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So you'll start at the Yuletide homepage. Yuletide 2010. And you can see a link to the
sign-up form.
Basically, the idea is if you fill out requests, 3-4 requests, then you fill out offers, 4-10
offers, then at the end you submit. And you will have signed up. So…
First piece about requests. You have to make at least 3 requests, you can make 4.
The requests, however, all have to be for different fandoms.
In the past we've allowed for people to duplicate a fandom in their fourth request?
This year, we're not going to do that. Just because it would have required making the
code really kind of clunky and difficult to configure.
If you only want three fandoms then make three requests and if you want, add a fourth.
The other piece that is different this year in addition to fandom and characters,
which, as always, that's the only piece that we guarantee matching you on,
but this year we are able to do a couple of cool additional things.
You can specify some additional tags and we will try to match you on these tags as well.
And so for instance you can specify a particular rating, if you want a het or slash or femslash
or multi story you can ask for those as well.
The important thing to remember for all this is we don't guarantee you a match. These are
just like the optional details. The difference is, optional details, we can't actually match
on that in a sort of programmed way. These things we can.
So what we're going to be doing is using to improve sort of the ranking of your match.
And hopefully we will be able to match people up better this year because of it.
So for instance you'll be more likely to match somebody who has offered two fandoms you've
requested than match somebody who just offered one. You are also more likely to match someone
that meets all the things in your request instead of just one, instead of just the fandom
and characters.
But again, not guaranteed, just so that people don't get disappointed! However it will hopefully
be cool if it works.
So here is the request form. I'm just going to scroll through the whole thing briefly
since these new features do make it a bit longer. We start out with the fandom then
there are the characters.
Here's where you enter a freeform tag, and if you want some inspiration, I suggest you
look at the Tags tab which shows you the tag cloud of all the various most popular tags
that are just freeform tags.
And you can put any one of these in. We do unfortunately limit you to only putting in
one because I'm a little afraid of making the matching blow up or take 10 years if I
do more. If it works pretty well this year hopefully we'll be able to add even more flexibility.
You can also specify the category, which is like femslash, het , gen, slash, multi or
other. You can also specify a rating.
So for instance what this is kind of intended to do is let you specify sort of a little
bit more about your dream story.
We still however ask that you keep in mind that you may be matched with somebody just
on fandom and characters. And so please be flexible and understanding if you don't get
a story that matches your ideal dream, and when you're writing your details please be
flexible there too.
It's perfectly fine to give your writer a sense of what you really love, what would
really sort of thrill you the most, but try and also give them alternatives, give them
also some ideas for what they could do if that's not up their alley.
So, let's start with finding a fandom that we want. Um... I... let's go to my tiny little
fandom, Dracula: The Series. All right. So when I click now in the Characters form, obviously
it's sort of intimidating, hey, how am I supposed to fill in the characters? When you click
in, you will get a happy little autocomplete that will show the characters wrangled to
the fandom.
For performance reasons this has to be limited to about the first 10 characters that are
returned that match. So if you choose a fandom that has like 80 characters in it, it will
sort of only return the first 10.
However, if you start typing, it will automatically respond and for instance and will fill in
more characters that match exactly what you started typing.
So you can always just look up the characters on the big text list that we posted on the
Livejournal and there'll be a link to it from the instructions as well.
For freeform, let's say crossover, whoops, this gets long, and category, M/M.
And sure, let's go for explicit for this story.
And what we say in our optional details, which, remember, are optional.
And then the URL here, if you have written a Dear Yuletide Author letter you can put
that letter in, or for instance, you can just put in your main Livejournal address here
and they can take it from there.
Once you've got your fandom picked, your characters, put in whatever tags – you don't have to
put in characters, and you don't have to put in Freeform tag, and you don't have to choose
a category, you don't have to choose a rating. The only thing you have to choose is the one
in red which is a fandom.
And you can only choose one per box. If you make a mistake, don't worry, the sign-up form
will not let you submit.
Now let's go down to the offers which are also different this year. You can make up
to 10 offers, you have to make at least 4. And all of them have to be in different fandoms.
The reason that it's... the code is limited to 10 just because we found that that is what
actually makes for practical matching in a reasonable time frame, without killing the
server.
And that it actually is kind of the limit for where it's sort of useful in terms of
potential matching.
Because, you have to remember you can only be matched to one person. So you know, if
you offer 100 different fandoms, that actually doesn't help matching. It means that the person
who offers 100 different fandoms had an enormous list of potential matches but they can only
be matched to one person.
So what is much more helpful is if you specifically offer things that people have requested which
nobody else has offered.
Those you'll be able to see up here at the top – there will be a signup summary.
That said, we know that people love to offer a whole bunch of fandoms as part of Yuletide,
it's part of the fun of being surprised by what you get. So there is a way you can offer
more than 10 fandoms and that will be a Bucket Offer.
The first piece that I will show you is just how to do a regular offer and then I'll show
you how to do a Bucket Offer.
So here's the offer form. Again, the only things that you have to submit are the things
in red. Fandom and Characters.
It says Characters 2-8, you can also offer Any.
Keep in mind that Any means really any. So be sure that you're aware of the characters
in that fandom before you check the box. So just be prepared for that and if you're willing
to take that risk we salute you, and we are very grateful, because that does make matching
much easier.
So fandom, again, this works pretty much the same as it did on the requests side.
I'm going to show you for a second the kind of thing that happens as I mentioned when
you choose a fandom that has a huge number of characters.
You unfortunately get a long list and as you can see it's alphabetical, and stops at the
Cs because there are too many people here.
So let's say that you have some sense of the character you need, you want, so please start
putting in this. And we get a much smaller list of matches, including a new one that
wasn't on the first list because it alphabetically came late. So I'll start with Richard and
let's say, I don't know, is there anyone named... Sure! Him.
Actually, I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know who these people are.
In Freeforms you can put in up to 3. And again the big tags page is super useful for this.
Let's say that you're happy writing
first time, you're happy writing humour, and you're happy writing poetry. So you could
put those in.
And now, here's how to make a Bucket Offer.
For a Bucket Offer you pick just the first fandom that you're looking to do. So let's
say 2001.
Then in Characters, you have to choose Any. The Bucket Offer has to be all the fandoms
for which you are prepared to write any characters. If you want to restrict characters, then the
limit is 10 offers total.
Just because it makes the matching much more intensive when we have to match characters.
That's basically why. In this case, to make the Bucket work.
We choose 2001, we choose Any, and then leave all the rest open and go to Optional Tags.
And in here, you basically are going to put in any fandoms that you also want to write.
So, and this is, so the way the optional tags autocomplete works is, this can be used for
almost any kind of tag in different challenges, for instance, some challenges might want to
let you just throw in a huge pile of tags. So the autocomplete will return you a whole
different set of wacky options.
The simple solution is just look at the full list here and let's say you like a-ha. And
we're just going to copy that and you can paste it in. And it will work.
You can also scroll down to the one just below... whoops,
Just to review, Bucket Offer is you pick one fandom from the list, you choose Any for characters,
and you put in the additional fandoms that you want to write here.