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

[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!!