Guardian scene discussion posts -- a poll!

[china_shop]

Things have slowed down a bit on the scene discussion front lately, and there's only one more scheduled in this round, so we thought it would be a good time to check in with you.

Poll #25613 Scene discussion series

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 14

View Respondents

Shall we continue the scene discussion posts?

View Answers

yes, please! I'm enjoying them!
8 (72.7%)

yes, and I'll sign up to host one next round!
3 (27.3%)

no, three rounds was enough
0 (0.0%)

we should do something else instead (I'll make a suggestion in the comments)
0 (0.0%)

If you've hosted one or more scene discussion(s) in the past, what did you like about it?

View Answers

it was an excuse to study the scene
4 (66.7%)

writing it up was fun
5 (83.3%)

the discussion/feedback/interaction
4 (66.7%)

other
0 (0.0%)

If you've hosted in the past and *don't* want to host again, why is that?

View Answers

I'm too busy
2 (40.0%)

it's too much work
2 (40.0%)

too much participation/feedback
0 (0.0%)

not enough participation/feedback
1 (20.0%)

no other scenes I'm interested in writing up
1 (20.0%)

other (feel free to elaborate in comments, or via private message to china_shop or trobadora)
2 (40.0%)

Comments

[dorinda]

I love the scene discussions so much! But I haven't been able to sign up to do one myself, so I guess I'm just being an audience rather than a creator. I appreciate everyone who has done one, a lot.

[china_shop]

Where would we be without an audience?! We greatly appreciate everyone's engagement, at all levels (including lurkers!). Thanks so much for letting us know you've been enjoying the series! <3

[sakana17]

If you've hosted in the past and *don't* want to host again, why is that?

I checked "it's too much work" and "other." The "other" is that the format required by the community was more work/more constricting than I anticipated, and I really struggled to complete the post. By the time I posted, I felt drained and ended up not really engaging in the comments. This isn't a slam against having a required posting format to keep consistency, because I totally understand why that would be desirable in the community.

[china_shop]

That's incredibly useful feedback -- thank you so much! ♥ And I'm very sorry you found the experience draining!

We intended the template to be optional -- in case people wanted a starting point -- but obviously we weren't clear enough about that. Definitely something we'll take on board! Personally, I'm eager for regular Guardian content, whatever the format... :-)

[shadaras]

Oooh if we're talking about the template, I would actually love to know what's considered the "minimum" standard for these posts.

On the one hand I'm fascinated by these scene discussions and know I could make one myself, but on the other it looks like so much work because of the level of detail that seems to go into the ones that I see posted on the community. Like, some reassurance that it doesn't need to be like a thousand words of meta (with screenshots accompanying most paragraphs) would probably help? (...this is a bit of an exaggeration of how the posts can come across but... yeah...)

[trobadora]

Heh. This is helpful, thank you for weighing in!

(There's no actual minimum! The only requirement is "identify the scene and where to find it; write something about the scene". We really should make that clearer. As someone guilty of some of those long, long posts, picking apart the details is fun for me, but yeah, it's a lot of work, and absolutely not expected.)

[shadaras]

Look I love the long stuff and I will also cheerfully dig into details (see: how many words was I willing to spend doing a less-formal version of this on my own journal?), but as someone who tends to internalise expectations from seeing examples rather than by reading instructions, making it very clear that posts like yours are going well beyond what's necessary would be helpful. <3

("identify the scene and where to find it; write something about the scene" as the entire expectation did not come across to me at all, yeah. xD Hearing that spelled out definitely eases the burden of possible expectation! Hopefully spelling it out more clearly in your "hey sign up for this!" posts will make more people interested in joining in.)

[trobadora]

Thank you! It really helps to get this kind of feedback. ♥

We can't do anything about what examples you might see from other posters, but we can definitely spell things out clearly from now on. I'd love to see more people joining in!

[melinoel616]

All of the scene discussions are amazing, and thank you everyone for your hard work! There are some scenes that haven't been brought up yet (and I'm eager to contribute), but I understand if momentum has slowed down to the point of holding them less often.

[china_shop]

So glad to hear you've been enjoying them -- thanks for weighing in! ♥ There are hundreds of wonderful scenes yet to be cooed over or put under the microscope (or both!)! We'll see how things go -- it's great to know you'd like to contribute. Thanks! :-D

[maggie33]

I enjoyed all the former discussion post and I would gladly read more of them. But I'm still not feeling up to taking active part in different fannish activities. Generally post Covid I'm tired basically all the time. So for now I wouldn't have enough energy for making a post and hosting a discussion. But if you'll decide to have another round I will read, and enjoy and maybe even comment sometimes. :)

[trobadora]

*hugs*

I hope you'll feel less tired at some point soon, but in the mean time yay for enjoying the posts! They've been a lot of fun for me too, and I hope there's enough interest to keep them going for a while.

[china_shop]

*hugs from me, too*

♥ ♥ ♥

[mumblemumble]

I super loved all the scene discussion posts I've read; they were so full of little details and language information and interesting musings! Huge thanks to everyone who's ever put one together! I haven't been on Dreamwidth in a few weeks and didn't participate in a lot of discussions before that either, and I can see how it might be discouraging for someone who's put that much effort into a post to "only" see a handful of comments. /o\

For me, I think the weekly-ish schedule was too much? Sometimes I'd see a scene I'd want to comment on, and then life would happen and there'd already be a new post. (I understand I could still comment on the "old" post, but the brain is weird that way.) A monthly scene discussion would feel more relaxed and give people more time to chime in, I think? Still no guarantees, of course.

So that's my 2 cents!

[trobadora]

Thanks for weighing in! It's good to have different perspectives. :)

We do have a community of people who are active on DW on a daily basis, and there are always new posts, so we don't think less frequent scene discussions would necessarily get more attention. Do feel free to jump into older posts whenever you feel like it!

[mumblemumble]

Oh gosh yes, didn't mean everyone is flakey like me. /o\ Looking forward to more scene discussion posts regardless of schedule/outcome, and will definitely jump into older posts when I can gather up enough free floating brain cells. :-D

[trobadora]

Aw, no worries! ♥

I haven't been as active as I'd like lately, either - I could do with some extra brain cells myself. *g*