Snowflake Challenge 15: How did it go?

[ysabetwordsmith]

Snowflake Challenge 15: How did it go?

How Did the Fandom Snowflake Challenge Go? Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it.

Did you get all you wanted to get from it? Are there things you're going to carry with you for as long as you can? Are you going to continue to challenge yourself? Continue to connect? We can't wait to hear.





Did you get all you wanted to get from it?

Not really. Two of my favorite challenges are the recommendations and new fanwork. This time, the closest thing to recommendations was a top ten list, and most people made theirs of something other than fanworks. There was no challenge that really called for new fanfic or fanart. The moodboard challenge was fun, and I'd be happy to do that again, but it's not really the same thing. So that was disappointing.

The timing was absolutely exasperating. In a typical year, most challenges appear early in the morning, with a few appearing just after midnight. This year, a bunch of challenges only appeared in afternoon or even later evening, and two of those happened on consecutive days. There's no way to tell the difference between someone posting late because of their time zone or schedule vs. a situation that needs moderator attention and maybe a pinch hitter. After the second late post I just gave up trying to keep them on track. Needing to check back repeatedly through the day was distracting and frustrating, rather than the fun of having a new challenge ready to go in the morning.

I still had fun this year, it just wasn't as good as some previous years.

On the bright side, participation has been good. I've found new blogs to follow, and some new folks have subscribed to mine. I've gotten lots of extra comments, including on non-snowflake posts. So I would say that the activity and connectivity have run higher than average for recent years.

I was also pleased to see a meta challenge for a canon overview, fanifesto, etc. I got to read some good ones, and I'm pleased with how mine turned out. Comments indicate that there are High Potential fans on Dreamwidth, which is cool.

Comments

[nightfalltwen]

I found the timing of posts a little frustrating too. I'm not familiar with all of DreamWidth's features, but I know that Livejournal had a way to schedule posts for a specific time. If DreamWidth has that feature, I hope that the mods will possibly use next year to make the postings a little more consistent.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>I found the timing of posts a little frustrating too.<<

A lot of people did. It led to considerable "Hey, where is today's challenge?" posts. I also saw a few references suggesting that it led to some people falling behind or missing challenges altogether because they had one checkpoint in their day -- usually but not always morning -- so if the challenge wasn't up, they didn't see it.

>> I'm not familiar with all of DreamWidth's features, but I know that Livejournal had a way to schedule posts for a specific time. If DreamWidth has that feature, I hope that the mods will possibly use next year to make the postings a little more consistent.<<

As far as I know, DW does not have advance posting. I wish they did; it's very useful.

The organizers try to get volunteers from different timezones around the world, so that the same group of participants don't always see a new challenge first. It's possible that some other folks really enjoyed this year's spread. But there are two factors to consider:

* Midnight to noon, the most common posting range, offers a 12 hour span for posting with another 12 hours left (at least) after it appears. A challenge that appears late in the day may only have 6-8 hours in which to make a post filling it, which leads to many such posts dated the following day. This not only irritates many users but also makes it harder to find Snowflake posts later on, if they aren't properly attached to the odd-numbered challenge dates.

* A majority of DW users live in North America. The continent actually spans about 6 time zones -- Alaska and Atlantic are on the edges -- but the vast majority of people live in the middle four: Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern. It would make sense to post most challenge times suiting those zones, and prior Snowflake seasons have done that.

[author_by_night]

I wonder if one solution to the timing might be posting the challenges ahead of time? I'm another one who found it a little frustrating, although I do understand that (a) everyone's in different time zones, and (b) sometimes life happens. But I think if people at least have the posts written, that takes off some of the stress. I also echo nightfalltwen's suggestion to schedule posts ahead of time.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I wonder if one solution to the timing might be posting the challenges ahead of time? <<

It might. I thought about that. It would certainly make planning ahead easier.

On the other hoof, the surprise is part of the fun. I'm not sure I'd want to lose that.

>>I'm another one who found it a little frustrating, although I do understand that (a) everyone's in different time zones, and (b) sometimes life happens.<<

Yeah. A lot of folks seem to share that feeling. Others may have liked it, but I have yet to see anyone actually saying that, so I can't be sure.

>> But I think if people at least have the posts written, that takes off some of the stress. <<

It certainly does for me. I do some of the things in advance that take a lot of time and usually or always appear somewhere. But then this year they didn't call for new fanworks. :/ I guess I can always save it for next year.

>>I also echo nightfalltwen's suggestion to schedule posts ahead of time.<<

If Dreamwidth has that feature, I haven't found it. But if it could be done, it would help.

Re: Thoughts

[author_by_night]

On the other hoof, the surprise is part of the fun. I'm not sure I'd want to lose that.


Yeah, that's a very good point.

>>I also echo nightfalltwen's suggestion to schedule posts ahead of time.<<


I think it works if you set the post in the future. I feel like I've done that before.

[pronker]

It's good to see that you still had a measure of fun, despite the unwelcome differences that 2026 brought ... I agree that surprise proves a large part of the fun, year after year.