Yeah, I mean, for Yuletide I get it. (And it turns out there *is* something you can do throughout the rest of the year, which I didn't know and which I will definitely check out!)
OTOH, it seems as if there's this general attitude of... if the mods do not want X thing to happen, they make it out to be twice as bad as it is in the rules, expecting that people won't take them entirely seriously and will end up thinking it's about the right degree of bad. I mean, I run into this absolutely everywhere - people saying "this is 100% awful always" and then when I take them aside to ask it turns out that no, it's actually not, they were exaggerating so that people would take them seriously-
But the problem is that my mind doesn't work like that. If someone tells me that something (dropping out) is terrible awful huge problem, I will believe them. In fact, I usually make missing deadlines and the like a *bigger* deal than what people say it is. And I will build up a huge amount of anxiety about the thing in my head. This means that a) if I drop out, I am less likely to tell them, because I'm so racked with guilt about it that my only hope is to avoid thinking about this thing at all costs and b) that I am probably more, not less, likely to drop out, because even before the deadline approaches I can't think about the thing without "I have to complete this if I don't the world will end!!!" So, you know, in some cases being tough on drop-outs can actually be counter-productive, you know?
And I totally agree with you on non-exchange fests having rules about dropping out. I've probably been banned from femgenficathon for not completing my prompt last year, and that wasn't an exchange fest. Although I can see the point in exchanges - e.g. for Yuletide, it's a) structured as a Christmas present and b) specifically designed as a way for people to get fic in rare fandoms that may usually only see a few fics per year. I mean, if I have a hankering for a specific Kirk/Spock scenario in ST XI there are tons of places I can go for that, but if I want to see, say, Randy/Mike in Gordon Korman's I Want To Go Home!, there are probably only three or four active writers in that fandom at all.
I suppose something cool would be to have people who didn't want to request something and only write something "open up" a slot for someone to only request and not write, or write with no obligation of completion, but I have no idea of how realistic that is.
no subject
OTOH, it seems as if there's this general attitude of... if the mods do not want X thing to happen, they make it out to be twice as bad as it is in the rules, expecting that people won't take them entirely seriously and will end up thinking it's about the right degree of bad. I mean, I run into this absolutely everywhere - people saying "this is 100% awful always" and then when I take them aside to ask it turns out that no, it's actually not, they were exaggerating so that people would take them seriously-
But the problem is that my mind doesn't work like that. If someone tells me that something (dropping out) is terrible awful huge problem, I will believe them. In fact, I usually make missing deadlines and the like a *bigger* deal than what people say it is. And I will build up a huge amount of anxiety about the thing in my head. This means that a) if I drop out, I am less likely to tell them, because I'm so racked with guilt about it that my only hope is to avoid thinking about this thing at all costs and b) that I am probably more, not less, likely to drop out, because even before the deadline approaches I can't think about the thing without "I have to complete this if I don't the world will end!!!" So, you know, in some cases being tough on drop-outs can actually be counter-productive, you know?
And I totally agree with you on non-exchange fests having rules about dropping out. I've probably been banned from
I suppose something cool would be to have people who didn't want to request something and only write something "open up" a slot for someone to only request and not write, or write with no obligation of completion, but I have no idea of how realistic that is.