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)

[bluedreaming]

This was my first time participating in SASO and disclaimer! (I ended up not being able to participate as much as I would have liked due to unexpected issues) but in reading the comments above, while I feel that I can't necessarily provide a constructive opinion on some raised concerns, I wanted to note that I really enjoyed the remix bonus round (and lest it be seen as a points issue, I really did take it seriously and made podfics of fills I strongly enjoyed/connected with; I didn't see it as a "quick points" thing at all.)

Regarding announcements, I did find the Twitter a little confusing to follow in terms of tracking important announcements amidst other Twitter content. I do think that the fun community aspect of the Twitter also had a very important place! It was just a little difficult at times to quickly check for announcements. . As the mod reply to the first comment quite reasonably explains, it would be a lot for mods to update three or four places each time there is a quick yet important announcement, but as services such as feedmyinbox were mentioned, I wanted to highlight a service like ifttt.com that could be used to consolidate announcement posting for the mods: if all announcements are posted to tumblr with the tag "announcement", a recipe can be set on ifttt.com so that all tumblr posts tagged announcement are tweeted (with or without a link to the relevant tumblr post for more information), which might simplify things for mods and also allow participants to assemble an easy personal email notification system by using their own ifttt.com accounts to have ifttt.com email them whenever a tumblr post tagged announcement is posted. In any case, it's of course completely up to the mods and what works best for them, but there are definitely a lot of options that might make things a little easier for mods and participants alike.

In summary though, it really was a lot of fun and I want to thank the mods for all their hard work. Thank you!