner.
  • ODAO With the exception of DNWs, the principle of ODAO - Optional Details Are Optional - applies. This means both that you do not have to provide them at all if you don't want to, but also that your creator is not obligated to follow any that you do provide.
  • Some tags may not autocomplete as you enter them, but they will still work if you cut and paste them from the tag set. This is a known AO3 bug of long standing.


If you have any concerns or queries that the above list doesn't help with, or encounter any difficulties in the sign up process, please do ask, either by commenting here, or if you prefer to do it privately via email to worldbuildingmod@gmx.com or using the DW messaging system.

The letters post and an opt-in post for other media (podfic/vids/IF) will follow very shortly.
worldbuildingmod: The Nebra Sky Disc (nebra)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
I have now dealt with all remaining queries to the best of my ability and run a variety of checks, so I am optimistic that the tag set is now in something very close to its final form. However, extra eyes on these things are always helpful and so I would be grateful if, in the day between this post and sign ups opening, any participants who are willing to spare the time could check through to see if their own nominations have made it through unscathed*, or indeed whether there are any issues in other fandoms they're familiar with.

*Note that just looking at your nominations page is not a 100% guarantee -- a tag will still appear "approved" with the green tick, even if I ended up having to delete it on the back end to fix a problem. I only ever do this with the intention of immediately re-adding it in the fixed form, but it is always possible that this final stage went wrong in some cases. Please do check the tag set itself.

Things that are helpful for me to know about

  • Tags which are appearing in the wrong fandoms (when they also appear in the correct fandom, this is often referred to as "wandering" or "migrating") - I have already checked through for these twice (the fix for these is to slightly change the tag, which is why some characters have had their disambiguations changed from how they were nominated), but some may remain
  • Tags which are misspelt (I do try to double check as I approve but it's impossible to catch everything and on some occasions I even introduce typos when fixing some other issue)
  • Tags which are effectively the same as each other (e.g. if a character goes by two names and both are nominated) - my guiding principle here is to always try to improve the quality of matching. If there is a distinction between two versions of something (even if it's a subtle one) I will probably leave them separate to help people match more specifically. But if the two tags are effectively synonymous I will merge them so that participants can't "miss" each other because one offered Version A and the other requested Version B of the exact same thing that they would both have been happy to match on.
  • Tags which make no sense, e.g. if there is nothing within canon that fits the description of a worldbuilding tag (again, I try to check as I approve but obviously I don't know every fandom so some things may sneak through)
  • Special request for Tolkien fans - it turns out that the canonical "The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien" tag is a direct synonym for the canonical "The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien" tag on the AO3 backend. As a result, all the tags nominated for both fandoms were appearing under Silm in the tag set while the Book of Lost Tales tag appeared empty. To fix this, I have created a new "Book of Lost Tales - Tolkien" fandom (i.e. without the "J. R. R."); however, since this is not a canonical tag it appears in the "Uncategorized Fandoms" section of the tag set. I would be very grateful if the nominators, or anyone else Tolkien-knowledgeable, could give particular attention to whether I have successfully separated the tags back out again.

Things that I don't need to know about at this stage

  • Inconsistent capitalisation, etc. - once a tag has been entered anywhere on AO3 everyone is stuck with the capitalisation scheme of the person who first used it (e.g. if "joe bloggs" has ever been used, you can type "Joe Bloggs" as many times as you want, AO3 will keep turning it into the lapslock version).
  • Inconsistent disambiguations - I have done my best to unite different nominators' different versions under one umbrella but I'm certain I have missed some and as long as the tags aren't migrating it won't affect sign ups. (In fact, most inconsistent disambiguations arise as the result of fixing migrating tags.)
  • Fandoms in the wrong categories - canonical fandom tags are all assigned to one or more categories by the tag wranglers and so this is completely outside the control of tag set maintainers. Non-canonical fandom tags all end up in "Uncategorized Fandoms" - do note that for worldbuildingex, more fandoms end up in this section of the tag set than in most other exchanges, because of the use of fandom names to specify the scope of material for worldbuilding to be extrapolated from.


Currently everything is on course for sign ups to open on time at 0755 UTC on Friday 14th January.
worldbuildingmod: Bablyonian map of the world (babylon)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Please use this post only for responses to these specific queries.


For anything else, please use the previous post
or the clean up post (coming on Thursday).


Thank you to everyone who has nominated; the tag set is now approaching the final stages of being ready for sign ups. This is the final queries post; as such, as well as explaining my remaining queries, I will indicate the actions I intend to take if I don't get responses before I proceed to the final clean up stages. I will leave things until 0700 UTC on Thursday 13th (countdown) before taking action without hearing from the nominator; however, things will run more smoothly if I'm not dealing with all of these at that point, so please do reply even if it's to indicate that my proposed action is fine.

How to link to your nominations

In a few cases below, I indicate that it would be helpful for nominators to link me to their nominations page (and in general it is never unhelpful). Only I as the mod and you as the account holder have access to this page, and it does not allow me to identify you by username, only see that one nomination slate for the WBEx 2022 tag set. You can find it by clicking on "My Nominations" at the top of the tag set, which will lead you to a page with a URL in the format "https://archiveofourown.org/tag_sets/9319/nominations/XXXXXX" where XXXXXX is a string of numbers - it is this URL which I will need.

Specific queries )

Finally

At this point, to the best of my knowledge and belief all tags that I have not mentioned above have either been approved or (very rarely) rejected. If you think your tags have been approved but they appear to have since disappeared from the tag set completely please let me know, ideally also with a link to your nominations page so I can reconstruct them if necessary. (On one occasion out of hundreds AO3 did give me an unusual error message that might just have resulted in some tags disappearing, though I suspect it was just the result of accidentally double clicking and so the tags will have gone through the first time.) Having said that, please do check the "Unassociated Characters and Relationships" section at the very bottom for any tags that appear to be missing; there are a number of tags in there which did not get automatically associated and which I will be rescuing as part of general clean up later on - they are not a concern, only tags that cannot be found anywhere.
worldbuildingmod: Bablyonian map of the world (babylon)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
The tag set is now closed for nominations. Thanks to everyone who nominated; there's a huge range of interesting-looking tags.

In terms of next steps, I'm aiming to finish processing the tags submitted over the last few days by the end of Tuesday (I made some inroads on Sunday but new submissions were coming in as fast as I could approve). That will enable me to get up a final queries post, give people 24 hours (i.e. the whole of Wednesday) to respond to it, and then leave Thursday clear for processing those queries and other final clean up and preparation for opening sign ups at 0755 UTC on Friday.

Please note that with a lot of tags still to approve, the tag set is still a long way from its final form and so I won't be looking at errors etc. until much later; if you spot any, do feel free to note them here, but I won't be in a position to do anything about them until Thursday.
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
I won't be in a position to do another queries post until some time after nominations have closed, but I did want to flag up that on working through some more approvals just now I have spotted a few fandoms which have actual A/B-type relationship tags instead of worldbuilding tags in the "Relationship" field. In worldbuildingex, we (ab)use this field to allow fandom-specific worldbuilding tags, which should be prefixed "WB:". So far, I've seen Nuclear Throne (Video Game) and Sen no Kiseki | The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel Series (Video Games), but I suspect there are others (AO3 only shows me a random selection of nominations each time I refresh).

I should add that I can also see a fairly large number of fandoms which are missing their "Any or No Characters" and "Original Character(s)" tags; they will not be approved without them.

The vast majority of participants have been formatting their nominations in line with the requirements (which I freely admit are extremely picky!); however, I did want to give those who have not managed to do so a chance to check them before nominations close in ~14.5 hours. In case it's helpful to anyone, this is a step-by-step guide with screenshots to how nominations work in this exchange.
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Nominations close at 0755 UTC on Monday 10th, a little over a day from the time of this post. (My schedule for tomorrow has become crowded, so I will be sticking to the exact time.)

Countdown here
worldbuildingmod: The Nebra Sky Disc (nebra)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
I haven't reached the point of clearing all nominations except the ones I have queries about, but I have wrestled it down to the point where I can see everything that's left on the same page, so I'm pausing there for now to put up this post.

I'm relatively less able to get online over the weekend - I will probably do one big push on approving tags at some point over the next couple of days, and then everything else will have to wait until after nominations close on Monday (I have given myself a three-day buffer zone in the schedule for a reason). Please be patient, but do note if you're still mulling noms that 0755 UTC is early on Monday in many time zones, and even potentially Sunday night if you're somewhere like the US West Coast - countdown here.

Missing character tags

The following fandoms are missing one or both of "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)". They will not be approved without both these tags present.

  • Disco Elysium (Video Game)
  • Discworld - Terry Pratchett
  • Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
  • Ever After Academy (Visual Novel)
  • Fate/Grand Order
  • The Elementalists (Visual Novel)
  • The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin*
  • Where the Sky is Silver and the Earth is Brass - Sonya Taaffe

*I do appreciate that the two nominated tags "Original Gethenian Characters" and "Original Hainish Characters" cover 99%+ of potential OCs, but I don't see a compelling reason to create an exemption from the general rule.

Specific queries in already-approved fandoms

  • All the Wrong Questions - Lemony Snicket - The Bellerophon Brothers In general, character tags should be for individuals (or "Any" type tags) although I have made exceptions int he past for definite groups within the canon whose members have little or no separate existence from one another; it seems from a bit of wiki-diving that that might be the case here, but it's hard to tell. Some clarification would be appreciated.
  • Team Fortress 2 - WB: Life after the war There seem to be two wars in the timeline, the Gravel War and the Robot War; it seems more likely that the intended one is the Gravel War?


Specific queries in yet-to-be-approved fandoms

  • Motherland: Fort Salem - please check that your tags are in the right categories; the overall number of worldbuilding tags nominated here exceeds the number of "Relationship" slots available so I think some of them must have been nominated in "Character" slots.
  • Pokemon (Main video game series) - Worldbuilding: Sinnoh Legends and/or Johto Rituals (Pokemon MVGS) Are there sufficient similarities between these that the "and/or" makes sense, or would this work better as two different tags?
worldbuildingmod: visualisation of the Riemann zeta function in the complex plane, showing both trivial and non-trivial zeros (black dots) (riemann)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Here are the things that have arisen in the first day-and-a-bit of sorting through the tag set.

Missing character tags

All fandoms must have the two character tags "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" and "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)" nominated in order for them to be approved, in addition to any other characters the nominator is interested in being able to request/offer. The following fandoms currently lack them:

  • Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
  • Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
  • Ever After Academy (Visual Novel)
  • Fate/Grand Order
  • RWBY
  • The Elementalists (Visual Novel)


Disambiguations

Many tags still awaiting approval for other reasons are also missing disambiguations (the name of fandom in parentheses after the tag). I am able to add these as I approve, but it does slow me down significantly (especially if AO3 starts putting drop down menus in my way), so if nominators are able to add them on their end it would be much appreciated.

Crossovers

Crossovers are not on topic for worldbuildingex, unless the crossover exists in canon. If the crossover does exist in canon, or two canons are part of the same universe, please nominate under a fandom tag that encompasses all the relevant source material for worldbuilding that you want to be included. There are currently two worldbuilding tags that talk about crossovers (I suspect from the same nominator?):

  • Star Trek - TV Shows - WB: Crossovers Between Shows Welcome
    the idea that creators might draw on more than one show is already implicit in the fandom tag; perhaps a tag like "Interactions between different crews" would achieve the desired effect?
  • Middle-Earth - J.R.R. Tolkien - WB: Crossovers with Other Tolkien Welcome
    this one I am less clear about; "Middle-Earth" as a fandom tag already encompasses all the different Middle-Earth source material (see also the following section), but if the intention is to encourage crossovers with non-Middle-Earth works like Farmer Giles of Ham then I'm afraid that would not be on topic for worldbuildingex unless a convincing argument can be presented for shared worldbuilding.


Tolkien

Currently nominated Tolkien fandoms are:

  • Middle-earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
  • Middle-Earth - J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Book of Lost Tales - J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
  • The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien


I am planning to approve all of these (merging the first two by making the capitalisation and spacing of the initials consistent) but I did just want to ask about the final one - so far, there are four nominators for this fandom, using slightly different disambiguations. Some tags are disambiguated as "Silmarillion" and some as "Silmarillion/HoME" - my instinct is to adjust things so that they're all to "Silmarillion/HoME" on the off-chance someone later comes along and wants to nominate just-the-Silmarillion, but I would be interested from hearing the views of nominators on this.

Specific queries

In these cases, I have approved the fandom overall but have questions about individual tags:


  • The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco - WB: Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (Name of the Rose)
    As best I can tell, this is a real thing which is now lost and, while it clearly plays a key role in the novel, I'm not sure that this worldbuilding tag doesn't stray into requesting real world research (in this case, trying to reconstruct it), rather than fictional worldbuilding (which is the reason RPF is not on-topic for this exchange) - however, I am open to persuasion on this point. How much fictional(ised) information is given about it within the novel?
  • Granblue Fantasy (Video Game) - WB: Astral Society (Final Fantasy XIV)
    this looks like it's probably a tag that accidentally went in under the wrong fandom, but there seem to be "Astral" things in both games so I'm wondering if it's a mistake in the disambiguation.
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
The tag set is now open for nominations, and will close at 0755 UTC on Monday 10th Jan (amended from original schedule to allow for AO3 issues). Countdown to close of nominations here.

The official guidelines on nominating are here and a detailed guide to nominating for new participants (made in 2021, but there are no changes for this year) can be found here.

Brief reminders:
  • Fandom names should make clear what the scope of the intended source material is*
  • Please disambiguate all character and worldbuilding tags with the name of their fandom in parentheses after them
  • Worldbuilding tags go in the "Relationship" fields with "WB: " at the start - please do not nominate actual A/B, C&D, etc. relationships
  • All fandoms need to have "Original Character(s) (Name of Fandom)", "Any or No Characters (Name of Fandom)" and at least one worldbuilding tag
  • Other types of "Any" tags are allowed in the Character field to specify types of character, e.g. "Any Halfling(s)", "Any Space Marine(s)"
  • AUs (except those which appear within canon, like Star Trek's Mirror Universe) and RPF are outside the scope of the exchange

*A quick note on fandom names for Original Works: the tag set seems to be more manageable for participants when these are split up by subgenre, so please do use fandom tags like "Original Work - Pulp SF" rather than just "Original Work". I will default to approving whatever participants choose to use, even if they seem similar to existing ones in the tag set, rather than try to act as an arbiter of genre boundaries. If, once the tag set starts to take shape, you end up feeling that your nominations could be folded into another category that has been nominated by someone else, let me know and I will do so behind the scenes.

Please feel free to use the comments of this post for queries, to help me understand anything that you think is potentially complicated about your nominations, and for co-ordination between participants to avoid unnecessary duplication.

Finally, please do be patient while waiting for your nominations to be dealt with - it is fairly likely that this year, I will be approving in larger batches but somewhat more infrequently than I have managed in some previous rounds.
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Round 6 will be the final round of Worldbuilding Exchange (see here); there are no rule changes from Round 5, except that (for obvious reasons) I have removed references to potential bans from future rounds.

The Basics )

Nominations )

Sign ups )

Assignments )

General )
worldbuildingmod: Detail from Carta Marina showing Thule and sea monsters (Default)
[personal profile] worldbuildingmod
Nominations: Tuesday 4th-Monday 10th January
Sign ups: Friday 14th-Monday 24th January
Assignments out by: Friday 28th January
"Default deadline": Friday 11th March
Assignments due: Friday 18th March
Works revealed: Friday 25th March
Creators revealed: Friday 1st April

Everything will take place at 0755 UTC (except creator reveals, which will be at 0655 UTC, due to the clocks changing).

After a lot of consideration, I have decided that the 2022 round (the sixth overall) will be the last time Worldbuilding Exchange runs; I'll write a comment in reply to this post with more detail for those who want it.

Profile

worldbuildingex: Detail of Carta Marina showing Thule with sea monsters (Default)
Worldbuilding Exchange

November 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
678 9101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 12th, 2025 07:39 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios