Moderator Sign-ups

[sprat.livejournal.com]

Although the first few discussions in this community will be moderated by gurrier or sprat, we would eventually like to share this responsibility with other members of the community.

How we think it'll work:

* Each Monday, a new story will be linked for discusssion by its author. The author will include a contact email for you, the weekly moderator, at the bottom of her post.

* Once that initial post has been made, your duty as moderator for the week begins. You will need to watch the comments as they are posted to make sure that everyone who participates in the discussion is following the guidelines for the community. If there are concerns about a comment posted while you are not around to see it, participants will be asked to email you to let you know about it (rather than engaging with the commenter themselves).

* Some comments you might need to delete outright (i.e.: "YOUR STORY IS SUXXOR!!1!" or "You are obviously just writing this story to deal with your own deep-seated psychological issues, which I will helpfully list right here." And etc.).

* Other comments may need a little more thought--does the poster seem to have been trying to engage in a rational discussion, but has veered away from the guidelines a little? In that case, you may just want to step in with a comment reminding them to stick to the rules. But if the comment seems to be steering the discussion away from a useful critique of the story, you will need to delete it.

* It's okay for you to participate in the discussion, too--and in fact, it would be cool if you could keep things moving by asking questions, etc--but as moderator, it's obviously a good idea for you to try to stay neutral in any polarized debates.

* At the end of the week--say on Sunday afternoon--either the story's author or one of the comm's maintainers will freeze the comment threads on the post and edit the post itself to say that the discussion is closed. At that time, you can read through what was discussed and make a second post summarising all the major points brought up that week.

* Then you're done!


If this sounds like something you'd like to do:

1) Join the community
2) Participate in a few discussions.
3) Comment below with a contact email address to sign up! We will email you to set up dates and details.

Story sign-ups

[gurrier.livejournal.com]

Hi, and welcome to ds_workshop!

We hope this community will be a supportive environment to discuss Due South stories of all varieties and flavours. It's a scary thing to put a story out there and have it critiqued, so we're leaving it up to authors to submit their stories.

The idea is (and it's open to change once we see how it works and what people want) that every week, we'll focus on one story, posted by its author. The discussion will be moderated and frozen at the end of the week, and the moderator will then post a summary of the discussion.

If you'd like your story critiqued, just reply to this post. We'll take each submission in turn. The week before your turn, a moderator will contact you, and get you to submit a post with (i) a link to your story and (ii) your moderator's email address. On Monday, that post will go up, and the fun begins!

this week's story: "In the Water" by gurrier

[gurrier.livejournal.com]

To get the ball rolling, I'm submitting a story of mine called In the Water.

Due South is the first fandom I've ever written in, and the first time I've written fiction since leaving school nearly 20 years ago. That's a long time without worrying about plot, structure, characterisation - anything! People have said nice things, which feels really good, but I'm left wondering. What didn't work? What could I do better? So i'd really appreciate some critical feedback.

This week's moderator is sprat, sprat75@gmail.com.