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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on May 24, 2021 21:13:41 GMT -5
This was a question mentioned recently with the lack of series in the Neopian Times, thanks to @herdygerdy, and the subsequent response.
Do you think there should be a 'hard' cap on New and Continued series in total? Should there be more entries?
I'll start with my opinion.
Honestly, I think having a 'hard' cap (which I think is low) on series during regular editions is actually more of a deterrent, thanks to the constant TMGE one would receive. I get that the staff is overwhelmed at the moment with the site conversion, but that's certainly not an excuse for having a cap on series in total. In fact, the April Fools edition (Issue 932) had 2 new and 2 continuing series. Going back even further, the Valentine's Day edition (Issue 927) had 5 continuing series and the Performing Arts collab (Issue 926) had 4 New series, so we know that the cap is not set.
Also, the suggestion of paying attention to series is not going to help. For one, there is no way of knowing how long a series would run, especially if the series in question is from a newcomer to the Times. However, even series from veterans will be hard, unless one has read another series from the veteran and can estimate how long the series has run, but that's not always given. Take me, for example. In the past, most of my previous series have been 4 parts but my current series is 5 parts and I have gone up to 7 parts before. One can also take a look at the userlookup to see the number of trophies and estimate from there, but how many people do that?
To me, with this answer, it feels like that having shorter series is better (even less than the recommended amount of 6-8 in the submission form), but at what cost?
I don't know, I feel like I may be rambling about this, but I needed to get this off my chest.
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Post by Kat on May 25, 2021 5:03:36 GMT -5
We've noticed that the cap isn't strictly followed when it comes to special editions or collab issues of the NT. Then the new series that show up in those issues are allowed to run their normal course so the continued series section is a bit more populated for a time. Unfortunately that means the series section is officially occupied until enough series end for a new one to be published. I assume Aesop is given more time to edit and read for these issues and sometimes he takes one issue off before the collab issue is published, but unfortunately for most of the time he has to wear multiple hats. Considering the current number of staff working at Neopets, it's unlikely that he'll get help, but you'd think Scrappy, who was editor for a time, would at least be able to lend a hand.
If they strictly enforce this hard cap, I'll have to figure out the most outlandish ways to shoehorn my series into the collab/special issues, which I just did for April Fool's, but if the hard cap is extended even to collab/special issues, I may retire from the Times entirely, for good. I really enjoy writing series especially since it's the best way I can "practice" after x number of years of my creativity sapped by the legal profession before I can move up to trying to write an original novel, and it's disheartening to find out that everyone with a finished series will have to vie for the single slot that opens up when a series is almost over, which adds an element of chance when being able to get into the NT ought only to be measured by merit. (Granted, the other competitions do have a degree of luck to them too, especially the Caption Competition.)
Paying attention to series lengths could be done by Neomailing the current series writers to ask how many parts they have ongoing, but of course, not everyone will want to do that and will certainly feel shy and weird about Neomailing the authors not to talk about their work but to ask when it'll be over. Personally I don't mind announcing to everyone here or to anyone who asks how long my series is, but this is going to be such an odd arrangement, especially since I could tell a number of people that for example, A Hero's Journey: Rivalry is 8 parts long but that means anyone writing a series who hears me say that will be competing with the others for the slot I will leave behind when my series wraps up.
Plus, there is also the possibility that a series writer will want to have another series published right after. Instead of being seen as a prolific, passionate writer, they could instead be seen by others as someone who hogs the limited series slots and feel guilty about writing series. Something they take pride and care in doing would instead be a source of embarrassment. They could wait for a few issues before trying again but I'm sure a lot of us have felt that itch to submit something once it's done and edited, and that feeling probably won't change even with waiting because everyone will still only be vying for very few series slots.
I COULD take my work to AO3 or leave it here should the unthinkable happen (like series being abolished entirely or length reduced by a considerable amount) but there really is something more...IDK, fulfilling about getting published in the Times and knowing that the staff approved of your fanfic enough to place it in their semi-weekly newsletter. Plus, A Hero's Journey is so closely entwined with the NQII proper that if I published my work elsewhere, it'll feel divorced from the source material. I dunno, it wouldn't feel right.
Should we have shorter series? Should we abolish the series section entirely and publish each part of our "series" as individual short stories? For me this feels like a huge damper on creativity. The NT for me has been my favorite creative endeavour on Neopets precisely because I have more freedom instead of having to adapt to the current Storytelling or write a poem for the Poetry gallery or be funny (and advertise for a whole week) for the Caption Contest.
tl;dr I didn't crawl out of retirement for this.
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Post by Herdy on May 25, 2021 7:50:57 GMT -5
Yeah, it's a mixture of problems that Aesop most of the time enforces a three max quota and then prioritises themed series, with the now semi-regular skip weeks on top.
For reference, I've been submitting the same series each week since December. Waiting and watching for series ending simply isn't an option that works - plenty of series have ended in that time. But mine is not collab issue themed so is at the back of the line for Aesop. I know I am not the only person in this situation, I've had people Neomail me in frustration since the editorial was put live. I have to say, although this is no reflection on the wider good the collabs are doing for the NT community as a whole, this situation is rather souring me on the collabs. The series section is now essentially being turned into a long form Storytelling contest, where if you want to get published you need to conform to a topic. It isn't fair that the section that arguably needs the highest amount of work to write also now has additional requirements that the other sections aren't subject to.
Part of the reason I asked the question, and the part Aesop kind of ignored, is that getting the TMGE rejection week after week is immensely disheartening when you *know* the series section hasn't been judged at all that week. That your entry is not even being read. Going back to the old Held Over status would help, I think, since even if you weren't getting published any faster you'd at least not have the weekly neomail that's essentially saying "fat chance".
Failing that, yeah, scrapping the series section entirely and just moving them to short stories is probably the best option.
I know I have no right to be published and I've had my fair share of entries and then some, but honestly if this continues I might just stop writing series entirely and only bother with collab short stories. There's far better writing projects I can be spending my time on.
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Post by Killix on May 25, 2021 9:35:43 GMT -5
Sounds like a combination of piling entrants and an overburdened editor. Really not a favourable situation for anyone this way, but probably necessary at this time.
Perhaps it is only a temporary way of juggling entries for now.
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Post by Huntress on May 26, 2021 10:05:56 GMT -5
Nngh, this is more disheartening news on top of frequent disheartening news that make up the management processes of the NT these days. And not just because I've had a series in the works for ages that I really need to wrap up and (attempt to) send in one of these days.
Don't know about anyone else, but to me the Continued Series section was always what's made up the, for lack of a better way to put it, serious worldbuilding of Neopets. Articles are the meta segment, comics and short stories are this flexible space, but series are what allow writers to well and truly sink their teeth into how they see the world of Neopia, because there's space to spread out and flesh it into details. I'm a comic artist first and foremost but series have always been a way for me to establish the personal foundation of Neopian lore that I use to set all those comics in, so as to have better depth of character. Which I realize probably only comes across if you actually read those series, but hey, one can have much worse hobbies throughout one's twenties xP
Point being, what I'm reading here is, essentially, "blaah, running this fanmade newsletter is so much wooork, we can look through the funny pictures fast enough on the side of other stuff but plz not to bother us too much with your indepth nerd rambling". Yes, I realize that they're a small team stretched thin, but that's precisely where it becomes telling where they allocate their resources. It might be a temporary state of things, but if there's one thing I've learned with my encounters with the neurotic world of adulthood, temporary states of things become permanent very easily even with the best of intentions - give it long enough and people won't even remember that it used to be any different. There may be the site conversion going on right now, but once that's done, there'll be other events, and other factors, and even less money to spare for employees...
Also, whyyy do they seem so unable to keep a nice solid buffer of judged, verified and edited entries going? What's the benefit of making users snipe at an available slot instead of working through the pile of submissions at whatever pace currently possible? The NT fills up too much - pick some nice two-parters to let the load peter out, there's a lull - bring in a major 8-parter. Instead they seem to prefer to start over with a mixed bag of unknown quality entries every single week and of course that'll be a strain to chew through when you have no idea what there even is to stuff into the issue by Friday. How is this better worktime management?
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Post by PFA on May 26, 2021 11:08:41 GMT -5
I agree with Killix in that it makes sense given that the editor is so overworked. Poor guy has so much to do, it'd be hard to find time to read long series.
On the other hand, Hunty makes a good point. Why keep rejecting them and make people wait for that sweet spot? Doesn't the "held over for a future entry" response still exist? I, for one, would prefer being held over for several months to having to constantly resubmit.
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Post by Twillie on May 26, 2021 12:13:38 GMT -5
I'm also left wondering why hold overs aren't being utilized here more. Building up a queue rather than starting from scratch each week is common practice with content-related jobs for the exact reason of saving time and prepping for updates weeks or months in advance. As is, this feels near impossible for series writers to plan their stories and know when, if at all, they'll actually show up in the Times. I guess it's nice that the user collabs don't have the same cap, but what about the people who aren't interested in collabs? Who aren't inspired by that particular theme? Who haven't heard of the theme in time to actually write for it?
I also agree with Hunty's point that temporary solutions often turn permanent, intentionally or not, or whether they're actually sustainable or not. This current method feels too contrived and competitive to let be the new normal, and I hate to think of anyone feeling they have to fight the NT itself for a chance to get in it. If I were a series writer, I know I'd feel similar in stepping away from the NT. And even if they did remove the cap in the near future, my next worry would be how we find this out. The only reason we know about the cap in the first place is because someone asked the Editorial after months of being left in the dark with relentless rejections. We're only learning about new NT rules well after they've been implemented and purely at the expense and efforts of users.
I submitted a follow up question to the Editorial today asking how one's supposed to know when a series will end, and also proposing hold overs be used to save time and give writers better encouragement. I dunno if there's more that can be done as a collective, though. I remember back when humans were temporarily banned from the NT, we were able to convince them otherwise, so perhaps there can be a similar effort made here in hopes of better series treatment?
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Post by Killix on May 26, 2021 17:53:37 GMT -5
When I first read this topic, I was pondering why there are no holdovers, because I do remember them from my time in the Times. From what I've been reading about the state of things right now, I would not be surprised if the absence of holdovers really just is due to the editor needing less to juggle.
Whatever the reason, the current state of things seems to be exacerbating a bottleneck. When you've got (let's say...) 50 people writing and submitting quality entries each week and can only accept and publish 1 or 2 from that pool each month... you're going to end up with many unhappy writers and a growing mountain of submissions - more than can ever be published in a reasonable amount of time.
A queue would provide a wider cap, though with this bottleneck... I imagine it would really suck having to compete over holdover slots (either randomly as they open up, or by means of "you get one chance per total queue-refill. Didn't make it? See you in a few months") X'D but it's possible that it would help drain the number of submissions at a better pace. Right now, the trickle is ineffective at least, and very frustrating to the content creators at most.
Hopefully the inquiries about the state of series submissions/holdovers will provide some answers... or at least help convince them to change their mind about it.
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Post by Carolyn on May 26, 2021 20:32:52 GMT -5
I have mentioned to Aesop that a new held over NM would be beneficial, because dishing out constant TMGEs is going to be very disheartening to people who have spent *months* writing and editing longer stories. I wish--really wish--they could allocate a second person to help Aesop do his job. He's stretched thin and I really do feel for him. There's only so much he can fit in a 40-hour (possibly longer) work week, and I'm trying to be understanding of his situation. I guess since the creative contests don't print money, the big bosses aren't putting it in the highest priority bracket. But gosh darn it, the creative community is so talented and wonderful. Our work deserves to be seen and enjoyed.
Though it saddens me, Herdy makes a good point. I hadn't intended on the collabs making the series section a longer storytelling competition, but it is heading in that direction and I can 100% see why that is frustrating people. I'm not sure what we can do about it, though, unless we ask Aesop if we can shift collabs to being short story, article, and comic *only* and ask people not to do series (or to have a section limit)? But we've never really had that sort of limitation before and I'm unsure of how we'd enforce it. Or what we would do given that three individuals (as far as I recall) were doing series for this upcoming collab issue.
Thinking about it, we should come up with some potential feedback in a consolidated form, like our biggest issues and potential solutions to these issues. Something fair and balanced with ideas for how they can improve the system for the future. New TNT seems relatively open to feedback from the playerbase as long as we can frame it professionally.
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Post by Huntress on May 27, 2021 4:40:10 GMT -5
I'd be entirely down with a consolidated official feedback statement of some variety. Only we'd be taking a lot of guesses at what the actual problems are and thus how they could be improved (like the whole business with heldovers - is there something legitimately preventing the use of them or did it just never ever occur to them on account of all of these recent editor changes that've completely severed the chain of continuity since Droplet?) As one potential brainstorming point, could something be done about those 15-year-old NT submission restrictions? It's been a while since I took a look at them but holy Fyora, the series section allows up to 12 parts of up to 50,000 words each. You could submit the entire Lord of the Rings. With the Hobbit included. And there's no way they'd be able to actually process it. If they're struggling with workload and the aim is to balance things out then the form should really be adjusted to allow for submissions that they can actually reasonably handle. More to that point, the max wordcount for short stories is only 4,000 words, and I'll bet that this right here has given birth to a whole lot of two-parter series over time. I took a look at my submission history and a lot of my series were in that 5k-6k range: it's the kind of length that allows you to tell a bit of a longer story, stretch it a little, but doesn't go into full novel territory. So I'm wondering if raising the short story wordcount limit would siphon lots of those shorter series out of the series pile. (Which, okay, also means more short stories to read through, but hey, publishing the NT means having to read our entries and there's only so much one can do about that ) (and while I'm at it, what is the deal with the equally insane 50k limit on articles? I've translated entire books shorter than that.) Although ultimately, the central problem continues to be that the entire NT submission pile gets bottlenecked to one hat of one dude with too many hats. Which is kind of a managerial issue. And we know that they continue to be averse to any kind of help outsourced from the userbase - but is that something that could still be included in suggestions all the same? Let us help you, etc etc?
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Post by Kat on May 27, 2021 6:11:10 GMT -5
I'm also willing to contribute to a consolidated official feedback, but we may be looking at a higher hill to climb. Pushing back against banning humans completely from NT work was just us reminding the staff that the rules and established NT tradition have always allowed humans in supporting roles. But this time, we're likely facing management decisions. I'm only guessing here, but judging from the fact that Aesop is handling the other competitions and even content writing, the workload may very well be part of the problem. The NT already took two breaks this month for the Altador Cup. I've seen winning Storytelling entries that still have typos and, to be quite honest, entries that are subpar and would not have passed scrutiny under the previous Storytelling judge.
You'd think they would be able to outsource, at least, an assistant who can help Aesop with the editing. They already outsourced merch manufacturing and the site should still be making a steady amount of income from NC items, premium subscribers, and merch buyers. Note that Neopets' audience is now comprised of working adults, many of whom used to be kids who either couldn't afford the merch from Neopets' heyday or who (like me) were simply not in the right places for merch.
Using the held over letters would be good but only if they amp up the number of new series published each time. Otherwise, the held over series pile will build faster than Aesop can publish them. Instead of having a hard cap on the series, why not at least release one per week or per two weeks so we don't stare at an empty section issue after issue? And if we try to limit the series published in collabs, that might further exacerbate our series limit problem because then, each time we try to submit a series, whether collab issue or not, is going to feel like a shot in the dark. I don't think it's anyone's fault that the collab issues have become like this...it's just that, these collab issues are now the closest we have to the size of the issues we got from years ago. I feel like this is one of our last few reminders of the time when we didn't have to debate on series getting a hard cap.
I think I can offer a couple of answers as to why the NT submission requirements and word limits were always like that.
1. No one questioned them, as far as I know, from the time the forms were launched until now (and if I remember correctly, the forms were a new thing when I submitted my very first short story, the one that launched me into full NT authorship). If we wanted to write something, we took one look at the word counts, then we were like "cool" and then just submit. People chasing the Neopian Times avatars couldn't care less either. They probably wanted a limit but at the same time were afraid to stifle our creativity, knowing that series with more than 12 parts were published in the past, so they tried to compromise by offering a high word limit per part.
And of course no one would care because...most of us, if not all, wouldn't submit series that were 50k words long per part. Writing for the NT isn't a full-time job, just something we pick up in our spare time or when we want to escape the real world.
Which brings me to reason number two:
2. This wasn't a priority. Because no one questioned this at length unlike with the neverending UC controversy, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And unfortunately, the NT continues to, well, not be a priority considering the times it has been pushed back. Which is a shame because even if the NT doesn't print money the way merch and the NC Mall do, it's still an integral part of the site. It's always fun to see what people come up with based on their Neopets experience and the ever-growing volume of lore which has grown so big that parts of it have begun to contradict themselves.
I do agree, however, that perhaps expanding the word count to short stories will reduce the number of very short series that come in, because I've also had my share of short stories that wound up going over the word limit and morphing into 2- or 3-part series. But something else has to be done on top of that. Some (other) options include:
1. Making the NT a biweekly publication. If Aesop will be wearing this many hats from here on out, then perhaps giving him more time to work on one issue will allow more series to be included. Also, it will be less disappointing to have the NT formally become biweekly instead of waking up on Friday (or Saturday morning for me) looking forward to the NT and being greeted by the "The Neopian Times will be taking a week off today!" announcement.
The downside? We don't know if this will truly address the problem, and it will be, from then on, evidence that the NT has really fallen from its glory days and is no longer as much of a priority as it used to be. Not to mention, it will still be disappointing that the NT will no longer be weekly as it has always been since time immemorial.
2. Accepting one new series per issue or per two issues as mentioned above. But, this presents the same problem - people will be vying for the single new series spot per issue. Unless we finally see the held over notices being utilized more often.
3. Please, for the love of Sloth, Aesop needs help. He's the first editor AFAIK (I could be wrong, I was somewhere in the law school oblivion during Country Queen's time and I only caught the tail end of Scrappy's time) who has had to wear many hats on top of his NT one. The past editors have had the luxury of focusing solely on the NT and could spend a whole week editing and holding over and accepting.
4. Outsourcing. I agree that TNT may still be averse to this but it's still worth offering. Perhaps if they see how sincere we are, they might outsource help elsewhere if not from us.
I guess right now, we have to show them that the NT - especially the series section - is still an important part of the site.
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Post by Herdy on May 27, 2021 7:28:33 GMT -5
Country Queen, Scrappy and Jade were doing other duties on top of the NT as well, though the content team was larger for each of them (they each had the India office).
I also wouldn't be too certain that extra staffing for content would be a dead end even with it being a management decision. Many of the staff we interact with these days are management, really. Looking elsewhere, for the last 8-9 months some users have been deliberately shoehorning a request for a community manager into every conversation about TNT's failings. We're now getting one - a position that Neopets didn't even officially have prior to the layoffs. We *can* bring about staffing changes if we are focused enough about it.
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Post by Kat on May 27, 2021 7:49:29 GMT -5
My mistake, I think it was Jade's time I caught the tail end of when I returned last year. Sounds like Aesop doesn't even have the luxury of a large enough content team.
I guess I'm a bit pessimistic about staffing changes because the Neopian Times seems pretty niche compared to a community manager's duties, and there may be less of us clamoring for extra staff who can pick up the slack and free up some of Aesop's time since, well, not a lot of people write regularly for the NT and those who do are usually done by the time they have their avatars. (And a lot of people who are just shooting for the avatars don't go for writing series.)
But I'm tired of the TMGEs I kept receiving last year whether I wanted to submit a 12-parter or a 3/4-parter and only getting a series accepted when it was tailored for a collab issue. I'm willing to support whatever our next move on this matter will be - well, as long as that next move isn't "lying down and staring up at the ceiling, dumbly accepting the fate of the series section".
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Post by Ian Wolf-Park on May 27, 2021 8:02:25 GMT -5
I think all of us who write series are tired of the constant TMGEs and want this over somehow, in a meaningful way. We'll just have to wait and see what the future holds, which is never easy.
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Post by Twillie on May 27, 2021 11:08:41 GMT -5
That is a a good point, we shouldn't try putting the cart before the horse and come up with possible solutions to a problem whose details we don't know in full. From the outside, some possible changes can seem like simple or obvious fixes, but in the end it's hard to say what's best without knowing TNT's full circumstances.
In my eyes, that means that if we want to figure this series situation out, we need to pivot focus. Instead of coming to TNT and Aesop with possible changes they can make, we can approach them with questions on what their biggest needs or obstacles are in the first place. What's happening on their end that's making things difficult, what are they already doing to remedy the situation, and is there anything that can be done from the users' end to help?
That may come in the form of a consolidated statement, or it may come in the form of multiple people asking these things over a period of time. TNT is rather spread out over various platforms like Twitter, Discord, and Neopets itself, and the staff members on these platforms also vary. As such, I dunno if one concentrated move or several would be a better course of action? They've also got the community manager coming in soon, whose job I understand will be all about collecting community feedback and answering questions from users.
(Earlier this week, there was a Twitter thread made to ask the future CM questions, so I submitted one about the NT. However, I had specifically proposed the a biweekly schedule idea, so if I have another chance, I may ask them about the NT's more general needs).
I dunno how much priority is put on the NT right now, but letting staff know that we care about it is what helps it stay on the table. I'm less concerned about NT's heyday, as in my opinion that already passed several years ago and in large part depends as well on the userbase's size and regular activity. Right now, my interest is in working just to keep the NT around and with easy use for both users and staff, as both parties are needed to maintain the Times' existence but are also both facing severe roadblocks.
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