#PLEASE do this and tell me i want points for voiceteam

[korechthonia]

Once again, reminding everyone that

~*~Blanket Permission~*~

is the greatest gift you can give your friendly neighbourhood podficcer/artist/fan translator this holiday season, or maybe a great New Year's resolution too!

It's pretty simple - just put a sentence or two in your AO3 profile to tell someone who looks what they are free to do with your works - remix, fanart, fanmix, translate, podfic, bind - and what you would prefer they ask first or don't do. (The handy-dandy Fanworks Permission Statement Builder can help!)

And look, I can't promise it'll mean you get podfic or art or anything, but I can promise that it'll make it easier for the folks who make those kind of fanworks to find you and increase your chances of something turning up in your AO3 notifications one day!

AND if you do it and let me know, I will submit you to the amazing fpslist to help podficcers and other fans find you!

And if you have concerns or questions, well, I have a few answers, but I am sure there are more.

"But I only post drabbles!"

Podficcers love to podfic a drabble! It's short and sweet and easy to do. A good drabble might make a great subject for an artist! Maybe someone would be interested in turning it into a multichapter epic - all of those people would love to know if you'd like that, or even be remotely interested in hearing about it.

"But I don't want [fanwork type]!"

Okay! If you say so in your profile, you've just reduced the number of people who'll ask you! And they won't get their hopes up either, so they'll love it too.

"But they'll take credit for my work!"

I most certainly hope not - that would be plagiarism and very not okay. They'll only take credit for the work they did in transforming it! The "Inspired By" feature on AO3 makes it easy to credit, and author names are often found elsewhere in the post, on cover art, and in the metadata of the file.

"But it's archive locked for a reason!"

Say you don't want someone to transform your archive-locked works then, or request that podfics based on archive-locked fics are also archive-locked. If you're clear in your requests, people will be happy to follow them!

Any more? I'll be happy to add them to the post!

[voiceteammods]

Voiceteam Mystery Box is a two-week mini spinoff of Voiceteam to wrap up the holiday season and start the new year! Every day of the first week, teams will be presented with two new point-earning challenges. Each challenge will be active for seven days, so for the second week two challenges will close each day. Once all the challenges have closed, the team with the most points per member wins!

TIMELINE

Sign-ups: December 12th–December 22nd

Discord server opens: December 23rd

Challenges post: December 26th-January 1st

Final challenge ends: January 8th

Amnesty: January 9th

Results & Celebration: January 10th

Voiceteam runs on GMT, which means that all challenge drops and deadlines will happen at midnight GMT. Your mods—cantarina, forzandopod, klb, and wingedwords—are in EST, CST and PST.

RULES

For Mystery Box, we’ll be offering team sign-ups and individual sign-ups. In team sign-ups, teams of between 5 and 15 players can sign up as a complete group. In individual sign-ups, individual players can sign up to be matched by mods with others who signed up individually.

Minors (and over-18 folk who prefer to avoid mature content) are welcome to participate in Voiceteam! Where needed, two Discord channels will be provided to a group: a general-access channel and a NSFW channel.

Since team sizes will vary, each team’s final score will be determined by dividing the number of points the team earned by the number of players.

Challenges will sometimes leave room for interpretation. If you are not sure whether something counts, please check with the mods. We support creativity and will be generous with what we allow!

Completed creations should be turned in to the mods via a form we will link here once the challenge begins. A mod will look over and verify your submission and will reach out to you if we disagree about the point value or need more information from you. You are also encouraged (but not required) to share your creations within the Discord so that other players can see and enjoy them!

Individual participants will have a cap for how many points they can earn for each day’s challenges. If you’ve capped out for a particular day’s challenges, you can still participate by supporting and cheering for your other team members!

This challenge is all about adding fun and connection to our lives, not adding stress! If you choose to sit out a couple days or to only take on a single challenge for the whole event, that’s perfectly allowed. If you decide to just hang out in chat from time to time and cheer on your team, and you end up not making any creations, that’s allowed too. That said, you do need to meet the minimum participation level of checking in with your team to say hi once per week, or you will be removed from the team. If you are removed for non-participation, there is no stigma attached (really really) and you’re still welcome to sign up for future rounds.

Each team member has the final decision about their own creations (including their part in collaborative creations, if they choose to participate in any). There are no minimum requirements for the quality or size of your creations.

The mods are committed to supporting a positive experience for our players! Please feel free to come to the mods to request support with any issues, including but not limited to: feelings of exclusion, conflict with a group member, and concerns about the rules or structure of Voiceteam. We’ll keep your concerns confidential unless you give us the go-ahead to share them, but we can help you think up solutions or make mod-level changes as needed to address the problem. For more serious problems, our anti-harassment policy is linked here.

This is a community space, and players are expected to act in ways that take the needs and feelings of other players into account. If a player publicly complains about their team, pressures or excludes team members, or gives unsolicited concrit, they will be contacted by the mods and asked to stop. If this type of behavior happens repeatedly, they may be asked to leave Voiceteam or asked not to return in future years.

That said, our community will always make space for calling out or calling in of racism, transphobia, or other behavior harmful to historically marginalized communities, and the mods will always work to support players who speak up about this type of behavior. This includes calling out/calling in of the mods.

Connected to the previous point, we want to publicly (re-)acknowledge that as an all-white mod team we’re also a part of racism in fandom and the world. We have messed up in the past and caused harm when it comes to issues of race. As we go forward into this new round, we’re working to center anti-racism more intentionally from the start. The initial steps we will be taking are detailed in the FAQ below.

FAQ

Where did this idea come from?

We wanted to fit in one more round of Voiceteam before next May, and as we looked at available times, this idea started to form. We’ve been picturing the daily new challenges as a kind of opening of presents to extend the winter holidays, and the creation of new fanworks in the second week as a fun and exciting way to launch the new year!

Sounds fun! But I don’t have a pre-made group and don’t like the idea of being matched to a group of total strangers. What can I do?

While Voiceteam is a great place to make new friends, we also know there are lots of reasons someone might not feel comfortable being thrown into a social situation with a group of strangers. To address this, we have something new this round called “sign-up buddies”! People who sign up in individual sign-ups can choose one sign-up buddy, who will be guaranteed to be on the same team with them. Please note that to keep matching from becoming overly complicated, sign-up buddies must be reciprocal, so if person A requests person B, person B must request person A (and not person C)!

What if I have one or more people I’d like to privately request to NOT be on a team with?

There’s a field at the end of the sign-up that says “Is there anything else you want us to know?” If there are any people you’d like to request to not be on a team with, please mention it there. This field is set to private, so nobody except the mods will see what you type there.

What is Discord?/Tell me more about how the Discord server is going to work.

Discord is a chat-based platform. Every server (like the Voiceteam server) can host multiple text and voice chat channels. Some of the channels will be open to the entire Voiceteam community and some will be visible only to members of your team.

Voiceteam players will be emailed an invitation to the Voiceteam Discord server on December 23rd. You can spend the first days saying hi and getting to know your team—we’ll provide some optional icebreaker questions you can answer for each other—and then the first list of challenges will be posted at midnight (GMT) on December 26th (as the clock is ticking over from the 25th).

I don’t live in GMT. How do I keep track of when drops and deadlines will happen each day?

We know this can be confusing! We will have a time zone converter set up in Discord in a prominent location to help players keep track of when the next drop or deadline is coming up.

Are there limits or requirements for crossposting creations I make for Voiceteam?

Nope! You may crosspost any works made for Voiceteam whenever and wherever you want. You can also choose to not crosspost at all and only share with the mods, or only share within the Voiceteam Discord. One reminder, though, is that since many Voiceteam works are collaborations, all collaborators should discuss and be on the same page about when/where a work will be crossposted.

What is Amnesty?

During Amnesty Day, you can turn in anything you didn’t submit on time, but the point values for all submissions will be half what they were during the main challenge.

What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?

You can find examples of past Voiceteam challenges here.

What plans does Voiceteam have in place to address racism within fandom and our community?

We have put in place content moderation rules—if a fanwork is flagged and found to be in violation of these rules, any points previously earned by the work will be removed and the work will be removed from our Voiceteam collection. We will also be hosting 3 discussions on the Discord across the span of Voiceteam Mystery Box where we will talk together about articles, posts, or other sources written by BIPOC about antiracist practice.

We have also been looking for areas where we can shift our work as mods away from exerting power over others in the community and towards equal power-sharing, with us taking the role of facilitators. As one small part of this, mods will not delete any words by players from our Discord unless those words violate our anti-harassment policy and their deletion is requested by the affected community members. In case of deletion, we will keep screencaps of the unedited conversation for accountability reasons.

We are continuing to reflect as a mod team about these topics and will also remain open to suggestions and feedback from members of our community for how to improve in this area.

How do I sign up?

Head to our sign-up post or directly to our sign-up form

I have more questions!

For the answers to other questions, you can check out our FAQ from the last round. Anything in there that isn’t explicitly contradicted here still stands! If you have further questions after that, please ask them in the comments and we will get back to you as quickly as we can.

[voiceteam]

Voiceteam 2020 Info Post

Voiceteam is a Discord-based team scavenger hunt for the podfic community. Teams will earn points for making different voice-based or voice-adjacent creations. Each week in the month of May, teams will get a list of ten point-earning challenges and then will be set loose to strategize, create, and have fun!

TIMELINE

Sign-ups: April 20-30 Discord server opens: April 30 Week 1—Introductions: May 1-7 Week 2—Music: May 8-14 Week 3—Adventure: May 15-21 Week 4—Endings→Beginnings: May 22-28 Amnesty: May 29-31 Results & Party: June 1

Voiceteam runs on GMT. Your mods, klb and cantarina, are in EDT and PDT.

RULES

1. Completed creations should be turned in to the mods. Creations can be turned in via email (voiceteammods@gmail.com) or via the Submissions channel on the Voiceteam Discord. A mod will confirm a) that they saw the creation and b) the number of points it is worth. If you don’t receive mod confirmation or disagree with the point value, please follow up!

2. Individual players will have a cap for how many points they can earn per week. (We’ll also be trying to spread very prolific podficcers between the teams!) If you’ve capped out for the week, you can still participate by supporting and cheering for your other team members!

3. There is no minimum level of participation. This challenge is all about adding fun and connection to our lives, not adding stress! If you choose to sit a week out or to only take on one challenge per week, that is perfectly allowed. If you decide to just hang out in chat from time to time to say hi and cheer on their team, and you end up not making any creations, that’s allowed as well. Self-care is paramount!

4. Challenges will sometimes leave room for interpretation. If you are not sure whether something counts, please check with the mods. We support creativity, so we will be generous with what we allow!

5. Minors (and over-18 folk who prefer to avoid mature content) are welcome to participate in Voiceteam! Where needed, two Discord channels will be provided to a group: a general-access channel and a NSFW channel.

6. Each team member has the final decision about their own creations (including their part in collaborative creations, if they choose to participate in any). There are no requirements about the quality or size of your creations.

7. The mods are committed to supporting a positive experience for all players! Please feel free to come to the mods to request support with any issues, including but not limited to: feelings of exclusion, conflict with a group member, and concerns about the rules or structure of Voiceteam. We will keep your concerns confidential unless you give us the go-ahead to share them, but we can help you think up solutions or make mod-level changes as needed to address the problem. For more serious problems, our anti-harassment policy is linked here.

FAQ

Where did this idea come from?

Voiceteam is inspired by a combination of Amplificathon, GISH, and the 2000s eras sorting and landcomms on LJ. (Name inspiration is from here.) We wanted a point-based podfic event like Amplificathon used to be, and we also wanted an event with excitement, fun, and occasional silliness, where anybody who loved podfic would feel welcome and would have plenty of opportunities to bond and make new friends!

Do I have to be a podficcer to join?

No! You just have to love podfic. Every week’s challenges will include some non-voice options, like feedback or graphics. No one has to do every single challenge.

How big of a commitment is this going to be?

No bigger than you want it to be! The point of this challenge is to have fun and make friends, and if you end up getting inspired to create a bunch of stuff, cool. If not, that’s also cool.

Okay, but what if my version of fun is to scheme with my team members and Crush The Competition?

Go for it! Just make sure that it’s all in good fun and that team members with different reasons for participating don’t feel pressured.

What is Discord?/Tell me more about how the Discord server is going to work.

Discord is a chat-based platform. Every server (like the Voiceteam server) can host multiple text and voice chat channels. Some of the channels will be open to the entire Voiceteam community and some will be visible only to members of your team.

Voiceteam players will be emailed an invitation to the Voiceteam Discord server on April 30th. You can spend the first day saying hi and getting to know your team—we’ll provide some optional icebreaker questions you can answer for each other—and then the first list of challenges will be posted at midnight (GMT) on May 1st (as the clock is ticking over from the 30th).

How will the teams work?

When you sign up, we’ll get some information about your fannish likes and your preferred group dynamics. We’ll use that to form teams! The exact numbers and sizes will depend on the number of sign-ups, but our ideal is 10–15 people per team. If you are assigned a team and feel that it is not the right match for you, please contact the mods and we can reassign you.

Once you are assigned a team, anything you create counts toward your team’s point total. Beyond that, being on a team can be as interactive as you want. You can hang out in your team’s Discord channel all the time to chat and scheme and create with team members, or you can just check in every now and again to say hi and see if there’s anything happening you want to participate in. Or anything in between!

How do I earn points?

At the midnight (GMT) that begins each new week, a list of ten challenges will be posted in the Discord’s public channel, along with an update on point totals for each group so far. As soon as the new challenges are posted, the former week’s challenges no longer earn points until the Amnesty days.

During the Amnesty days, you can turn in anything you didn’t submit on time, but their point values will be halved.

What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?

This is tricky to answer, because we don’t want to give any of the challenges away in advance! But, for example, if this were a comm about dance rather than podfic, an example challenge might be:

Create an interpretive dance about a fandom trope. Bonus points if more than one team member contributes dance moves! (10 points baseline, +2 per additional member)

The tasks involved in the challenges have a wide range: art, photos, feedback, group chats with your team, recorded audio, and of course full podfic (or oral not!fic). There will even be an opportunity to incorporate other areas of interest, like cooking or gardening!

Note that in the above example, there are bonus points for collaborations between multiple team members. This will be true for many, though not all, of the challenges, and will always be noted in the challenge description.

What if I was already working on something before Voiceteam started? Is there a way to get points for it?

Any creation can earn points for a Voiceteam challenge as long as it is completed during the time that challenge is active. This includes WIPs you were already working on that happen to align with one of the challenges.

How do I sign up?

Head to this post!

What does the winning team win?

BRAGGING RIGHTS but the real prize is the friends we made along the way.