coaltide | C.R.E.A.M

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2021

C.R.E.A.M

Coal ruins exchanges around me - spitey spitey fic y'all.

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Well, like I said, it wouldn't help with the ones like all-yugoslavia or giant-pile-of-hard-games person. But the full round of IPHs included a lot of stuff that wasn't actually super obscure, and was reasonably likely to have been the kind of stuff someone might have thrown in if they'd had to, like Snowpiercer or Transmetropolitan or Sharpe (or Murderbot.) But if there's a bunch of noms sitting around that nobody's planning to request, they soak up a bunch of offers that the stuff people actually want then don't get. Plus, of course, if people are nomming 6+ things themselves and only request those, they're less likely to add something that somebody else nommed that would make them more matchable.

No sock noms wouldn't magically solve it, but real participants offering and requesting other real participants' offers and requests are what makes the wheels turn, and the more fake noms you get the creakier it is.

You're already not supposed to nom with socks, and mods have absolutely no way to enforce that. What exactly do you propose?

DC

First stupid idea to come to mind is "nominating pledges you to sign up with the AO3 account you used to nominate". Runs into problems as soon as anybody has good reasons not to sign up, e.g. unexpected RL issues that mean you can't dedicate time to writing a gift, but it's a thought.

It's actually not a bad idea - might reduce possible socks / sock armies!

It would be a nightmare to enforce, because mods don't see who nominates.

And I, for one, would have zero qualms having socks "pledge" to sign up and then have a RL emergency.

I think the only way to enforce would be a) for mods to be able to see who nominates and b) nominating but not signing up puts you on the NYR list for *next* yuletide and/or disqualifies you for getting pinch hits this year. And they would also have to put in serious effort to hunt down socks, of course.

I think well before they did that though they would either reduce max noms per person/increase min offers per person, or they would completely change the way noms are done.

People like you, coalie, who just want to see the world burn, would figure out a way get in no matter what, but if we cleared out most of the people who are just nomming as a favor for a friend or who are nomming on spec but don't really think they'll sign up this year or are nomming because they want to treat but not sign up, it would probably reduce the level to where it wasn't causing problems. And honestly a polite request or two would likely work for that.

I think the only way to enforce would be a) for mods to be able to see who nominates

But that's not how AO3 works. This isn't a Yuletide thing, it's a AO3 thing. AO3 have to rework the entire nomination process for all exchanges. And while they've changed things to give Yuletide specific functionality before, I really doubt that this would be worth it.

And I don't want to see the world burn. I just want to nominate a variety of things so that when sign-ups come around, I have fandoms I really want to request. Narrowing them down before nominations doesn't work for me.

I don't think it would solve anything, anyway. The assumption that there are unmatchables because there are too many nominations is faulty from the start.

I mean, they have the head coder on the mods list, they could probably get a special database report just for them if they asked very nicely. (And they're probably going to have to totally redo the exchange code if they ever get moving on block lists; better noms handling would likely be on the list, because you'd need to be able to block people from nomming in your exchange.)

But yes, I don't think they would do that as their first move. They would change the required numbers again first. And it's not that bad yet, but it's way up compared to last year, so it could get that bad in a couple more.

If it is a problem they could start by saying it's become a problem and just asking people not to next year? Most of the people doing it don't actually want to hurt yt.

And a couple time previously they've had to change the noms, offers, or requests max/min numbers, I suspect a minor rumbling about that possibility would also be motivational.

People would wank furiously either way, of course, it would have to be causing worse problems than a few lingering iphs, but if it trends up it might.

If they let me nominate more than three things, I wouldn't have to nominate with a sock... Honestly, I think increasing the limit from three to, let's say, five or six would significantly decrease the number of people who nom with socks.

But the point is to get you to offer more than you can nominate. If nominations go to 5 or 6, are you comfortable offering 6 or 7?

As someone who never offers anything she nominates, it didn't even occur to me that this was the thinking. I nominate things I want to request. I will typically only request things I've nominated. I will also typically have more than 3 requests. Ergo, I need more than 3 nom slots.

SA

And on the subject of request matchability, all it really takes is some promo and keeping an eye on the requests summary as the exchange progresses. I've never been a Yuletide IPH or unmatchable despite only requesting self-nommed fandoms. OTOH I could easily make myself entirely unmatchable by only requesting fandoms nommed by other people but asking for very complicated or obscure stuff.

Ah, interesting. I'm usually a mix (I requested 2 fandoms I nominated this year and 1 I didn't, offers split 2:2). I don't think it's bad logic to say everyone should offer at least one fandom they didn't put forth themselves, since the whole point is you're writing for someone else. But obviously it's not foolproof.

The thinking isn't that you're supposed to offer what you nominate (I usually don't either) but that people need to be offering and/or requesting other people's noms. If you could nom six, offer six, and request six, you'd end up with a situation where a lot of people would nom, offer, and request the same six, and nobody's signups would overlap enough to be matchable.

By making it that you have to offer at least one thing you didn't nominate, and you have to request at least as many as you nominated, in theory nearly everybody is matchable (and if you changed it even more - so that you have to offer twice as many as you nominated, or you have to request more than you nominated - people would overlap even more and be even more matchable.)

But if there's a bunch of extra nominations, that throws the numbers off.

da

It also means Yuletide would drastically shrink because a lot of people in tiny fandoms would have nothing to request.

And you're ignoring that everyone already IS matchable on offers. There's not a single participant out there who offers nothing someone else requests. That's why we have the "contact unmatchables" 24 hours period.

Well, yes. But they've changed those numbers before and somehow yuletide survived!

The contact unmatchables phase involves people being asked if they can add offers. So yes, sometimes people already need to offer more than the minimum number in order to be matchable.

AYRT

They've changed those numbers, sure, but if the number of requests are higher than the number of nominations that's more along the lines of the inane "things need to be nominated by two people to make it into the tagset" idea they had for five seconds a few years ago before the outrage made them reconsider. Yuletide is a rare fandom exchange. Forcing people to request something they didn't nominate would, for many people, mean a) they don't sign up, b) they have sign ups with a "I don't really want this fandom but I had to add a sixth request" note (joy!), or c) bring out the socks.

It creates much more problems than it solves. Which isn't hard, because it solves precisely zero.

The contact unmatchables phase involves people being asked if they can add offers. So yes, sometimes people already need to offer more than the minimum number in order to be matchable.

And they do, and then everyone is matchable. I don't see what reducing nominations would change there, other than maybe reduce the number of unmatchables before assignments go out. Which was, what? Five this year? A real problem that needs to be addressed, clearly! /s

How does that fix the problem? The problem (supposedly) is the total number of nominations per person, not the number of socks being used.

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C.R.E.A.M

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