hhanon | A Wild Discussion Post Appears!

Could we possibly make a general rule of trying to fill a prompt for every one that you post? obviously because everyone's mostly anon it would have to be on an honour system, but it seems like the meme's being flooded with prompts without many fills being posted as well.

I think that having an actual rule would actually do less good in the end. For many people writing fic is their method of escape/just for fun, if people are forced into it matters become a lot less fun and people just get stressed.

it shouldn't really force people to write anything if they're not inspired, just hopefully make people think before they start spamming the meme. and it won't be enforceable anyway, because no one's going to insist that you prove you've filled so many prompts before you post another one.

You see, I don't consider it so much spamming - we get, on average, about ten prompts a day from what I can see. That can hardly be called spamming when other memes are getting over 100 prompts a day and no fills.

THIS.

Considering other memes where they get loads of prompts and hardly any fills, the rate of fics to prompts is actually incredibly impressive.

It would be lovely if we got more fills - but making a rule isn't really going to help, especially as I know quite a few people are in the middle of writing or perhaps can't write but can prompt.

Anyway, this is distracting me from writing fic :)

*gets back to the keyboard*

on average maybe, but (going by the diigo archive) in the last three days we've had 50 prompts and 6 new fills, and that's not including the further 17 prompts that have been posted today. i call that spamming.

and yeah, but every meme is different. i liked that ours was so productive.

Come, now, aren't you basically calling it yours by this point? And it's still productive, people just have actual lives right now and prefer to focus on more important things.

... no? it was just a suggestion about something that was mildly bothering me, but you clearly disagree, so okay! i really didn't mean to come across like i was demanding more fills, or anything like that.

My apologies if I sounded a little sharp there. I realized after I posted it that I may have sounded a little aggressive but didn't have enough time to correct it since I was already terribly late for important things. And you're allowed to ahve your opinions, totally! I just felt like maybe you were jumping the gun a bit, talking about "the good old days" when they aren't really over.

The important thing to remember is that this trend has only been going on for three days. And I know for a fact that this is the busiest time of the year for some people - exams and schoolwork being handed in and general stress all around, leaving not much time for fic no matter how much of a desire they have to write it.

Again, sorry for sounding sharp! But I jsut feel like you may be worrying over nothing. :)

This. Plus, if there was a rule, there would most likely be a flood of crappy drabbles by people who can't write but feel honour bound to do something so that they can post.

I'd rather have a lot of prompts like now where, as a writer, I can go through and ponder and have SUCH variety and so many different ideas for my muse to attack at will, rather than have only a couple of prompts that can take my fancy and flood of crappy 100 word ficlets. Plus, some people are just not writers, know they're not writers, and don't enjoy writing. Why should they be barred from prompting? They may have amazing ideas, but if there was a rule asking you to fill they may not post these prompts as tey know they can't do other prompts the justice they would want their own to be filled with.

I know what you mean, there is so many prompts posted all the time... and it sort of feels like it is specific persons who "spams" their fave pairing.
I just want to have more fills, and less awesome prompts. I would suggest a longer prompt freeze than one week. Like... one month?
We have about 1500 prompts and only about 350 fills. :/

it sort of feels like it is specific persons who "spams" their fave pairing
oh, agreed. i have no interest in a lot of pairings that are being prompted at the moment, which is fine and i'm absolutely not complaining about that, but when it seems to all be the same person who isn't filling anything either it starts to grate.

i like the idea of the prompt freeze in theory, but during the last one everyone seemed to disappear, so i fear a longer one would completely kill the meme. maybe some kind of prompt drive, where you can pimp your favourite unfilled prompts, could help?

that's not too bad, actually! just glancing at the diigo archive it looks like the ratio of prompts to fic is about 3:1, which is pretty good, but the lack of fills seems to be more of a recent problem? idk, i think i'm just ridiculously nostalgic for the early days of the fandom (which, yes, was about four months ago. shh) when there was such a rush of fills.

I'm the anon that you may be talking about here (note: I also read the other posts) and I'd just like to say that I've actually probably posted more fics than prompts. Seriously, over 100. So while I understand your point I'd just like to say that it seems a little inaccurate there.

when everyone's anon it is impossible to tell who's posting what, that's just the impression i was getting, so apologies if you felt that may have been directed at you ♥

(and over 100? really? there's only like 500 fics in the whole fandom! *appaulds*)

Well, if you have no interest, you could always prompt what you would like to see filled :)) And I know a couple of those prompts are mine, but I am working on fic at the moment, so I do know that stuff is in the process of being filled :) There are lots of prompts, and lots of the same characters, but with a fandom such as ours, that's to be expected :)

And I do like the idea of a prompt drive, that sounds like a good idea :)

The rate of fills is really amazing, and I think that it's probably because the meme was started in the summer holidays when everyone had lots of time, whereas now everyone is in the middle of exams and RL stuff, which would also explain the rate of prompts (my inbox isn't filling quite so quickly :) )

I do hope that's helped reassure people on here! Any problems archivey wise please let me know :)

oh, i know, and i am prompting (and filling) the things that i want to read! this is not at all about what's being prompted (it's just the similarity of pairings that made me assume it was the same person), or even the number the fills, more that it seemed like there were people who were posting a lot of prompts without giving anything back. it was just a suggestion based on an impression i was getting.

but yes, in general the rate of fills is brilliant, and it is a madly busy time of year, and i love the variety in this fandom! :)

Hey I'm glad you felt comfortable in speaking up if you were worried, that means we can all talk and hopefully sort this out so everyone can go on being happy and squeey :)))

As someone further down said, they may not fill, but they may review, and they may give people the spark of inspiration needed for fic :)

I do hope we've helped sort this out, again, if you have any problems let us know - that's what we're all here for :)))

Just wanted to say that the prompt freeze came at a really bad moment, right before NaNoWriMo. I didn't have time to fill anything, I was to busy planning, and I know that that we where many who did NaNo, so I guess that's why it looked abandoned.

I haven't posted many prompts, maybe 2-3, (And posted 8 fics, 3 unfulfilled D:) it isn't really my thing to come up with stuff, but I love reading all the fills and it's sort of sad that there are so many great prompts that needs to be filled.

I agree with some more encouragement of filling stuff. This meme deserves that. :)

Hey hey hey the more fic the better hun!!! (and I need to make myself a cup of tea and read all the way through your epic, can't wait to get some time to relax :)) ) Doesn't matter if it's prompted or not, the fact that you want to write for this fandom is marvellous :))

I will admit that I have posted a lot of prompts. I haven't filled any yet either: I am working on a lot of fills, but for health reasons I find writing slow and difficult at the moment. But I don't think that those who aren't even planning on writing should be banned from prompting: coming up with a good idea for a story is not the same as writing. Some people are good at the former, some at the latter - some at both. But not every writer is good at coming up with ideas, and not every writer who's good at coming up with ideas is good at it all of the time, either. Why restrict ourselves to only ideas from those who also write?

Personally I prompt for a wide range of characters, ships and scenarios, and try to space them out so I don't post similar prompts too close together. I also spend a long time on each prompt, making sure it's as polished as possible. I do not consider my posting to be "spamming": I think very carefully about each prompt. I do not post a prompt before it's ready - even if that means months elapse between me thinking of it and finally posting it.

One thing I've learned from all my prompting is that you never know which prompts are going to be filled. There are several that I've posted and thought "this one is great!", and then it gets two comments saying "I NEED THIS" - and no fills. And there are other prompts which I've liked but suspected they won't be filled, but gone "...well, I'll post it just in case" - and then received an amazing fill. You can't predict what's going to catch someone's attention.

Personally, I think we have a really good prompt-to-fill ratio. If you've spent much time looking at memes and ficathons, or indeed anything where people can freely post prompts without being required to fill, you'll know there's always going to be a large disparity between the number of prompts and the number of fills. You're never going to get a 100% fill rate. Not even 50%. To be honest, I think anything over 10% is quite good. We have 1500 prompts and 350 are filled: that's about 23%.

I know it's frustrating when you post a prompt and it doesn't get filled - or you see a prompt from someone else and really want a fill for it - but you can't force people to be inspired by prompts. If there weren't (as many) new prompts being posted it doesn't mean someone would suddenly be interested in a prompt they've never had any interest in filling before. And if someone is interested in filling a prompt, but haven't done so because they're busy - with real life, or with writing other fics - you wouldn't actually increase the amount of fic being written. You'd just swap a fill for one prompt for another. But if someone's not writing because they're not inspired by any of the prompts that are already there, and then a new prompt goes up which inspires them? Well, now the fic count has increased by one.

So reducing the number of prompts might increase the fill percentage, but in actual terms I think it would result in a decrease in the number of fills being posted. And, really, would you rather have a lovely high fill percentage that we can all sit around and feel proud of - or would you rather have more fics to read?

And what's wrong with an unfilled prompt, anyway? What harm does it do? (Other than reduce that percentage.) The archivers have to file it, yes, but I've not heard any complaints about their workload. You might have to scroll past the prompts you're not interested in - but just because you're not interested in that newly-posted prompt doesn't mean someone else won't be. In fact, just because nobody's been interested in a months-old prompt doesn't mean nobody ever will be - things from round 1 are still getting filled occasionally.

Also, consider that prompting and filling are not the only ways to interact on the meme - reviewing is too. Have you ever met a writer who didn't love receiving reviews? I think that can be a valuable way to contribute. So you don't have to be a fic writer to "give back" to the meme.

I do think it's a good idea for people to think about what they're prompting - does it have all the information it needs? is it logically laid out? is everything spelled correctly? - but I would never advise someone not to prompt.

In fact, if you think it's a good prompt and you'd like it filled? I think you should post it. Whoever you are.

A Wild Discussion Post Appears!

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Archivey hat :)

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Part 1 (because this got ridiculously long :'D)

Part 2