This is Yuletide, everybody make a scene

[coalcube]

I am the sock with the tear-away face

Low-effort with your gift and gone without a trace

I am the "who" when you call, "Who does an exchange without acknowledging their gift?"
I am the wanker blowing through your fics comments
I am the coalie dragging your letter at night
Filling your exchange to the brim with fright!

This is Coaltide!

Nominations: Tuesday 22 September to Thursday 1 October

Sign-ups: Friday 16 October to Monday 26 October

Assignments out: between 26 & 28 October

Default deadline: Friday 11 December

Assignment Deadline: Friday 18 December

Yuletide Discord for Hippos. Google Group for PHs. F_F wiki for history.

NYR Info | 2020 NYR Collection | yuletide_admin | yuletide

 

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Comments

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

1) A general desire for fairness. There are a lot more places where fanfic is posted than just AO3 and FFN. AO3 is the archive where Yuletide is run, so it should obviously be used to determine eligibility. FFN is an unrelated archive and should be treated like other non-AO3 archives, i.e. ignored for the purposes of Yuletide.

2) Participants often screw up when counting fic in their fandoms. The most common screw ups when counting fic on AO3 are to forget to select Complete or 1000+ words or in English, all mistakes which would make the fandom seem bigger than it really is. Accordingly, it's most likely that a nominator who screwed up their AO3 counting would nonetheless nominate an eligible fandom.

The most common screw ups when counting fic on FFN include the AO3 common mistakes as well as forgetting to check crossovers and forgetting to include Mature works, both mistakes which would make the fandom seem smaller than it really is. Accordingly, a nominator who screws up their FFN counting is much more likely to nominate an ineligible fandom and hence to waste their nomination slot.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't see how that would make it fairer in the slightest. A fandom that's big on FF.net and nonexistent in AO3 isn't a rare fandom.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

What about a fandom that’s big on Tumblr or Wattpad? FF.net isn’t the place that it was 20 years ago. FF.net isn’t what it was when all the porn moved to AFF. Sure it’ll keep out old big fandoms but new big ones benefit from the mods arbitrarily using it and not Wattpad. Either use the most popular fic site (which isn’t FF.net) to be fair or only count AO3.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Look, if greeting the numbers on whattpad and tumblr were as straightforward as getting them on FF.net, I'd be all for including them too. It's a matter of logistics.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

DC Exactly.

Wattpad and Tumblr are missing the ability to accurately search and filter works by fandom, and have no way at all to sort/filter by word count, completion status (Tumblr), and language (Tumblr, plus Wattpad's native language browser setting fuckery). If it requires Jane Average Fan to write a scraper to evaluate eligibility, it's too complicated to require in Yuletide.

Love it or hate it -- FF.net makes it easy to search and filter by the parameters required by Yuletide.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

If it's big on Wattpad or tumblr but not AO3, is that crowd participating in Yuletide in large numbers? The fandoms that actually get written for in large numbers are all AO3 popular fandoms.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

DC was wondering that too. What are these "big on Wattpad" fandoms that are getting requested in Yuletide? All the ones I know about have a healthy presence on AO3 or ff.net as well.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Doesn't matter. According to the mods, applying the same logic as including FFN, the people who want fic for their fandom should learn how to use wattpad and stop complaining.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

The FFN crowd isn't participating in large numbers, either. Hell, I'd say Tumblr and AO3 have more crossover than FFN and AO3. But for some reason, bringing up the demographic differences between FFN and AO3 ends up being controversial more often than not...

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

The most fair method would be to only allow rare fandoms into Yuletide. Just an absolute ban on fandoms that are big on FFN, Wattpad, Tumblr, LJ, single fandom archives, etc., etc. That would require a tremendous amount of time and energy each year, however, and I fully support the Yuletide mods in their decision to not do that.

Any other method means that big fandoms will unavoidably be eligible for Yuletide. Given that fact, the second most fair way to determine eligibility is to treat all non-AO3 archives/social media platforms equally (which the current method of singling out FFN as somehow different from Wattpad, Tumblr, LJ, etc. does not do).

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

It's been treated as a given for years, but I honestly have to ask - what exactly are some of these canons that are big on FF.net and nonexistent on AO3? People always bring up the dread specter of anime megafandoms sneaking into Yuletide, but I don't see much risk of that. Most anime megafandoms are big on AO3, too, even if not as big. Even when you go to series that were more popular in FF.net's heyday than they were when AO3 rolled around, there's enough on AO3 alone to disqualify them. The only exception I see to that is Ranma 1/2 (~11k qualifying works on FF.net, 458 on AO3) and I don't really foresee Ranma breaking Yuletide in this day and age.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

There's nothing, these sad bastards just enjoy whining.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Only people I see whining around here are the ones who will not shut up about ffn being included, year after year. You'd honestly think they'd tire themselves out but no. Still whining.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

My first guess was DN Angel and I was right. I would bet basically all my slash anime fandoms from childhood would get it. However I don’t think anyone (including me lol) WANTS them anymore so I still think them being eligible doesn’t matter/wouldn’t ruin Yuletide.

https://archiveofourown.org/tags/D*d*N*d*%20Angel/works
https://www.fanfiction.net/anime/D-N-Angel/

This was my first time back on FFnet in ages and holy shit the ads are bad.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, glancing over some anime/manga media I was into as a preteen, and Gakuen Alice, Shugo Chara, Vampire Knight, and Pandora Hearts, for example, are all out on FFN though they're under the limit on AO3 with filters applied.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

The Alex Rider books come to mind. ~4000 fics on FFN, and 800 on AO3 (without filters for either.)

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

SC Same goes for Maximum Ride, the Inheritance Cycle, Skulduggery Pleasant... probably some more, too, but just looking over some in the books section.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I would be fine with dropping FFN, let's just get that out of the way first. Now I'll do some digging to see if we can answer your question. I don't know anything about anime, so I started digging through the TV category.

After comparing the top TV fandoms on FFN to their AO3 counterparts, these are the ones at a glance that would make it in were FFN not counted:

>10K fics on FFN
Degrassi
Big Time Rush
Victorious
One Tree Hill
iCarly
Hannah Montana
CSI: NY

<10K but >5K on FFN
Austin & Ally
Sonny with a Chance
CSI: Miami
The OC
House of Anubis
Friends
ER
JAG

Some of FFN's other top TV category performers might eek in but I wasn't wiling to filter every one that looked close on AO3 (I did for Victorious then decided it was going to take more time than I wanted to invest). I am sure that if I had kept going through those with less than 5K on FFN that I would have found even more that have a smaller presence on AO3.

I've listed 15 TV shows, there are undoubtedly more, and who knows how many in other categories. The combined power of all of these might dilute the rare/small aspect of Yuletide? But it would depend on how many of these once big older canons were asked for each year.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

fyi, it's "eke," not "eek"

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT - Interesting! It's clearly more than just the groundless "but what if Naruto or Hetalia sneaks in" fear, but like you and the other coalie, I don't foresee any of these fandoms rising from the grave to eat Yuletide. I guess there's an argument to be made for keeping Yuletide about truly small fandoms, but I don't feel like it would ruin Yuletide to open it to dead ones.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Video games are another big one where AO3 vs. FFnet can change eligibility a lot. Just at a glance, and only bothering with the most rudimentary filtering, here's some obvious ones that are eligible on AO3 but big on FF.net:

Halo (approx 9k FFnet, 900 AO3)
Tales of Symphonia (approx 6k FFnet,700 AO3)
Spyro series (approx 3k FFnet, 100 AO3)
Tekken (approx 3k FFnet, 300 AO3)
Star Fox series (approx 3k FFnet, 400 AO3)
Final Fantasy IX (approx 3k FFnet, 500 AO3)
Left 4 Dead (approx 3k FFnet, 700 AO3)
Golden Sun (approx 2k FFnet, 200 AO3)

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I think the group of participants that make mistakes when checking eligibility is way smaller than the group that just don't check at all, either because they're new and assume their fandom is eligible or because it just ticked over into ineligible.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

Okay, but there's not much to be done for participants who don't bother to check their fandoms' eligibility other than to give them reminders that they really ought to be checking that (as the Yuletide mods in fact do). Whereas getting rid of FFN in determining eligibility would automatically help the participants who have trouble using FFN's search options.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think the mods should make rule decisions based on handholding participants through checking eligibility. If the participants either can't use the browser tool or manage to do it manually, it's not the mods' problem imo.

Re: FFN

[(Anonymous)]

I don't actually check the eligibility of the fandoms I nominate. Mostly because I looked at the tag once months ago and it either didn't exist, had 1 fic (not in English) or I could count the number of fics using my fingers. I just checked, and the biggest fandom I'm requesting this year has <40 fics total on the AO3. Checking eligibility really isn't necessary for most fandoms.