Comments From a Simple Treedog

[Ashira]

???

While you do post at least once a week (and believe me, one post a week is enough for me), these contests strike me as something that's supposed to be leisurely paced.  Spread out over the course of the week so that we can read in intervals and enjoy it, rather than letting it be a rushed affair just to feel like we give each contestant a fair chance.   Strikes me as rather rude to dilly-dally the whole darn week and then make the audience read everything right at the end. 

It might just happen that during voting we have a huge German exam to study for.  Or two midterms.  A sudden paper.

It also has way less chance of coming off as rushed if we think you're just procrastinating and suddenly get to the end of the week and think, "Crap, I still have a contest post to write!"

[Rath the Whirlwind]

First of all, I'm sorry you think that way.

Also, it really is a shame if you're busy, but I don't feel that's a right to blame us for how we choose to post.

I can see what you mean, and getting in posts at the beginning of the week, where there's usually a lull, would be nice.  But then it might get confusing skipping between those posts at the beginning of the next and the death at the end of the last week, since these posts technically still come before the death.  

[Opal]

It might just happen that during voting we have a huge German exam to study for.  Or two midterms.  A sudden paper.

And did you stop to think that maybe the contestants have a huge German exam to study for early in the posting week? Or two midterms or a sudden paper? Reading a post takes way, way less time than writing one, and so does writing reviews (unless you're Sabu at MM, of course XD). If you have enough time to criticize posting speed, you probably have enough time to write at least a few short reviews.

While I agree that it would be ideal for the posts to be spread out more, and I would certainly encourage the contestants to make every effort to do so in the future, at least they're posting. At least they care enough to write a great story instead of throwing out the first 1000 word slop that comes to mind. I WILL encourage them to spread the posts out more in the future though. But at the moment I'm not terribly worried about their performance. Could be a tad faster, but they're writing spectacularly and I'm quite proud of them, actually. :)

[Revel]

*hugs Ashira* And don't let meanyface Tara get you down. You're one of my favourite reviewers! I hope you stick around even if we're silly sometimes about posting in pulses. :duck: I do agree that we should be doing our best to have posts go up at an even rate. Now we know it makes some readers annoyed, it should be happening less often. And if readers can make sure to remember that sometimes not everything can go perfectly on our end, I'm sure we can all relax better and enjoy the story as best we can regardless of what happens. There's no need to keep arguing when everyone has heard both sides!

Click to feel better!

[Opal]

That probably sounded a lot meaner than I intended. But still. **shrugs**

[Damask the Minstrel]

You used the baby stoat! *clings* 'S so cute! (And... random duck? Revel... are you the Duck Man, now? Does that make me Foul Ol' Ron? I tol' 'em. Millenium hand 'n shrimp, so I did. Pone.)

Ashy: We're trying to keep 'em spread out, really! And notice that Rath and my posts are short! I did a 1500 and a 1200. About the size of one really big one. ^.^

[Revel]

I used the duck as punctuation because I've never seen a punctuation duck before and I wanted to see one.

[Jarrtail]

Who wouldn't?

[Opal]

STOP LOOKING AT ME, SWAN.

[Sycamore]

I'm just going to throw in my two cents here.

I think the main cause of concern isn't the fact that these come up in waves. If we see a huge multitude of posts at the beginning of the week, I very much doubt that we'll be complaining about that. It's the fact that we see three or four posts crop up at the end of the cycle, right before voting takes place. Let me use an example:

Week Three begins. We see a post from every character except Deadtail, Bellona and Eliza. Voting is extended for a day. During that day extension, three posts pop up from Deadtail, Bellona and Eliza. Well, freaking a, guys. I don't have the time today to read three posts and vote. So what I'm going to do is not read them, and vote on what I've already seen, and that was a post from Damask, Revel, Keane, Venril, and Rath.

Point is, you're putting yourself at a disadvantage because I can't bother reading your posts in order to cast an unbiased vote. You're then forcing me to rely on what I saw last week to use as judgment. So sometimes it behooves you (and I know I've been using that word a lot) to post in a manner that allows me time to read, digest, and cast.

Now, when it comes to reviewing, if I don't have time to read in a manner that gives me an unbiased vote, then I'm not going to take the time to review. Once voting ends, new posts for the next week are being posted and it's easier for me to jump ahead than to dwell on past chapters.

[Ashira]

It might just happen that during voting we have a huge German exam to study for.  Or two midterms.  A sudden paper.

And did you stop to think that maybe the contestants have a huge German exam to study for early in the posting week? Or two midterms or a sudden paper? Reading a post takes way, way less time than writing one, and so does writing reviews (unless you're Sabu at MM, of course XD). If you have enough time to criticize posting speed, you probably have enough time to write at least a few short reviews.

While I agree that it would be ideal for the posts to be spread out more, and I would certainly encourage the contestants to make every effort to do so in the future, at least they're posting. At least they care enough to write a great story instead of throwing out the first 1000 word slop that comes to mind. I WILL encourage them to spread the posts out more in the future though. But at the moment I'm not terribly worried about their performance. Could be a tad faster, but they're writing spectacularly and I'm quite proud of them, actually. :)

But the contestants have an advantage of planning ahead and adjusting their posting order accordingly.  Not all of them are going to have a German exam or a paper to write, so I would appreciate the flexibility in persons posting one before the other.

I understand that sometimes these things do get in the way.  I've been there!  But the main point is is that each and every single contestant knew what they were getting into when they entered a survivor contest.  It requires you to prioritize your time around such things as school, which is, I will say again, why I didn't enter!  Because I'm really busy!

[Nallmian]

Hey, I have to say, Tara and the cast members are doing a phenomenal job of getting all of the posts up in a reasonably timely fashion.  The most justified critcism of Redscape is that we write really, really slowly and take too long to post, but I haven't seen any signs of chronic lateness here.  As long as the contestants meet the deadlines, I feel like I owe them the courtesy of reading all the posts.  I understand that in order to review you have to read the posts in much more detail than most people do, but for voting it probably shouldn't take an outlandish amount of time to form a basic idea of what you do/do not like about the post.

[Jarrtail]

Speaking of Redscape...the last post was WHEN?

[Nallmian]

I know, I know...we actually have one post pre-posted along with part of another, and literally as I write this we are having a chat about Week 4 plotting.  The Brandies kinda got thrown off by something that happened with one of their writers.  But don't worry, Redscape is still very much in the works.

[Jarrtail]

Aw, something else happened? I hope he/she's okay.