To everyone who gave this a go: thank you so much! Constructive criticism is not a new thing, but running this event was new to me. Thank you for being patient with me and bringing a lot of thought and generosity.

I think everyone has received their 2+ pieces of feedback, but please tell me if I'm wrong so I can fix that. This round is roughly over, but it's never quite over as long as people who signed up are still interested in feedback. See the open-for-concrit tag. You can take that tag off your own post any time, or ask me to.

What worked / Improvements

How did this work for you, and how might you have liked it to work instead?

I have a few notes on my thoughts. Responses or completely different thoughts are welcome.

Mod notes

• Hand-matching. I made this more complicated for myself than I had to, and started to contemplate AO3 matching or google forms, but by the end of matching, I was fond of hand-matching again. Sending out assignments gradually worked for me. I think the sign-up form was overcomplicated. One question I would definitely include if making a similar form in future is "Do you want to read smut? Do you want to read non-smut? Do you want to read both smut and non-smut?" I know people are willing to read outside their comfort zone sometimes, and I appreciate that, but porn/not porn was a fairly frequent divider in sign-ups.


• Platform for sign-ups. I think there are benefits to individual Dreamwidth posts. How did you find them? I think the process of people submitting a sign-up, then me approving them and telling people to make their own post, was a bit cumbersome for everyone and could be improved. For example, I could just set posts to moderated and approve them.


• Platform for concrit. I think the principle of "post where your recipient asks you to" generally works. I was very grateful for people who posted in places that weren't DW comments and then promptly told me where they'd posted - that was really helpful. Commenting on the recipient's DW post to say "Note for mod, I have posted where asked" or whatever would probably work too, and be a little easier to keep track of.


• Platforms in general. I discovered I am woefully unfamiliar with fanfiction.net. I also noted that my instructions on posting to Dreamwidth were lacking - ie, you have to join the community to post to it. Some general notes on platform features might be a helpful resource - maybe?


• The concrit guide. This was meant as a starting point if you were stuck or uncertain, rather than strict rules. I'm not sure how helpful it was - for one thing, my impression is that everyone taking part this round already had grounding in and confidence about how to give feedback. Is it needed at all? Improvements welcome.


• Replying to concrit. Does there need to be any mod guidance about that? I saw skill and thoughtfulness in giving concrit, but I also got the impression people were pleased or relieved to be told their thoughts had been useful. I'm not going to make a "you must reply" policy, but I'm happy to frame it as a normal thing, or make suggestions about how - "Try not to argue with your concrit giver, they can't change their first impression..."


• Fandoms. This came up, so: I know this would be exponentially more useful to some people if matching on fandoms, but I don't think that's possible for a small event drawing from multifandom participants.

Btw, thank you specifically to the two people who signed up to get assignments only - that made things a lot easier for me as a mod.

Madness

I was thinking I'd make this post and leave it a few days, then put up a single Madness post where people could comment requesting feedback. No new requests after X date. Keen? Tell me! And if so, please check back.

Next round

How do people feel about another round in November, or if not that, February, on similar principles but with a longer assignment period?