We Die Like Fen 3 Statistics & Discussion/Brainstorming Post

[fencesit]

Hi, all! We've all had a while to recover and think about the exchange—and also crunch some numbers—and now we're coming to you with statistics about the exchange as well as a call for opinions and thoughts on how it went and how we might use what we've learned in further challenges! "We" here meaning both "the WDLF3 mods" and also, maybe, you! The non-mods!

(Also, someone who doesn't know anything about WDLF might wander past this post, so here's a link to the collection, not that that will really tell you much about what nonsense we got up to.)

Statistics

On the statistics end of things, here's a Google sheet with all the stats scraped from the collection a few days ago — we regret to inform you that we missed a total wordcount ending in "666" by three words, and thus no final certificate will be awarded. But still, we wrote 405,663 words! Go us!

Here's a screenshot of the spreadsheet showing some of our word count totals:

Also, we made more than just fic!

On the audio front, we also made:

• Three fanmixes. Specifically, kimaracretak made them:
  • here (Dare Me - Megan Abbott)
  • here (Critical Role)
  • here (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Two podfic. Specifically, flowersforgraves made them:
  • here (The West Wing)
  • here (Original Works)

On the visual front, we made ten works with art!

Still Life with Origami Waterfowl by draconicsockpuppet (Finnish Mythology, Untitled Goose Game (Video Game))

Matt Bragg Stealing A Dufflebag by fencesit (Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF)

Two Animal Crossing Pictures by fencesit (どうぶつの森 | Animal Crossing Series)

snake, rabbit, panther by isaiah_is_the_blob (Original Work)

Her Hand by Resilur (Tortall - Tamora Pierce)

(Soon to be) Half a Red Riding Hood by sheagar (Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale), Rotkäppchen | Little Red Riding Hood (Fairy Tale))

Awkward puppies... by sheagar (Naruto)

The Magnus Sketches... by sheagar (The Magnus Archives (Podcast))

Through the Smoke by wednesday (Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game))

With a cut clean hands by wednesday (Dragon Age: Inquisition)

There's loads more data on the sheet, although it's all from Wednesday (4/29/2020) and is thus a little bit more out of date. If you want to sort or edit the sheet, you'll have to make a copy.

Discussion/Brainstorming

And now the discussion part! We've gotten interest from a good number of people about running this event or one like it (with auctions, you know!) in some form or another in the future and we've even brainstormed a little on Discord, but overall that's a really hard format to have an orderly conversation about all the possibilities, so we're hoping Dreamwidth will help us sort some things out about how you felt the event could be improved.

Here are some discussion questions to get you started:

• What would an improved version of this event look like to you? What parts are most important and what parts could you do without?
• What did you like? What part of this experience are you most interested in seeing recreated?
• Do you have any cool event ideas related to this nonsense that you're kicking around?
• What limits would you have imposed on yourself/the exchange if you had to do it again? Think word count, assignment number, time for auctions, etc.
• Did you have fun???

Anonymous comments are on and you don't have to sign anything you say, but please be constructive. We'll never run this event in this format again and the event is already over, so just telling us it sucked is useless barring the invention of time travel. Similarly, if your only feedback is that you'd never be interested in anything like this ever again because it's not for you and you know it, you're probably wasting our time and yours! In other words, this is a post for improving future versions of this event, not a post for airing of grievances.

Please feel free to answer all or just one of the questions above, and please feel free also to pose your own questions!

Comments

[snickfic]

Things I enjoyed:
- The auctions! Bidding, being bid on, rubbernecking, all those aspects were really fun.
- The general community atmosphere. :)))
- The mods, who worked miracles. Y'all were amazing.

Suggestions for future rounds (especially if the rounds are intended to be less wdlf-y):
- Have a firm deadline from the beginning. I know we were inventing the exchange as we went along this last time, but I think it actually made it harder for me to be productive, not knowing how much time I had.

- I think lowering the max bid might be a good idea. People can still go over the max bid, obviously, but I feel like it might help everyone rein their aspirations in a bit and also reduce the sense that some people are guaranteed to get way more fic/gifts than other people. I think 5-6k might be a good max bid? Or maybe let the max bid be larger IF the bid involves more than one creator? Although then you're still going to have some people receiving way bigger bids than others. Or maybe let the first round of auctions have a higher max bid, and then if everyone gets auctioned off twice, the second round has a much lower max bid? I got the feeling that everyone was feeling a little exhausted by the end of the last round of auctions.

- This is more a frustration than a useful suggestion, but it took me several days to win an auction, just because I didn't feel able to go nearly as high as a lot of people did (even when I teamed up with someone!). That was due to a combo of RL and other fannish things going on in my life, and in a different week I'd have been willing to bid higher, but I feel like maybe some kind of limit on number of assignments per person, at least until everyone has an assignment, might be a good idea? Of course that gives the mods even more to keep track of, and what if the only person willing to bid on a given assignment is someone who's already maxed out? IDK.