Stargateland: post-phase-8 brainstorm #2

[theeverdream]

Hi everyone!

In case you missed earlier talk - stargateland is ending after the current phase and there is interest in starting a challenge community to follow after it. The first brainstorming post is here and if you'd like to help or give any general ideas that is a good place for it.

Basically at this point, I am proceeding as if another challenge community will in fact take place. I have gotten a comm and now with this post am headed to some specifics that I need feedback on. I've been thinking a lot about how to balance certain things. I want people to have fun, be interacting with other people, and basically have it feel like the type of comm we're used to. Due to my own health issues and a limited number of organizing people I also need to think about how I can make it as low-stress for the people involved in running it. So I've really tried to come up with some good ways of balancing these two things. I don't want the comm to fall down in the middle of a phase because it can't be kept up with but I also don't want people not to have a bunch of fun.

These are some of the things I've thought of that might need to happen in order to have the best balance. Not all of these necessarily need to happen but I do think there definitely will have to be changes from what we're used to. So I've made the list so that you can give feedback on stuff! And if you'd like to hear my thoughts behind any of the points just let me know - I've tried to explain a little about some of the things. (I also think it may help a lot to have some changes to how points are done but I am saving that for a later brainstorm post).

Phase length/pace/etc
-shorter phase length ("test" phase)?
-less frequent challenges?
-not having people join in the middle of the phase?

Teams
-team names with no ties to show so it will be easier to organize people into teams.
-team challenges would be something where you could do things one after another (e.g. one person adds to a photo, next person adds something else, in sequence) versus people having to coordinate in advance (and/or possibly try to put people in teams based on what times they are online normally?)
-no individual captains (don't think we have people for that)
-use social comm from stargateland (will still be open) and possibly old chatrooms as well
-encourage different team members to post things in their team comms - not necessarily at only specific times. OR possibly team comms could be mostly reminder stuff and have posting things like social stuff in a social comm for everyone

Challenges
-since prob. less frequent challenges, try to have challenges be open with options. Puzzle challenges have multiple types of puzzles to choose from, other challenges be filled with fic or multimedia as the participants choose (Since writing the first draft of this I see the last stargateland phase is more this way - do people like this?)
-no claiming challenges
-no voting challenges

Feedback
EDIT: not feedback on challenge entries, just spaces for people to say to the mod/s if they liked the challenge, like the way things are progressing, etc.
-since things will be so different have opportunity for feedback. Anonomyous if possible so even I am not aware of who has said what. -area for feedback on individual challenges? definitely space for feedback about things in general
-possibly polls? Not anon, I don't think, but might be easier to take a poll rather than type out feedback (in addition to having space for people who do want to type out feedback)


Definitely want to hear what everybody thinks, especially if you don't think something would work out very well. Thanks! :)

Comments

[ashimon.livejournal.com]

Ideas
-Test phase seems to be a good idea and I would support a 2 months phase beyond that instead of the usual 3
-Challenges with different options could turn into a bitch for mods
-I have nothing against people joining at the middle of challenges
-My problem isn't really the number of challenges, I'd prefer that they'd be open longer
-I love small group challenges (either within or across teams, but I might be alone)
-I am not sure anonymous feedback would be a good idea. If you are not willing to put your name on the comment probably you should not say those things (I am not sure what you have in mind for feedback things, but making it compulsory would probably be a pain for members. However, it'd be interesting to say that you have to give feedback say 25% of the challenges--not the entries--to get points.) Anyways, it should be made clear for people that putting out their works means that they will get feedback and they might not like the feedback (I know we did feedback challenges with only positive feedback which I also find a little odd.) Or maybe people could tell in their entry whether or not they want feedback.
-I personally like keeping graphic and writing challenges separate (maybe one building the other could work but keeping in mind that not all would want to get involved in all kinds of challenges)
-I thought it would be fun if everyone got to host a challenge as a challenge, but that might not be feasible. (there are of course alternatives to the idea like design a challenge with screened answers so you could have at least a bank of challenges...and you might be able to tap some host their own invention...)
-No voting resonates with me

Question:
* Can you explain what individual captains are?

[theeverdream.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for the comment!!

With feedback, I wasn't thinking feedback about challenge entries, just a place for people to tell me/us how they think things are going with the challenges etc, and only if they want to.

I thought people joining in the middle might be difficult for mods - I should probably ask colls how that's normally handled.

I was thinking having different options for challenges so that people would be less pressured to do something they were uncomfortable with doing just so that they could get points for a particular challenge - does that make sense? I know people sometimes pressure themselves a lot to do each challenge even when that's not needed. And if there's no voting on challenges then it would be a participation thing, so it would (at least I think so?) be relatively easy for mods to check for points on challenges, even if they're looking at fic/art/etc in a single challenge.

When you say open longer, do you mean like two weeks or so?

Captains - like now, when we have the teams Military, Alien Allies, and Scientists, each of those has a community and is headed up by an individual (or at least I know that's how it was in the past). I don't think we have enough people to do this so I would probably just do any posts in the team communities. And that's why I mentioned maybe having social stuff be in places other than the team communities.

[rinkafic.livejournal.com]

Hiya.

Ok, so my general thoughts...

Make the time frames for challenges longer, the requirements a bit bigger and the phases shorter.

I was never a fan of team challenges, but that's my opinion. I found them stressful because of time constraints and trying to coordinate and I never had fun with any of them. The exceptions were the "chain" type of things, where you responded to someone else or added to someone else's things. The challenges where one team member ended up doing everything were very not fun. Also, coordinating with people that live three time zones away is hard. I would be more in favor of pairing up or

I don't see a problem with people joining mid phase, really.

Team names could be colors. Blue team, Red Team. As you said, no ties to any show. And Icons and sig banners could be color coded!

I think leaving clubstargate as the social area is a good idea, since most folks are in it already or watching it at least. :) I would say make new chat rooms, they're free and fresh and clean would be good.

That's my 2 cents.

[theeverdream.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely I want to avoid non-chain type team challenges.

With longer time frames for challenges, what were you thinking would be good?

Thanks so much for the feedback, I really appreciate it!!

[calcitrix.livejournal.com]

I agree with a longer time to finish challenges, and maybe having some be worth more points, too. If I'm busy for a week, I've missed five challenges without even reading the descriptions. Then suddenly I feel I'm not pulling my weight...but if I knew there was a larger challenge once a month (or more?) worth more points, I could finish in the odd minutes here and there and still feel like I'm participating.

For team challenges, I enjoy the comment spam posts, and the icon ones (post a cap, claim a cap, post an icon, post a cap...). I'd love to see things done with those other than icons. Captions? More caps made into a comic? Anyway, yes, that kind of thing.

I don't mind team names; I think things get splintered when most of the SGU fans are on one team, SG-1 on another, and SGA on the third. I kind of feel like we're like this a bit now. Not sure if mixing it up would be better, or...?

[theeverdream.livejournal.com]

Oooh that's a good idea, with captions and comics and such! I should definitely have a brainstorming post for types of challenges!

Your first paragraph touches a bit on the things I've been thinking about regarding points, that I haven't talked about yet, and it's really good to be able to incorporate other thoughts into the ideas.

Honestly with teams, I think if we're not going to do individual team activities and such then it doesn't matter hugely if people were just randomized into teams. Maybe when signing up do the "two members you'd like to be on a team with if possible" screened comment thing so it's not completely random.