The new prompt is up:
therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1224892.html
The Work Room is as well:
therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1225025.html
***
There were a few random things that I wanted to talk about. I'll probably go into more detail on them soon. But while they are on my mind:
I posted a correction earlier about how popfiend was ACTUALLY eliminated - the Topsy Turvy. That twist deserves it's own special entry, or at very least a bigger "Twists and how they came to be". But it did get me thinking about how important it is to know that every single twist was created to answer a problem, real or potential, from the season before!
Every rule in place is something I went "What about that???" including what I've casually referred to as my McDonalds rule of posting links to other sites.
Obviously this came from Season 4 when those wanna be groups had people coming in on a regular basis posting links to *their* group(s).
Those were easy enough to just delete. It was the well meaning people who showed up and "wanted to share", so I needed to set up a rule. It was pretty straight forward - if you want to post a link to somewhere else, come to me first. If it's a good link, I'll actually post it myself in a Green Room. If it's something I don't want to promote (the list is pretty small) then I'll let you know why. My example was that it was simple manners, you don't go into a Burger King and start handing out coupons for McDonalds. If you did, the management would throw you out and probably have you barred from coming back. I wasn't - and didn't - go that far and honestly 99.9% of what people wanted to post I ended up posting in a Green Room.
But my point that it was simply bad manners stood, and continues to stand. Although we really haven't had any major issues with that sort of thing in quite some time.
***
Which, in a way flows into "Why are moderators the only ones who are able to post in Idol?" This usually comes up during the "Why don't people just post their entries to the community itself?" I've already discussed "The Loop", and trying to avoid the whole snake eating itself of it all. Communities that are self contained like that are asking for stagnation.. You need the new blood and their perspectives to keep growing, not just in numbers but in ideas.
So, the "why aren't people just posting their entries in the community itself" is an easy answer, but even more importantly, its your entry. You own it. You should be the one to house it in your space and decide who sees/doesn't see it at any point.
As far as "why everyone can't post to the community?" IMO it's bad enough when I have multiple posts in one day. Could you imagine how fast the important stuff would get lost if everyone was making POSTS instead of comments? It's the same principle of why you only post links to the Prompt posts. It's chaos, and not in the way that fits on a wheel!
***
Someone remind me the Week of the 28th to talk about why Season 9 was going to be the last season. I think it would be appropriate there. Maybe going into more in-depth on what happened in 2011 that changed Idol forever,
But I'll give you a really big hint - that's when I met Cynthia and my own life changed completely.
***
Which leads me into a question that was asked about entries that I remember and/or reactions that took me by surprise. (or something like that). There's bits and pieces of entries that stick with me over the years. Definitely writers in general have stayed. I have my favorites, and occasionally I'll share who they are. :) (For example, one of my personal favorites of all time is alexpgp. Not only did he have some great stories from his real life, he was also a talented fiction writer. A lot of people don't realize that he was a professional non-fiction/technical textbook writer though! Which translating into just how precise his language always was. As usual, I digress...)
I've told this story before, but I think it encompasses the "entry I remember/meant a lot to me"/"reactions that took me by surprise" and a little bit of the why it was so important to always plan out the season't prompts and twists ahead of time, before the first person ever signs up.
There have definitely been people annoyed with me for prompts that they felt hit too close, but they've always been coincidences. Even this one I'm about to talk about.
Season 3. Week 3
"My Biggest Mistake and What I Hope that I Have Learned From it"
Note: Our first full-time fiction writer, who was successful was darkprism in Season 5! As weird as that seems now.
A contestant named jeibear wrote this really moving entry about how she had broken her ex-husband's heart by cheating on him and the regret she was living with. People rallied around her in a major way, her fellow contestants, readers in general. There was just a huge outpouring of how she shouldn't blame herself for that/needed forgive herself and move on/that it takes two people to set up a scenario to cheat. The Idol community just really embraced and rallied around her.
What the vast majority of them didn't know at the time (I'm not even sure I mentioned it when she eventually dropped,(I just looked, I did) and I know I didn't mention it around the time of her entry) was that she was my ex-wife. I was the ex-husband in question. It was the first time she had really put it out there and admitted that she was sorry for hurting me (3 years after the fact), and she did it in the form of an Idol entry. (She thought that I had put it in place in the season because of her, but as I said, that was set long before she ever mentioned she might sign up and even when I posted the topic, I wasn't thinking about what she specifically might write.)
I try my hardest to remain neutral on all things. But do you have any idea how difficult it is to assemble something like Idol and then have the (at the time) biggest group that had ever been assembled, en mass come together and say "It's OK". :) (Even if that's not what they actually said. They were being supportive to her, which is good for a community to be like that. I got that even then. But I also had a part of me that was "WTF people!" :D )
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