Forum:State of the Archives

This thread is here to gauge community interest in the featured works system, as well as get input from the Archivists. If you don't know what any of that stuff is, either click the links, or back away now.

We're going into month 10 of the FW system and only 6 FWs exist. There is one active nomination atm. That means we're behind, and even adding myself to the roster of the Archivists hasn't led to a significant uptick in FWNs or FWs being produced. We got one more done. Yippee. Has there been an uptick in fanfics being written? Eh, maybe. Hard to tell without more data. Certainly not a significant one. Nor has the community really responded with interest to the general idea.

Does this community want this establishment to continue? It cannot continue in its current state, and it either gets done right, or it doesn't get done at all. Part of that is my fault. When I established a 3-member Archivist board, I never imagined or expected the Archivists to copyedit or read a whole novel for grammar and wording issues. That's a lot of work, and there's a dearth of viable short stories here on SWF. I've heard that there's a couple decent ones being written at the moment, but suffice to say that reading 200-300 pages for grammar is far more work than anticipated. It's certainly unfair to ask someone to repeat that process each month, especially for free.

Here are some possible solutions. This is not a vote; it's a discussion, so add comments and options as you wish. Any combination of these could be implemented.

Options

 * 1) Remove the FW system. Call it a failure, disband the Archivists, and let it die after the last nomination is rejected or approved.
 * 2) Remove the "Archivists can't vote on things they nominate" rule. Could help pass more FWNs, but there's still a lack of community interest.
 * 3) Add more Archivists This would allow the Archivists to take turns reading novels (one month on, one month off). It would do nothing to alleviate the shortage of decent material and you can't just magic up qualified people on this wiki that are willing to do stuff.
 * 4) Keep the FWs, cut the Archivists. Community voting only. Of course, that means the community has to actually care.
 * 5) Loosen the rules Archivists don't have to read for isolated grammar errors anymore, unless there's a pervasive series of grammar and wording errors. I think most of the Archivists are too OCD to let them slide anyway, but I could be wrong.

Discussion

 * Talk amongst yourselves. This may progess to me setting up a CT thread as needed. Atarumaster88  Jedi_Order.svg ( Talk page ) 22:57, October 2, 2009 (UTC)