yuletide_coal | The Dirty Energy Source

The Dirty Energy Source

Do you want to make a spreadsheet about spreadsheets?
Do you still need to figure out what two other fandoms you should request beside the only one you really want fic for?
Or are you trolling ALL the letter posts for placeholders, just so you can write those people some nice, dry coal?

We want to know all about it.

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http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1206311.html?thread=18920487#t18920487

It's always been done that way for every single exchange.

It's so if the letter gets taken down or changed or whatever, you can still see the actual comment containing their ao3 name, their fandoms (and characters if they put them), and the link to the letter, may it possibly be RIP.

Not sure what good that does. If someone edits their letter, they also might edit their entry in the letters post. If they take their letter down, it was probably a wankstorm that someone screen captured anyhow.

na

it's good because everything points to the same place. you can verify that someone willingly commented and listed their fandoms on the actual post. no sneaking in friends, etc. or "missing" people who you don't like. it's an index of all the comments posted on the post, not all the letters across lj/dw.

like ayrt said, a big part of it is that that's always how thing have been done so going against the grain could be seen as incompetence.

"going against the grain could be seen as incompetence"

Given everything that's happened with the letters post and spreadsheet this year, you think that changing to link the letters directly would be the thing seen as incompetence?

yes, because after 4+ years of spreadsheets it's always been done this way to avoid linking to virus'/nswf stuff/taken down letters/etc. you can control all the content in your letters post, so you link to the things you control.

if someone linked directly to letters, despite everyone always linking to comments, and someone got a virus or complained that they saw porn at work and it was your fault, that would be seen as incompetence by other spreadsheet people and the participants to the exchange. everyone would go "smh, rookie mistake."

Hi TCC. Explain it all you want, it still makes no sense.

yeah i'm not tcc. i've ran a lot of spreadsheets for other exchanges. tcc is doing literally everything else wrong, but linking to comments intead of letters is standard practice for a multitude of reasons. it may get you super mad but that isn't enough to change all the reasons why spreadsheeters do it.

NA

I liked the comment someone just made on that thread, saying maybe direct links to letters could be an additional option - so, keeping default the link to the yuletide thread, but adding an additional column with links directly to letters. That way any spreadsheet-browsing yuletiders could pick their poison.

The downside is that it obviously sounds like a lot of extra work, but the commenter was offering to do it herself, so more power to her...

definitely! having it as an extra is a lot of extra work but it's worth it imo. it isn't a good idea to have it as the main and only link, but having it as extra information (like how some spreadsheets will mention the characters requested in addition to the fandoms) is great. bonus info never hurt anyone. having a part-time spreadsheeter dedicated to it while "main" crew works on inputing comment links + ao3 + fandoms sounds perfect to me.

I missed the offer to add direct links to the spreadsheet. Could you point me to it? Thanks.

http://yuletide.livejournal.com/1206311.html?thread=18934823#t18934823

+1

On my own, I link to the comment in the letters post instead of directly to the letter because I feel like half the time, the letter itself doesn't have the person's AO3 username or sometimes even the fandoms. Then I have to hunt down the information all over again in the letters post.

NA

Thank you, coalie. I didn't notice I'd forgotten to include my ao3 name until now. Editing that mistake now.

The system works!

Sometimes the journal name matches the AO3 name but not always and not always directly (dogcat on AO3 vs dog_cat on LJ). Using the wrong AO3 name, or misspelling it, means the notification doesn't go to the right person when reveals happen and it's happened before to people. It's easier for me to bookmark the comment on the letters post than it is the letter.

+2 or 3?

I find linking to the comment more useful, especially since not everyone specifies their AO3 name in their letter.

Agreed. The way they're doing it is the long way around, especially if people edit their fandoms.

A lot of people delete their journals, or their hosting site goes down, or they re-lock their letters after yuletide. I had to delete half my bookmarked treat list because of this. I mean, yes you can go to the signup list to see the same information of characters + fandom with no prompt, but it's much harder to wade through all that than a google spreadsheet.

So as a move, it makes more sense once you think about it.

A lot of people only bother to put their Ao3 name in the comment, not the letter itself.

That's true!

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The Dirty Energy Source

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