InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Liars waste so much time."

telesilla (telesilla) wrote in porn_battle,
@ 2009-04-13 18:47:00

Entry tags:

mod post

IJ Porn Battle ISO new maintainers....
Hi there! It's been a while since you all have heard from me and there are several, not very interesting reasons why. So moooooving right along....

My focus and that of several of my fellow mods, is moving from IJ to Dreamwidth. In that light, darkrose, helens78 and I have started up the DW Porn Battle community. For those who are going to be active on DW, we hope you'll be checking us out here.

Is this the end of the IJ Porn Battle? To be honest, I hope to hell it isn't. I know a lot of people who have every intention of remaining active on IJ and I'd hate to see the community fail just because some of us are splitting our time a little differently. And, selfishly, I will still be reading my flists here on IJ and I hope to take place in future IJ Battles.

In light of that, I'm looking for someone, or a team of someones, who is/are willing to take over the community. It's a concentrated burst of work while each battle is running, but it's totally worth it.

Please comment here if you're interested. If you have questions as to what is involved in running a Battle, feel free to ask.

ETA: For a breakdown of the process of running a Battle, see here

ETA2: ladynero has offered to take over; if you're interested in helping her, reply to her comment below. :)

(Read comments) - (Post a new comment)

	ladynero 2009-04-13 09:26 pm UTC (link)
	I am interested and rather curious to know what goes into mod-ing the Porn Battles. I know there will be a lot of work of organizing the prompts and then the stories, but what else is involved? (Reply to this) (Thread)

part one

telesilla
2009-04-13 10:17 pm UTC (link)

The main work involved in running a Battle is the organization of the two main lists--the prompts and the master fic list. Here's a rough breakdown of the process I used when it was my turn to run things. Also, this is how it worked for Battles 1-4. We made some changes with 5, but it'll be up to the new maintainers if those changes stay.

Day -3 or -2 -- announce the dates of the next Battle, emphatically reminding everyone that they need to follow the prompt guidelines. This bit is pretty easy; we had a standard post we'd cut and paste in and then edit to change the dates. example: here.

Day 1 -- Call for prompts, again reminding people to follow the guidelines. This is also just a matter of editing and then cutting and pasting at standard post. Example: here.

Days 1-3 -- As the prompt comments hit my inbox, I'd take and paste them into a document. At this point, it would just be a jumble of raw prompts. Since I don't have a job, I could spread this out over a day, so it's hard to tell how much time was involved, but it wasn't much. It did require me to be really methodical and even then, I'd still miss things.

Day 3 -- If I remembered, I'd post to the comm, telling people that they had a few hours left to get prompts in. (Example: here.) At the end of my day (which was usually in the middle of the night), I'd edit the prompt post with an ETA announcing that the prompt period was over. I usually backed this up with a comment to the post so people who missed the ETA would see it when they went to add more prompts.

Day 3-4 -- Once the prompt post was closed or the next day, depending on the time, I'd take the prompt document and sort it alphabetically. Then I'd go in and start sectioning off each fandom. This is the point at which I'd weed out prompts that didn't conform to the rules. In the early Battles, we actually reconfigured incorrect prompts, but at the point where we were getting in excess of 1,500 prompts, it just became too much work. This usually took several hours, although it seems like it shouldn't. It's just kind of fussy and tedious. Then I'd check the list I had against the comments in the prompt post to make sure I had everything. Even so, sometimes stuff would slip past me; it happens.

Day 4 -- I'd post the lists of prompts. The first time we ran the Battle, they fit in one post, but somewhere along the line, we had to start splitting them. This is the reason we posted the lists off-site in the last Battle. If we hadn't done so, we'd have had to split the list into three posts. We used a standard header above the prompt list, reminding people of the fic guidelines. Example: here. This was a pretty quick process once the list was created and divided.

Day 4-11 -- I'd just keep an eye as best I could, on the fics that came in, making sure they were all top level comments. Usually if they weren't I'd try to say something to the poster, so they could repost properly. I only had to do that a few times.

Day 10 or 11 -- I'd usually try to make a post reminding people that the deadline was coming up.

Day 11 -- I'd add ETAs to the prompt list posts, telling people that the Battle was closed. I'd also comment on each post, so people who missed my ETA would know the Battle was over.

Day 11 or 12 -- I'd start the Master List of Fics, linking each prompt used to the top level comment that contained the fic. This is where I'd start to hate the process because it's fiddly and really time consuming, particularly because I needed to keep each fandom seperate and in alphabetical order. I honestly don't know how long this part took, but I want to say it was a matter of five or six hours including breaks to read my flist and some of the porn I'd missed.

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

part two

telesilla
2009-04-13 10:24 pm UTC (link)

Day 12 -- I'd post the Master Fic List and then start in on the corrections as people left comments pointing out my mistakes. I'd also start compiling the stats, which was another really tedious process that took a few hours. It's something I finally gave up on in the last Battle and like everything else, it'll be up to the new mods to decide if stats are something people want.

As I mentioned above, for the fifth Battle, the prompts were listed off line and in a slightly different order. We let the people who left the prompts categorize them into several categories. After the fact, I'm not sure if that was actually a good idea or not; it made for a little more work, but not much, since I simply went by people's categories.

The bursts of work happen around the lists, both the Prompt List and the Master List of Fics. One of the things that might help would be having one person collate the prompts and then having a second person collate the Master Fic List.

There are probably places where the process could be streamlined; I think Helens used a spread sheet for the prompts for her Battle, but I'm not spread sheet savvy so I never tried.

One of the biggest issues for me was multiple names for single fandoms. This was usually a manga/anime issue, which made it hard for me because I'm not at all conversant with that part of fandom.

There are some decisions the next set of mods will probably have to make: Does the prompt list stay offline or should it come back to the comm? Should the arbitrary alphabetizing guidelines for prompts stay, or should they change? (For example: we insisted that it was "The Chronicles of Narnia" instead of "Chronicles of Narnia, The" and some people weren't happy with that.) Should the stats be brought back or did people really not miss them that last time?

Hope this helps answer any questions. :)

(Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: part two ladynero 2009-04-14 12:24 am UTC (link)
	It does help and I would be delighted to take over either part of this community or all of it. If there are others who want to be mods as well, I will be happy to work with them. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: part two telesilla 2009-04-14 03:33 am UTC (link)
	Awesome! You're exactly the kind of person I was looking for; someone who's been active in the comm for a while. grins What I'll do is make you a mod and give you posting access and then amend this post to say that people should reply to you if they want to help. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: part two jlsigman 2009-04-14 04:27 am UTC (link)
	I'd be more than happy to work with you. I'm good at collecting and sorting prompts, and making sure the way they're listed is consistant. :-) (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: part two ladynero 2009-04-14 12:18 pm UTC (link)
	grins Then welcome aboard. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	Re: part two aikonamika 2009-04-22 07:02 pm UTC (link)
	I'd be willing to help out! Maybe not if you started a Porn Battle in the next week or so, as that's finals, but in a couple of weeks I'll be completely free! =D (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	Re: part two ladynero 2009-04-22 07:13 pm UTC (link)
	Welcome aboard. grins (Reply to this) (Parent)

(Read comments) -