Admin Post: December 2018 Newsletter Posted

[dawn_felagund]

Our December 2018 newsletter has been posted!

Check out our News section, which rediscovers clotho123’s “Chronology of The Silmarillion”, and invites you to participate in our latest challenge “Holiday Feast”, a five-course banquet of Feanorian proportions. We also welcome two new joiners joining the SWG archive during November.

This month’s biography by Robinka is Eilinel. Eilinel is a little-known character, the wife of Gorlim the Unhappy, who is both central and nonexistent in the tale of the betrayal of Barahir.

The New at the Archive section compiles the list of fanworks updated and completed in the SWG archive during the past month. Last but never least, Around the World and Web brings you a fantastic collection of articles, news and calls for papers so that you stay up to date with all fandom news.

Thanks to our team of volunteers who contributed to our newsletter this month—Elleth, Robinka, Angelica, and Russandol!

Comments

[hhimring]

Thank you very much for the newsletter!

Can I ask about the change to the challenge guidelines? Does the "retro-fitting" clause essentially refer to previously posted material? If something previously only existed as a plot bunny, plan or outline (for instance, a second chapter that never got written), is it still eligible to be submitted?

Also, does this apply only to new challenges or also to pre-2017 ones? I'm thinking specifically of the Akallabeth-in-August tag and also of the murky connection of one of my slow-moving WIPs to old challenges where the exact chronology is pretty much lost in prehistory...

[dawn_felagund]

Does the "retro-fitting" clause essentially refer to previously posted material?

Exactly! What we don't want to see happen is that a story has been posted on, say, AO3 for the past two years. Suddenly, it meets our challenge and is posted as a challenge story on our archive.

If you're working on an unpublished story and our new challenge comes out and it just happens to fit perfectly, then that story is still counts as a challenge entry. Same if you have a finished story that you've never posted publicly. A rule I always follow when making guidelines is that if it's not enforceable, it shouldn't be a guideline. I don't know what you have on your hard drive or in your head (or posted privately on LJ or shared among a few friends), so there's no sense in making a rule about that. Also, I believe very much that if a challenge pushes a story on your hard drive or in your head or just shared among a few people to be fully published, then that is a wonderful thing! :) That's one of the things we want to happen because of our challenges!

Likewise, if you have a previously posted story and you add to it with new material based on the challenge, it is still eligible for the challenge.

Our challenge guidelines apply to all challenges, pre-2017 and otherwise. However, I feel like this is less relevant pre-2017 since there are no stamps or special publicity to be gained by "gaming the system" there. (In fact, since I don't keep records of the challenges pre-2017, no one is likely to even notice.) But technically, anything posted as a challenge on our site should be written at least in part to satisfy that challenge.

[hhimring]

Thank you very much for clarifying, Dawn!

[hhimring]

Hello Dawn,

Sorry to bother you again but I think Binka's bio of Eilinel might not be fully linked up on the archive. She's mentioned not being able to respond to a comment of mine, because she got the "not authorized to use that function" message. Maybe this is different, but I remember that I had something similar happen once, when some kind of link was not yet in place?