Worldbuilding Exchange

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.

Sign ups are now closed!

I'm hoping to be able to provide an update on progress with matching before midnight UTC.

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.

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.

<b>AO3 username:</b> <b>Letter link:</b> <b>Fandoms (one per line):</b> <b>Open to podfic?</b> <b>Podfic likes:</b> <b>Open to vids?</b> <b>Vid likes:</b> <b>Open to IF?</b> <b>IF likes:</b>

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.