The Coalies Are Back In Town

[coalcube]

Friday night they'll be dressed to kill
Down at Coaltide Bar'n'Grill
The receipts will flow and wank will spill
And if the coalies wanna fight, you better let 'em
That jukebox in the corner blastin' out my favorite song
The nights are getting longer, it won't be long
Won't be long 'til Yuletide comes
Now that the coalies are here again

Nominations: Mon 20 Sept to Thurs 30 Sept
Sign-ups: Fri 15 Oct to Sat 23 Oct
Assignments out by: Mon 25 Oct
Default deadline: Sat 11 Dec
Assignment deadline: Sat 18 Dec
Reveals: Sat 25 Dec

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Comments

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

As a writer: 6, so that the odds of you requesting at least one/multiple fandoms I like goes up and thus I have more people to treat.

As a requester: however many fandoms you like equally. The odds you’ll get treats is low, so you should only ask for fandoms you would be happy to have that be your only gift for, not “this is my fav and getting bonus fics in the other ones would be cool too!” I personally am really multifandom so I can have 6 requests I like a lot, and those are usually the years I get the most treats. This year I think I’m only going to request 4 because those are the ones I want equally, and then I plan to sock up to request the fandoms I want a little less.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

+1

I'm asking for three this year. There are other things in the tagset I'd enjoy reading, but I don't want them as MUCH and, really, that's as unfair to my writer as it is to me.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

+1

For requesting, if you can imagine being disappointed to receive one of your fandoms as your only gift, you probably shouldn’t include it.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

This is the way. I personally also really like to be surprised when I get my gift, so I look at the number of offers for each of the fandoms I'm thinking about requesting. If one of my fandoms has a lot more offers than the others, I know I'll likely get matched on that one and it kind of ruins the surprise for me, even if I really want that fandom. So I try to only request 1) fandoms I want equally, and 2) fandoms that have about the same number of offers.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

This is exactly my approach, too. Even if I want them all the same amount, knowing that I will almost certainly get X if I request X makes me not want to request it.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

I'm the opposite: if there's one that's going to have a whole lot of offers, I happily assume I will probably get it, and then when I don't (so far, I never have), I am pleasantly surprised.

(IIRC, unless something has changed, the matching algorithm actually makes hardest matches first - it attempts to do as many 1-offer/1-request matches as it can - and then moves on to the easy matches for whoever is left. So your odds may not be as skewed as you think, as long as your other requests are *possible*.)

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

You are wrong (but perhaps lucky). It matches hardest first: but hardest PARTICIPANT, not the hardest fandom per participant. So someone with no popular fandoms gets priority matching. If you have a popular fandom, you are lower priority. That’s why a lot of rare fandom requests are double assigned and those who offer a popular fandom usually match on it. If your author knows multiple fandoms that you requested and writes something other than the popular fandom, that’s luck.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

I think I was basing it off the old Yuletide Archive matching algorithm, which started with that as the first criteria, but also had a step of prioritizing based on rarity : https://yuletide.livejournal.com/61558.html

Does the AO3 algorithm skip the second criteria? Is there a full explanation of it anywhere?

Honestly, I'm not convinced that even without the rarity step, having a popular fandom means you will match on it. If you have five difficult-to-match fandom and one common one, chances are still pretty good that you will be the best remaining match for somebody will all rares before it gets down to the commons.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

DC I seem to remember in a few past years there were A LOT of initial pinch hits that contained some of the most popular fandoms. I'm not sure what that means beyond it's not a guarantee anyone will be matched on them.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

nc

I think it's the result of matching harder participants first. You end up with the hardest people to match and then the people who are so matchable their potential authors aren't already taken by the hard-to-match participants that come out of the algorithmic matching without needing to be a pinch hit.

Initial pinch hits seem to be people who either literally have no potential authors or people who, despite requesting mid-sized or large-for-Yuletide fandoms, have no potential author because any potential author was already assigned to someone else.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT anecdotally, anytime I have offered a fandom clearly more popular than my other offers, I have always matched on that fandom.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

Yep, any time one of my fandoms had a lot more offers than the others, I've always gotten matched on that fandom.

Re: Stupid Questions

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, thank you for this. It made me realize I should cut one from my letter.