Comment Fest Theme #15, Sunday 3rd April

[darkravenwrote.livejournal.com]

hd_writers

Well, it’s wrap up day. This is the last theme post. Head's up, if you make a submission you'll probably win, because we've had no submissons so far. Not one. All you have to do is make a new comment on a hp creation that fits this theme, then post a link here. Check out the guidelines if you have any questions. The closing post will be up on Tuesday, you have until then to submit on any of the event themes.

Today, we’re going to look back at some of the contributions that have kept this comm going. You have 3 options here:

1. Go have an amble through the past events the comm has held. Back to Hogwarts, maybe, or Wizarding Games. (Browsing through the tags should help you here.) Have a look and see if anything interests you.

2. You could go take a look at what the other wonderful mods have been up to. They give up their free time maintaining this comm and I’m amazed by what can get done when they put their minds to it! (The other mods on this comm are: drarryisgreen, digthewriter, witchyemerald, khasael, tryslora, kitty_fic and thisgirl_is. *Claps and salutes them all*)

3. Take a scroll through your fellow members. Go search out their archive of creations. Drop them a line if you appreciate their work as well. We all like to feel appreciated and that our words are reaching other people.

Comments

[khalulu]

I'm sorry you haven't had more participation for your fest - I can see that you've been trying to spread enthusiasm about reading new things and leaving comments, which are both great goals! I know for myself, it took me awhile to understand how it was to work, and then the time I've had for reading in the past couple of weeks has gone to trying to read the work of other participants in the fest I was just in (HD Remix, so I've been trying to read originals and then remixes). And that usually didn't line up with the themes you had for that day. I can look back and see if any of them match up.

If you're not feeling totally discouraged, and think you might want to do something like this again, you might put out some feelers first? Sometimes I see people do that, say "I/we were thinking of having a fest about... would anyone be interested? It would work like this," and then sometimes people write back and suggest a little change in how it works, or the timing. So then people would understand "oh, it's about leaving comments on fics, it's not about writing little prompts and ficlets as comments," or they might suggest "How about saying here are three themes for this week, read a fic with any of these themes this week and leave a comment," so there was more turnaround time to find a fic, read it and comment before the theme changed again. Just a thought.

Anyway, I want to say I appreciate your effort to encourage reading and commenting.

[darkravenwrote.livejournal.com]

Hey :) Firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to shout out. I definitely appreciate it. I'd also like to say that instead of a closing post it's more going to be a 'what do we need to do to improve and make this something you want to take part in' post.

I haven't been discouraged, no worries! This was definitely a bit last minute, I only had time to do one poll before we started about a week in advance. This was absolutely a trial run so as long as I get loads of feedback, this wasn't a failure.

I actually ran this event over on another comm at the same time and it worked really well there (over in the Merlin fandom.) I don't know if more people participated because they happened to be free time wise compared to over here, or I think there are a lot of short fics that are a quick read. Or maybe because the fandom's newer they could remember old fics they'd read and go back to them for a skim read? I also know they're a lot more socially involved over there (eg there's always at least 5 people on chat) so they might feel more comfortable getting involved/asking questions etc. Either way, it's proof the event will work once the kinks have been ironed out.

Honestly, I've never taken part in a prompt/comment fest, so it didn't occur to me that the wording would confuse people! I'll have to ask for suggestions on that, on how to make it clearer. (I also don't think that's a thing that really exists over on Merlin so maybe that's why people tagged on quicker?)

One possibility I did think, was what if it was a comm in itself that ran all weeks of the year with a few 'themes' (i chose not to use prompt on purpose cos it's a writery word but i don't think it made much difference) a week so people have got time to read like you said.

Anyway, a how to improve feedback post will go up maybe tues or wednesday, whenever I have time. Thank you again, so much, for your feedback, it's really helpful!

[kitty_fic]

I agree with everything khalulu said here
<3