Reflections on Issue 975 + Suggestions for Improvement

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

There is a board in Site Events about this but it can be hard to disentangle the legitimate concerns from the potentially hurtful remarks, so I thought I'd try to write a neutral summary of what happened. Hopefully, this summary could be helpful to TNT (and to any forumers who wanted to stay out of the drama).

In case there are forumers who feel the need to talk about this issue, I thought it'd be helpful to have a thread here as well that is separate from the issue 975 reviews thread.

Full disclosure: I was lucky enough to be accepted into issue 975. However, I came very close to being excluded. My friend and I submitted our collab on December 29, received a held-over notice on January 4, and then nothing. Finally, on Wednesday, January 11 (two days before the issue was scheduled to come out), I caved and sent the editor a neomail reminder. Only then did the acceptance letter come.

Now that the issue is out, I also feel uneasy about all the excluded people going through the published entries trying to see why their own entries didn't make the cut. I don't feel that my work was necessarily better than theirs. As a whole, I feel that issue 975 was poorly handled - though I definitely feel for Stone and the immense workload they were burdened with this time around. I'm writing this summary in the hope that future issues could be handled better.


Essentially, people are upset about three things:

1. Misleading messaging

• There was a call for submissions in the news one week prior to the NT coming out, which gave the impression that there was room for more acceptances, when in fact there was already a massive backlog of held-over entries.
  
• Some people had submitted early, received a held-over notice in late December / early January, and then were left hanging with no rejection or any further follow-up until the issue came out and they realized they didn't get in.
• On Friday, the news stated that the issue would come out "later that day," but it didn't actually come out until after the long weekend, on Tuesday morning. This meant that many people who were left with only a held-over notice continued to cling on to false hope all weekend only to be disappointed on Tuesday.
  

2. Inconsistent acceptances

• Some people submitted last-minute, yet somehow got in ahead of the people who were still anxiously waiting.
• The entries that were chosen to be published weren't necessarily better than the ones that weren't chosen, which left many people feeling like the selection process was arbitrary and like there wasn't anything they could've done to improve their chances.

3. Lack of communication

• The lack of rejection letters meant people were left hanging - some of them, since late December - with no way of knowing if they'd made the cut until today when the issue came out.
• There was no acknowledgement in the news or on the neoboards about what happened.

Suggestions that may be possible to implement without programming help:

1. Implement and communicate clear deadlines

• State in the news that no more entries are to be accepted after, let's say, December 31 for a January 13 issue. This would give the editor more breathing room to sift through the entries with the care and attention that they deserve.

2. Improve internal communication

• It seems like there was a disconnect between the person in charge of writing the News Features and the Neopian Times editor.

Suggestions that would only be possible with programming help:

1. Improve the interface

• Allow the editor to see when a submission was received and when it was held, so it's easier to keep on top of things.

2. Implement some kind of tracking system for submitters

• Let people see where their submission is in the queue. This may cut down on the necessity of manually sending out held-over and rejection letters. When people know that their submission is still in queue, they will feel less of a need to resubmit as well.

3. Provide more ways for people to earn the avatar

• If people could get the avatar through other means, like getting into 20 non-themed issues, it would cut down the workload for milestone issues immensely.

4. Update the NT prize structure

• As Kat wrote on the boards, it may be time to give out prizes for non-themed issues, not just milestone ones, so that veterans don't feel the need to compete in milestone issues and more spaces are opened up for people who still need the avatar.

Finally, I want to say:

To the people who weren't lucky enough to get in this time around: Your frustrations are valid. Your work isn't any worse than others'. It was literally just "too many good entries" that caused your work to be skipped over. Hopefully, we can advocate for a better system so that TNT can do better next time. In the meantime, know that your work is seen and appreciated by the community.

To the people who were lucky enough to get in: Don't feel bad about taking up space. You aren't any less deserving of a win than others. As bittersweet as this event was, you should still be proud of getting your work published.

I will be going through the issue and writing reviews later. Sending out virtual hugs for all.