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

 

Flat / Recent | Top-Level (Last) | Search

 

 

Comments

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

"I was able to use my IT background to start tag wrangling and co-modding"

LOLOLOL

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

Mods and tag wranglers who aren't very good with IT have created some of the biggest exchange fuck ups in the past, tbh.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

+1 for ever and ever jfc

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

Which only proves the point that you need no IT skills to get started on either.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT it also demonstrates why the majority of mods/wranglers who are recruited do have decent IT skills. 99% of people with next to no IT skills are not given these roles because of the risk of potential fuck ups.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

Genuinely, I have to wonder why you think that coalies (people who are obsessed enough about a fanfic exchange to spend months and months gossiping about it) are not largely the same people who spend time in other exchange spaces and see how modding decisions are actually made. You make it sound like mods hand out flyers at MIT career fairs to get co-mods and tag mods, rather than just posting "Hey, does anyone want to help with this?" in EAD.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NC. I’m sorry, coalie, but listening to gossip from people in anonspace is not the best way to understand how exchanges and modding works. The CYRT is 100% correct, whether the less tech-savvy among us want to admit it or not. I’ve done a lot of modding and most of that modding has been based around systems, coding, etc. Yes, some mods are more publicity people than anything and don’t always possess great tech skills, but do you seriously think anything internet based doesn’t need tech-savvy people on board, especially talking about something as big as Yuletide? Come on!

Even with a smaller exchange, having a bunch of people on your mod team who have no idea what they’re doing with critical systems or just coding in general are an absolute nightmare and are usually more trouble than they’re worth. One massive fic exchange disaster back in the long ago time happened because a Luddite mod who thought they knew best didn’t listen to warnings about serious security problems from those who did possess the required skill sets. Those mods who don’t bring people on with the needed skills buy trouble everytime.

Double-posted this because it obviously needs to be said.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

CYRT

This is impressively disingenuous. You're pretty obviously not a "NC," no matter if you add the period after to make yourself look like you're a different person. You can't even pass yourself off as well as the socktopus did.

You may want to work on your comprehension skills instead of those IT skills you keep bragging about, since you seem to think I learned all the ins and outs of modding through randoms on coal. (And hey, if I ignored anon gossip like you told me to, I would in fact be ignoring you! The first reasonable thing you've said in this entire thread!) I was saying that coalies are obsessed enough with exchanges that we spend a full third of our year talking about this one. Many, if not most, people here are into exchanges in general, not just Yuletide, and go to EAD, run other exchanges and fests, and have at least some experience with how things are run, often firsthand.

EAD isn't gossip, nor is it anon space; I know what goes on there because I go there, like I said, and I know how people tend to recruit mods because I am actually a mod and it is literally WYSIWG. Generally people come up with ideas for exchanges on their own or together, and if they need help, they will just fucking ask if anyone wants to help. They might turn down someone for being a wanker, or someone they don't recognize, and they might ask someone if they have any previous experience specifically with exchanges, but no one is looking for a resume.

The main reason I suspect that this is all elaborate trolling is that you clearly haven't modded anything in the last few years, since you obviously don't know how Discord works. Like the fact that we can go there and see literally years of comments showing, in fact, how modding actually happens.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT.

Unless you're a marketing whiz or BNF, no exchange these days will let you mod or wrangle unless you have the IT skills needed for the job. They won't take the risk that you'll crash their whole system.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

You literally have no idea how any of this works and it is so, so embarrassing for you.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NC. I’m sorry, coalie, but listening to gossip from people in anonspace is not the best way to understand how exchanges and modding works. The CYRT is 100% correct, whether the less tech-savvy among us want to admit it or not. I’ve done a lot of modding and most of that modding has been based around systems, coding, etc. Yes, some mods are more publicity people than anything and don’t always possess great tech skills, but do you seriously think anything internet based doesn’t need tech-savvy people on board, especially talking about something as big as Yuletide? Come on!

Even with a smaller exchange, having a bunch of people on your mod team who have no idea what they’re doing with critical systems or just coding in general are an absolute nightmare and are usually more trouble than they’re worth. One massive fic exchange disaster back in the long ago time happened because a Luddite mod who thought they knew best didn’t listen to warnings about serious security problems from those who did possess the required skill sets. Those mods who don’t bring people on with the needed skills buy trouble everytime.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

LMAO

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT. I did my first modding in XF fandom before the younger participants of YT were even born. I know what I’m talking about: even if everyone on your modding team has a PhD in computer science, things will go wrong, even if none of you have done anything wrong.

Even if nothing goes wrong, you need to have people on your mod team with IT skills to ensure any issues are fixed ASAP, and you need to keep any team members who don’t have those skills away from certain parts of your exchange unless they break something. If you don’t have people in your mod team with the skill sets required, you are asking for trouble.

The bigger your exchange, the more important it becomes for you to have people on your modding team who have the IT skills to get you out of trouble. YT is a huge exchange and there have been huge issues over the years, some of which were actually fairly minor problems exacerbated by YT’s size.

You should also remember that part of the reason for AO3’s existence is YT because of the massive IT issues the old YT systems had. It was easier to start afresh with coding they had control over. Therefore, the significant crossover between AO3 mods and YT mods.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NA +1000000000000 on every point. FFS, just because you CAN mod while being a fucking Luddite doesn't mean you SHOULD. Even more so if you don't have the brainpower to realize the reason why modding on AO3 is "so easy" is because those in fandom with actual IT skills have done all the hard work for you, and unless you're smart enough to have at least one mod with IT skills, will be the ones you go running to for help with the fuckups that will inevitably happen, whether you make them or not.

And yes, I AM one of those people Luddite mods have come running to for help when something goes tits up. And yes, those problems are usually either made by, or made worse by, Luddite mods who have no idea what they're doing. Ugh.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

"IT skills"

What do these "IT skills" consist of, exactly? Knowing not to hit the big shiny button that says "delete all assignments"? Because, uh....

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

DA.

In modding terms, "IT Skills" is an umbrella term which includes things as basic as actually knowing how to use the basic platforms/software involved and being able to type, use email, and so on, to more advanced skills like being able to read, understand and even repair (if not adding to) the coding (or programming) which drives the whole show, no matter if whatever it is that you are modding is hosted on AO3 or elsewhere. Even if you take your coding problem inquiry to an external Help Desk, unless it's a service-wide fault, the first thing they'll ask you is: "do you know what the problem with the coding might be?" If you have even a vague idea because you know part of it doesn't look right, it can lead to a fix in a few minutes, rather than a few days.

"IT Skills" also includes the vital ability to be able to fix any mistakes in tags and so on. A glaring example of an exchange mod being both an egotistical berk and someone with enough IT skills to cause a massive problem, but not enough IT skills to fix that problem, was when Jenn amended everyone's nominations in Marvel comics fandoms she had no understanding of, and then publicly whined that separating all the nominated fandoms and characters back into their proper format was "too hard", even though the original nominators had provided her with their original nominations.

Modding an exchange like Yuletide also includes running the associated, additional channels, including the mailing lists, Google/Yahoo Groups, DW/LJ/Tumblr, the new Discord server, the old chat, etc. So yes, you can have some modding team members who have the IT skills of someone who died in 1631 as long as you have others who can step in and fix any mistakes that happen. (Ideally, your mods lacking IT skills make up for it in other areas, such as publicity, handling participant queries with grace, patience and timeliness, etc.) Because those mistakes will inevitably happen, whether it's that your tagset has problems, there's a coding issue causing lags, or your whole database is hacked because of security oversight.

With an exchange the size of Yuletide, you need members of your modding team with fairly advanced IT skills, because problems will inevitably happen even if your actual modding team hasn't done anything to cause them.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NC

Do you know how you become an exchange mod? You start an exchange collection on Ao3, and then tell people about it on FFA or EAD or [insert fandom server here]. It takes no skill. I modded my first exchange this year, so I should know about the no skill part. Just a lot of crying and reading tag documentation.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

DA. I'm pretty sure the posts above refer how people have joined the modding team of an established exchange, which is what OP seems to be talking about. Although IIRC OP never actually outright says they joined the wider YT modding team.

More importantly, congratulations on starting your own exchange! :) How exciting! How did it go? If you do at any point need some extra help, I'm sure a number of our passionately argumentative "IT SKILLZ IZ SERIOUS BUSINESS ON INTERWEBZ DAMNIT!!1!" coalies here would be genuinely pleased to help you, including myself.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, the baptism by tag set. (Whyyyyyyy AO3)

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

Wut.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

lmaooooooo this is so funny. I assure you that no one checked my credentials before letting me mod multiple exchanges this year.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

NC. I hope you either actually have the needed skills or are lucky enough not to cause any problems.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

This is delightfully batshit. Keep going!

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

It's true that if you lack "IT skills" like being able to wrangle a tag, you should not in fact be a tag wrangler. Well spotted.

Re: Your Yuletide sins

[(Anonymous)]

This goes to the hall of fame.