SASO 2016: Talkback

[referees]

This post is closed; thank you for your feedback. If you would like to provide constructive criticism, please contact the mods directly. All further replies to this entry are screened.

The mods still plan to reply to the topics listed at the bottom of the post.

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This is not the final wrap-up results/etc. post—that's coming in a couple of days. But while the mods tabulate final scores and create prize graphics, now's a good time to look back and reflect on your SASO 2016 experience.

Please leave comments giving us feedback on the event this year! What did you like? What did you dislike or find frustrating? What can we improve for next year, and how can we improve it? What was your favorite part of the event? Least favorite? Would you participate next year or not? Why? If you could mention your team when making your comment, we'd appreciate it.

If you would prefer to submit your comments in private, you can e-mail us at anime.espn@gmail.com or send us a Dreamwidth PM. We would prefer it if you'd put "Talkback" in the subject line.

Here's what the mod team plans to improve for next year:

• Voting program reliability. We'd like to apologize again for all of the server dowtnime, and definitely plan to make it much more stable for next year. The voting system in general, though, will remain the same.


• Bonus round program reliability. We think we got most of the kinks out during this year, but want to keep it stable for next year too.


• Dreamwidth capability for NSFW cross-posting. We didn't have time to implement it this year, but next year it should be ready to go.


• Clarifying the rules, especially on what "popular culture media" is acceptable to include in SASO work.

We also wanted to thank you again for being patient with us this year. We had a lot of technical hiccups, and you were all so kind while our heroic codermods worked out the kinks. We really appreciated your support.

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Mod Replies: (updated 12:55PM EDT 8/28/16)

Please note that inclusion of a topic on this list indicates that we're going to address it, not that we've made any decisions on judging/implementing or not implementing it.

Voting:

The preliminary vote system

Triggers in a participant's assigned vote pool

Juried panel (having the mods decide which entries were the best)

Voting mechanics

Bonus Rounds:

Promptless rounds

One day break between bonus rounds

Bonus round prompt and fill tracking/filtering

Recs round work count

Image size limit

Remix round

Remix/rec round timing

Rec round

Quality control (both prompts and fills)

What is allowed as a fill (tags and ratings)

Unscreening bonus rounds

Fairness to small teams

Comment screening

Main Rounds:

The anonymity policy

Professionalism:

Twitter tone

What information gets posted where

Considering a dreamwidth announcement community

Mod participation in the event

Comments

(frozen comment) Re: Team Azumane Asahi/Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi!!

[kazuyas]

I like the idea of a collective NSFW post where fills can be posted as comments, definitely seconding that as an option

(frozen comment)

[sawakise]

I'm just going to be positive and say things that I did like.

Hello, my name is Kise. I'm a young teenager who has got more salt than talent, which doesn't set the tone for this feedback. I enjoy playing the melodica and tending to my windowsill herb garden. I've also been growing twisting ivy up the walls of an apartment that I'm renting, but it's not embedded into the walls so I shouldn't have to pay for like, damage. Right?

Anyways, things that I liked:

My team.

I could write a twenty-paged essay on why I love my team. Holy cow. Amazing people to surround myself with. Met my writing idol (ON THIS TEAM, TURN UP, SO THAT PROBABLY EXPLAINS WHY I'M AFFRONTED BY HOW HER WRITING WASN'T TREATED WITH THE GODLY FEEDBACK THAT IT DESERVED BUT (shrug emoji, as the youths do). PRETTY SURE THAT THEY DON'T KNOW THAT I SEE THEM AS A GODDESS HAHA... ALTHOUGH I THINK... THEY MIGHT...) and met others that I knew OF in the fandom. It was like a young child's dream to meet up with essentially the Avengers of the MSW fandom. Wowzers. I was like a wise-cracking Spiderman that matured into a Deadpool who winks at the camera while doing dubious things in the background.

I really liked the team aspect!!! Bless y'all for doing that. I know that the Winter was Deadly Duos and the like, but it'd be cool if the winter ver. of saso was like, a team too!! Like maybe a randomly assorted team that searched for a common ship. That'd be balling.

Promptless BRs.

By a quick glimpse through everyone's feedback, I'm pretty much alone on this one. I really liked not having to worry about giving fills that the prompter disliked. Anyways, I liked the freedom to just come up with whatever I wanted to. Some people had GREAT prompts for the BRs but it wasn't really for a ship that I felt I knew a lot about, so I could just take the idea and run with it. Sometimes I would prompt something in a BR and I ended up filling it myself in BR5, so haha, turn up, right.

Rec Round + General Positivism.

Yeah, I agree with others that there shouldn't have been points assigned to the recs round. But I also think that the points should have been done with altogether--especially when you deduct points when a rule is violated, thereby instating value in something that """doesn't matter""".

But anyways, I really think we should keep the recs round! Maybe even have it OPEN for the entirety of SASO. So when you see a fill that you like, you can just pop on over to the recs round and post that you really love it. There would be no points so it's not like people would have to watch for a cluster of 3+ fills to recommend, and yes, you could probably comment that you really loved their fill, but there's nothing wrong with going to the other thread to recommend it to people at large!

I don't have any other suggestions, so I feel like it's unfair to complain. Like, there were problems, but I have no good solutions. Anyways, I don't think that I'll do this sort of thing again, mainly because of time constraints and the aforementioned "problems but no solutions", but I had a great time overall. Like I said, I got to meet some of the coolest people in the MSW fandom here AND I got to talk to my writing idol on like, everything. And I got to follow her locked twitter. I'm so happy. She could just like my tweets (SOMETIMES SHE DOES) and I'd be happy.

Anyways, this is also a good place to say it: if I've hurt you with any of my fills, please come to talk to me directly! I know that "bandaids don't fill bullet holes" but I hope that I can clear the air in any way possible.

Catch y'all on the flip side!

(frozen comment)

[kazuyaloveseijun]

I didn't say anything because I was too scared to, I honestly thought I must have done something to make you angry with me and I didn't know what. Thank you for the apology.

(frozen comment)

[hapaxlegomenon]

Popping in to say that I love the idea of an ongoing recs post, I personally would get a lot more use out of that and it would be a nice way to consolidate some of the exceptional fills.

I hope that idea gets serious consideration, I think it's a winner.

(frozen comment)

[sawakise]

That's my bad then, I should have aimed to come across as an individual who was welcoming and open, instead of this intimidating figure who was out against you with a vengeance.

Again, I only wish that you told me about this earlier so that future Bonus Rounds could have been avoided. Did I fill anything for you that had unnecessary violence/gore/triggers? If you provide a description, I can locate them and delete them if you would like.

Again, I apologize for not making SASO a safe space that you felt like you could participate in.

(frozen comment)

[dynamite]

+1 to ongoing recs post!!

(frozen comment) Re: team imaizumi shunsuke/naruko shoukichi

[hapaxlegomenon]

My understanding about having sexually explicit stuff be linked offsite was because showing that kind of content to an unwilling recipient (especially if they're a minor) could possibly be classified as sexual harassment. While something like violence, which may be unpleasant for some people, isn't actually illegal, and therefore is just a preference thing. I really don't understand why people are conflating unwanted sexual content with unwanted violent content when the implications of receiving them are completely different.

(frozen comment) Re: team imaizumi shunsuke/naruko shoukichi

[dynamite]

I understand the legal framework of sexual content, but I just think that if we want to respect both the prompter and the creative freedom of the filler, it might be a good idea to treat content with major warnings in the same way. (It's just easier to skim/inbox delete a fill if it's a link to AO3, or whichever solution they're thinking of implementing next year.)

(frozen comment) Re: team imaizumi shunsuke/naruko shoukichi

[platina]

It may not be "illegal" (although I will never understand why violence/gore is socially acceptable but sex is not, protecting minors aside... who should be protected from violence as well!), but it's just as "unpleasant" (and more than just """"""""unpleasant""""""""") for many people.

(frozen comment)

[sawakise]

Awww, thank you! I just think it would make more sense? Like there were definitely BR1 fills that I thoroughly enjoyed to the point of DREAMING about them, but I had no clue... where they were... by the time that BR recs opened up... haha...

Whoops.

(frozen comment) Re: team imaizumi shunsuke/naruko shoukichi

[hapaxlegomenon]

Perhaps I'm biased by my abhorrence towards the Ao3 cross-posting rule and my indifference towards violence/gore. I think it's kind of a silly suggestion but I suppose it doesn't matter what I think anyway, I'm not a mod.

(frozen comment)

[clefairy]

I have to be honest in the fact I had only heard about it paraphrased so I actually didn't realise it could have been something that was as easily misunderstood as that and now I feel really bad because basically neither party is wrong ghghdhhhs

humans are difficult

(frozen comment)

[clefairy]

Hi! I'd like to clarify I had only heard about it in paraphrase, so I actually wasn't aware it could have been up to a miscommunication. It's probably too late for that now, but I'd like to apologise to you for making assumptions. I actually didn't even know it was you who made the fill to be honest. I think I heard a name but I couldn't pin it to a person since I'm fairly removed from the event.

I guess the point to take home from all of this misunderstanding is that there definitely needs to be more clarity in what the tags are for and whether violent content should possibly be posted offsite or as the mods had brought up, cross-posted to DW (?). It's not your fault when no one is really sure what tags are used for.

Again I'm really sorry.

if it means anything this is the first time I've read the fill and I personally really like it...but also im an angst monster and i like to Suffer...

(frozen comment) Team KiyoYachi

[jeilovesyou]

First of all, I want to thank the mods for running this event again this year! This was my second year, and it was so great to come back to this fun, creative environment again. It was the highlight of my summer to be able to have fun creating things with a group of talented people, and I was able to do that thanks to the hard work all of you put in. Thank you.

I really appreciated some of the changes made from last year! In particular, the adjustments to work limits were a godsend and worked out pretty much perfectly from what I can tell. My team did well with them, and I saw some excellent entries this year that I think would have been over the limits by last year's standards, so I really want to thank you for working with people and making adjustments there.

Switching to bullet points now so I can keep myself somewhat organised:

1. A lot of people have mentioned the two promptless rounds, and I wanted to echo some of those thoughts, because that was particularly difficult for me as well. When I saw the Myth & Lore round go up I was excited that this meant I could write ships that aren't likely to be prompted, but my heart also kind of sank because I realised... the next round will probably be remixes, so that means I can't prompt anymore for the rest of SASO. Prompting is a lot of fun for me, so that was kind of discouraging and burned me out on the BRs a little. I agree that maybe spacing these out would help. But I also wonder if a promptless round could maybe be something a little more general or open to interpretation? I'm personally not good with AUs, and while I did appreciate being pushed out of my comfort zone a little, it was difficult to have that on top of the challenge of not having any prompts. It was too many big changes at once compared to the other rounds, I guess.

2. I remember that last year there was a chatroom, and that's how I made several of the friends I've stuck with ever since. It did sort of fall out of use after a little while, but I was thinking it would be nice to have a place for people to check in and make friends as we go like that again! The friending meme is great but I wonder whether there can't be something people will continue to use throughout the competition? Some sort of discussion forum open to all participants where people can just check in when they like, discuss what's going on at the time, what they're enjoying, and talk some general fandom talk. I'm not sure how realistic this would be or whether others would be as keen to use it as I would, but making friends and chatting with other creative-minded people is my favourite aspect of SASO. I'd love any opportunity to get to know people better.

3. I believe someone mentioned something somewhere about maybe having a round where people could go back and do fills from other rounds that they didn't get to? And I would absolutely love this, honestly, especially with the two-week BR schedule. I'm always impressed with the way the SASO community pulls out all the stops and generates LOADS of amazing, inspiring prompts, and there was just no way to get to even a fraction of the ones that really resonated with me. Having a round like this towards the end of the competition would be really great, I think, and allow everyone to relax a little more about balancing BRs against the MRs because that's less time spent sifting through prompts. I know I ended up with a pile of imcomplete fills that didn't make it because I just couldn't type fast enough, and I wonder if there are others out there who ran into the same problem. I'd love to see those fills realised!

4. Tagging prompts ended up getting really confusing for me, which I feel bad about because I think it was a question I asked the mod team that led to its implementation... initially I was just concerned about prompts being posted wherein the actual text in the prompt post itself was violently and/or sexually explicit. But once tags were required it seemed like some people were using them to tag the content of their prompt, but others were using it to suggest tags for possible fills, and I wasn't sure what to do with that field. For example, if I was open to a NSFW fill for a prompt, but didn't require it and the prompt itself was not NSFW, should I tag it? Would that discourage someone from writing a fill that wasn't NSFW? Should I omit it, and possibly discourage someone who would have liked to take it in a NSFW direction? Basically, when I asked the mod team about tagging prompts, my concern was about the text within the prompt post itself, and I don't think I communicated that clearly enough. If there's a tag field, I think it would help for the rules to explicity state whether it applies to the text of the prompt post or to the preferences of the prompter in regards to how they would like to see it filled. Or maybe there ought to be two fields, or some other way to differentiate between these two things? But I think that "do not read the text of this prompt post if you don't want to see x" is very different from "the prompter would like/is open to the fill containing x," and I think the tag field for prompts ended up being used for both/either and it was unclear. I believe this may have also caused at least one of the instances where someone received a fill that upset them, because the prompter may have interpretted their intention of "the text of this prompt may trigger people in regards to x" as "please feel free to put x in your fill."

5. In regards to twitter, I'm another person who found it difficult to find announcements sometimes. A single place for announcements and only announcements would be helpful for me as well. On the flipside, one thing I absolutely LOVED about the SASO twitter this year was seeing those individual ads for each final vote contender. I could tell that love and thought went into those and it was very touching. It was also so nice for people to be able to retweet their team's ad, or the ads of entries they particularly enjoyed.

6. I meant to ask this during the competition, but is there a reason for only team captains being able to advertise their team's entry? This was a little disheartening to me, as a person highly motivated by team pride. I wondered about teams whose captains more or less went MIA who weren't allowed to advertise. And for my part, it was sad to not be able to just put up a link and gush in my own words about how proud I was to be a part of a team that created an amazing thing. I believe a teammate also got a little freaked out because she had retweeted an ad with very innocuous commentary about being proud of us as a team, and then double-checked the rules about advertising and had to hurriedly delete it and RT again with zero commentary. Is this an anonymity concern, maybe? If so, then by all means remind people while advertising to keep the anonymity policy in mind. But I'm not understanding why exactly only one member of a team should be allowed to advertise a MR entry, especially when that person might not be the one most suited to it, or may have vanished entirely.

7. This is not to the mod team, but to my fellow participants, and it's been said before but I wanted to give my own thoughts on it. Last year SASO was astoundingly drama-free for an event of its size. There were a few (isolated, yet very disheartening) instances of poor sportsmanship and such, but some of it came from outside the competition, even. I was so happy to experience a large-scale fandom event where the general attitude was supportive and positive. I was really excited to be a part of that again, and for the most part I still felt those happy, welcoming vibes. But there was... noticeably more ugliness of attitude this year, for whatever reason. I saw people using their public twitters to criticise individuals and teams where those people could easily have seen them. I saw people being remarkably rude directly to the mods, once again in public. I heard stories from others who were directly spoken to harshly, or indirectly mocked in public and saw it. Y'all. How come? I know that in an event this big, sometimes it's not possible to get along with everyone. But being that SASO is basically just about creating cool stuff based on things you enjoy, can we not just... do that, and let everybody else do that too without fear of being publicly derided? If you really need to vent about the way a specific person is behaving or why you don't like something that was posted, can that at least be kept private?
I still think the vast majority of people were super-cool and nice and I still feel like I can recommend SASO to friends in good conscience, but I'm kind of worried about troubling behaviour escalating.

Anyway, I just want to wrap up by again expressing my gratitude, and my heart goes out to everyone for just MAKING SO MUCH COOL STUFF. Look at the VOLUME of what we have now for all these great ships, all this stuff that didn't exist at all before we started! And now here it is! I honestly get so emotional thinking about that. So much heart and passion got poured into this competition, and I'm still working through tons of stuff I bookmarked or that got recommended to me. I think that's the coolest. Thank you to absolutely everyone for being a part of this wild ride! <3 <3

(frozen comment)

[catlarks]

That's about how I feel! Misunderstandings really suck, but imo they're something we as users have to handle ourselves and the mods cannot and should not have to arbitrate those things for us.

I'm much happier to think that the issues with triggering content were misunderstandings like this, than that the userbase has some bad eggs who just don't care about people's comfort.

(frozen comment)

[catlarks]

(this is off-topic (ish) but I wanted to second that I enjoyed the fill you wrote for the prompt in question! I feel I would have made the same assumption you did: the prompt was tagged for a character death mention, so a fill with character death was appropriate, and I really liked how you chose to follow through on that.

I read a whole handful of things you've written this SASO and enjoyed them a lot; I'm genuinely sorry I didn't have the energy to leave nice comments at the time. So I just... Wanted to let you know that I think your SASO contributions were great. ♥ )

(frozen comment)

[sawakise]

First and foremost: I accept your apology.

I think that it was harsh to jump to conclusions about me and I felt pretty terrible being labeled as a person who would intentionally target someone and use their triggers against them. I understand that my "boo-boo" of hurt is nothing compared to someone's safety being compromised, but I don't appreciate being called out THIS LATE in a public forum. That was from the quotes bonus round, which was well over a month ago. It sounded like I was being dragged through the mud over a misunderstanding, especially since simply coming to me personally would have just resulted in me deleting a fill with a simple click of the button as well as issuing a formal apology (which I have done, the latter, not the former, because I'm waiting to see what the other individual wants me to do. I'm not good in situations like these.)

The way that I treat tags is more like guidelines, to be honest. It's probably not the most "fandom"-savvy, but when there's an entire bonus round dedicated to myth and lore and everyone has to post "tags: supernatural", I assumed that it meant that I'd have to cater to those tags specifically. I definitely agree that tags should be clarified; I had thought that if a prompter is triggered by certain things, then they would never explicitly mention it or post a prompt relating to it.

Anyways--I should stop rambling. I was just taken aback from being vagued at and that I didn't given a "single thought towards the prompter", because that could be further from the truth. I hope that this misunderstanding can be cleared up and that we can move to creating a safer space in the future.

(frozen comment)

[sawakise]

(Not to sound ungrateful, but I think I would feel better if this wasn't a fill that hurt someone.

But the other fills that you enjoyed that didn't hurt someone? Thank you! That means a lot to me; energy aside, I'm glad that you enjoyed my writing.)

(frozen comment)

[catlarks]

(Nah, I think that's totally legit, so I'm glad I mentioned the other fills because those were cute and to my knowledge, well-received by anyone who read them.

The ones I have saved in my personal daiya saso rec list which idk if I'll ever polish up enough to be public were: the kuraryou one about Kuramochi liking only Ryousuke to praise him, THE CHRISZAIZEN KINGSMAN AU that one I adored so much, the miyusawa fake dating as cops (I LOVE THAT TROPE) and a couple fills with Takako, so like, bless you for writing Takako.

I appreciate a lot that clearly you just want to make things people will enjoy, it's a good feeling and a noble pursuit. And you def made a lot of things this summer which were that kinda fill. So, thank you for writing them. ♥ )

(frozen comment) Re: team soumako

[kazuyas]

standing_ovation.gif

(frozen comment) Re: Team KiyoYachi

[kazuyas]

seconding no2! a general place to chat in addition to the friend meme would be lovely ~

(frozen comment) Re: team krry captain here

[dokuhan]

i've never liked image round and i love quotes round, to absolutely no one's surprise.

I feel like there could def be some improvements with the image round, especially as someone who as also never been a very big fan of it. I feel like I'm confined to the context the image was in when it's something pulled from the source material and it's super limiting.

I'm not saying that fanart should be an option, but what about something more generic? Like pictures of standard objects or portraits of random people or whatever else really.

(frozen comment) Re: team krry captain here

[kazuyas]

i would like to paper the walls with no3—that articulates everything i've been thinking re: this issue very well and in a very concise way so hats off to you for that.

(frozen comment)

[clefairy]

Yeah. I had obviously only heard Hannah's side of the story, and I guess any normal reaction of a friend is to be super !!! when the only side you heard was what I did. I understand it was likely an involuntary overreaction from her because she felt attacked by the fill, and I also in hindsight really should have asked for the source before I said anything, but I'm only human and I'm only capable of so much objective thinking :(

I definitely am too! Though I did read further on in someone else's thread that there were some fills that blatantly disregarded a prompted ship and that doesn't sit right with me because it feels like fundamentally missing the point orz

(frozen comment) Re: team krry captain here

[platina]

This just reminds me, I was a little confused whether those official arts had to be from the canon you are prompting for or any official art, because some people started prompting Love Live pictures for unrelated ships and I got so confused.

Also, some "images" were more like quotes by how text heavy they were (up to pretty much being only screenshots of speech bubbles).

Overall I like the idea of using pictures as prompts, but I do believe it could use some fiddling. Pictures (textless ones) in general might make for a nice prompt round.