Transparency, Thoughts, and Where We Go from Here · 7:19am Dec 23rd, 2019
First of All: If you haven't seen what the current plan for Jinglemas is, please read this blog here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/882902/what-jinglemas-participants-need-to-do-right-now
We had a very big day. And I can't help but express my deepest apologies to each and every one of you who have participated in Jinglemas and Jingleclop. I know there's a lot of vitriol floating around on the site. In addition, I hit a point where I began to simply stop responding to messages today. After 2 full days of organizing, writing and trying to make everything work, I personally hit a point where I simply lost hope. I took some time to escape from the situation that was being faced from the collaboration event. I know in some ways that's not fair. Especially to Trick Question, who was trying to get ahold of me regarding getting their story onto the collaboration, but I didn't respond promptly enough. If you can, please go check out her story. I'm not going to add it to Jingleclop now in order not set off "Plagarism checkers" on the site, which I believe are still a thing last I knew.
Many of you reached out for an official word from the mods on everything we faced today. Well I have that for you. It also contains information on our plan to go from here.
I had gotten permission from meester to share this, so I am doing so to ensure everyone is on the same page.
First: Because of this event there are no strikes or warnings for Jinglemas/JingleClop being placed this year. Even for some of the dropouts. I feel like it's wrong to penalize people at this point when we didn't meet our goals of having stories up the way we promised we would handle. That's our bad.
Tomorrow, (the 23rd) I will be issuing the site post for jinglemas in the best, most positive way possible. I really hope that next year we can work together to make Jinglemas as strong as possible. I hope that everyone takes their best opportunity to share their published story links with me so I can get their stories included in the blog post. I've gotten the impression from the mod team that they'll allow late stragglers to be added, but edits need to be done within reason. meaning I cant give detailed edits for every single little issue that crops up. I apologize for that.
I apologize... for everything. For everyone going through this. For everyone who feel like this event isn't worth persuing anymore. Who's faith in the runners in this event have been shook. I'm going to do everything in my ability to re-establish that faith and trust within our community. And that's going to start with a new leaf tomorrow. A new path forward. Even if we're doing things differently.
I'm sorry I shut myself out today. The event really needed someone strong who could withstand the storm and respond to all of the chaos happening today, but at a point it became too much and I couldn't take it anymore.
If the community feels I should step down from this event, I'll speak to our team and develop a plan of action to ensure everyone is happy with our future.
But our immediate future is simple.
1. If your story is currently in the Jingleclop story, please stick to the rules and don't release it until the 29th. We're going to follow the rules the best we can.
2. If your jinglemas story is not posted on the site yet, please put it up AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.
3. When your story is posted, please send me a PM with it so I can include it in the site post. It may not be as fancy to some as a feature, but it's what we have.
4. I don't know how I didn't realize it the first time, but please send a link of your story to the person you wrote it for. Please do it as soon as possible.
5. If you believe you have not gotten your jinglemas story, please PM FimficCollabs and I will ensure you have a story made for you by a breezie, myself, or have a private gdoc.etc sent to you of the story that was written.
Today was a rough day. But we're going to lick our wounds and keep going. Because that's what we do. As a runner of the event, I'm going to do everything in my power to ensure everyone walks away with a story, no matter what. I hope that's enough of an apology to everyone on how that went.
Thank you all for your patience today.
Love,
Priest
P.S. -- Since this alt violates some rules of the site, we're likely going to have to make changes to the user or figure something else out for how to use this account. But all of that will be in January after this gets sorted out. The last thing we want is to put ourselves or our events into more hot water. Thank you all for your understanding.
Rough day indeed, but you're right. We've got to adapt and move on.
Here's hoping next year things will proceed smoothly.
Cheers, pal.
Hey Priest, do not worry so much. While there might be someone terribly frustrated with it, it's not me. It happens. Organizing things brings with it the inherent possibility that something somewhere goes wrong. There are only so much things a couple of people can quickly fix (and, broadly speaking, you did it).
The main thing is, the event is going on and no one was seriously hurt in the process.
You did the best you could under the circumstances. Thanks for coming to a resolution for all involved.
You did fine. Nopony is upset with you.
Agreed with the other voices - this is not your fault and I don't think I've seen a writer blame you for the problems here.
Some confusion from my quadrant stems from the fact that Jinglemas used to be temporarily anonymous. That was kind of the point: in was a secret Santa Stone gift, so you wouldn't know who gave you your present until January 1st. I think I even recall this giving time for stragglers to get their stories in.
But that was why you couldn't post the story yourself, and why it had to be done as a collaboration project. You had to remain anonymous, and this was obviously the only way to do that without making 100 new accounts, and in part because of that necessity the mods turned a blind eye to it. This is not what Meeester is saying, but it was my impression at the time.
So I was surprised when author names showed up in the Jingleclop compilation. Maybe we started doing that a couple years ago, though, I don't remember (my memory is bad for a number of medical-related reasons). Either way, it seems like that will be impossible going forward.
5173674
We used to include names in author's notes. We would keep it anonymous at writer request. But we found the stories actually got better traction and chapters got -more- reads, when people knew who made what.
this was the first year we did it in chapter titles. And, well, the final year too.
I'm pretty sure my recipient was a follower of mine, so I tried to hold off onto the very last minute.
Sincerely apologize for any trouble that gives you - but I think we're all trying to do our best given the fae moods of the site staff here
I'm sorry you had to deal with this, especially since they're hitting you with it on the holidays with zero warning. I can't imagine it's easy trying to wrangle people with a sudden post-last-minute rules change -- and it is a rules change since it has only ever been enforced on a case-by-case basis -- and I appreciate you trying to be positive about all this when certain staff members are determined to grinch it up.
Again, I'm not upset at all at how this event was organized or setup. This was my first year trying to participate in Jinglemas/clop, and I have no complaints about the process. (transparency: I had to drop out due to family needs, but I was working an entry up until then)
If anything, I'm just bewildered at the reaction from mods and admins on the site. I understand there are rules, some psuedo-unwritten, and I don't believe any mod/admin actions were taken out of any ill-will toward this event or its participants. But it just boggles my mind how this went from 0 to a Cat4 hurricane in a matter of hours.
Maybe in the longrun, this helps generate a good conversation between collab groups and the site mod team, so future events can avoid these last second potholes. :)