Signing up for Yuletide 2010, part 2

Now let's go down here and we'll go ahead and submit and as you might hope the archive
code will not let you do this
If it lets through your submission then it's ok and then if doesn't then you'll get an
error message like this one
It's a little hard to explain why it works this way. It doesn't say you have an empty
- you haven't given us a request. It says you've given us a request, but it doesn't
have the fandom tag that is has to have.
You've given us an offer, but it has no fandom tags.
So these are the error messages we're getting because we left those requests empty.
And finally the other messages - offers have to have two character tags and we've left
those empty as well.
The other kinds of errors that you can get are - so in here we chose Dracula the Series.
So another error you can cause is if you select two fandoms. So lets say you put in too many
tags here [puts in more than one option for the 'freeform' field].
Let's say that we didn't read the instructions so you think 'oh my god, I'm going to make
a second request for Dracula: the series', [clicks on 'Dracula: the Series' for Request
2], and make a request for Dracula again.
Then down in the offers let's add a second fandom [checks two fandoms in the fandom selection
field for the first offer].
And then here let's check any [checks 'any' for characters offered, while at the same
time specifying two characters in the character field].
And also you might be wondering 'how the heck do we match all these things?'
Well that's because all these tags are canonical tags in the archive, that's what the auto
completer does, it only auto completes a tag that are actually exists. So lets say we add
[types 'foowherere' and 'aaaaahdsf' in the 'Optional Tags' field] and we throw these
in, the autocompleter is not going to find anything, as you might expect.
Now when we submit we will get a whole bunch of other errors.
Lots and lots of errors. [errors shown on screen]
So for instance, the first problem, we chose two fandom tags. Again, it says you can only
have one freeform tag, and we've currently selected two.
Then there are problems with the character tags, because Alexander Lucard is not in Dr
Quinn Medicine Woman.
[Narrator highlights "* Request must have exactly 1 fandom tags. You currently have
none."] This is the same error for that empty request.
[Narrator highlights "foowherere, aaaahdsfsdf"] Then we've got the error about the non-canonical
tags that we tried to put in.
[Narrator highlights "* You have specified tags for characters in your Offer but also
chose 'Any,' which will override them! Please only choose one or the other."] Then we also
get a warning, "You have specified tags for characters in your offer but also chose 'Any'",
just so that you don't accidentally choose any.
[Narrator highlights "* You have submitted more than one request with the same fandom
tags. This challenge requires them all to be unique."] And finally you've submitted
more than one request with the same fandom tags.
So I think that is all the different errors you might see, and now we're just going to
very quickly correct these -- I'm going to pause the recording while I do that so you
can see what happens when you've made a successful submission.
[Screen reads: Signup was successfully created.]
Okay, so when you have filled out the sign up correctly and everything works, you will
get a "Signup was successfully created" message and you'll get to review your signup.
[Scrolling down: "Signup for astolat" We see "Request 1", then a box containing three sections:
"Tags: Dracula: The Series, Alexander Lucard, Crossover, M/M, Explicit // URL: http://astolat.dreamwidth.org
// Details: some-details-here"]
You will see your requests. In each request you will see the tags -- so, fandom, character,
all those additional ones if you put any of them in; your prompt; any other details.
[Scrolling down: "Request 2", then a box containing just the section "Tags: +Anima" // "Request
3", then a box containing just the section "Beetle Juice (1988)"]
Then you can see the same thing for your offers.
[Scrolling down] You'll see the additional optional tags listed and so forth.
[Two buttons at the bottom labelled "Edit" and "Delete"] At the bottom, you can edit
or delete as long as signups are still open. Once signups close you can't do that anymore,
but until then you can make any changes you want.
You can always find your signup by going to the collection page [clicks "Dashboard" at
the top of the sidebar -- page changes to Yuletide 2010 collection page] -- you'll see
your signup [highlights "Your Signup" on the sidebar] in the link if you've signed up.
If you also got to your homepage [clicks "My home" in the bar at the top of the page; clicks
"My Signups"] under "Signups"you will see your signup right here. And you can edit and
delete from here.
[Back to the "Your Signup" page in the Yuletide 2010 collection]
Another piece that can you can't see just yet here is the signup summary [highlights
"Signup Summary" on the sidebar]. That is going to show you, as I mentioned, the list
of requested in the order of descending offers, so the fewer offers a fandom has, the higher
it will be in the list.
To give you an example of what that looks like...
...here's the Due South secret Santa, and what you can see is this is a single fandom
secret Santa, so nobody's actually specifying fandoms, what they're specifying is characters
instead. [Highlights list of characters.] And so you see that poor Martha has not got
enough offers, and you go down, and Benton has plenty of offers.
So if you're looking for ways to help with the matching, red ones are ones that are desperately
needed. Ones like this [highlight "Dewey[1,1]"] that have one and one, that could potentially
be somebody who both offered and requested the same thing, so it's very nice if you choose
to add to that.
[Back to the "Your Signup" page]
Okay, so finally I said I would talk a little bit more about the matching process. [Highlights
"Matching" on the sidebar]
There isn't really anything to show here, but just to give you sort of a sense, the
way that this works is when we're comparing you to another person and seeing, "Are these
two people a match?" the first thing we're going to do is go through each request and
each offer.
So for instance, let's say that we're matching me to Jane Fan, we're going to look at my
requests and her offers. If we have at least one match, then her offer matches my request.
If two of my requests match two of her offers, then that actually boosts the priority, because
we kind of figure that if you match on more than one fandom, that's great, that gives
the writer a lot more flexibility, so that's the thing that we prioritise the highest.
Let's say that I can matched to Fan Bob, and Fan Bob matches me on one fandom, I'm going
to be less likely to match Fan Bob than I am to match Fan Jane.
It's still not impossible, because the thing is, the matching process has to try and match
up everyone. So it's still going to do its best to give everybody better matches, but
it might not be able to.
Then if I match on one request with two different people-- Let's say I match on two requests
with Jane, and I match on two requests with Sue. Then the code looks at how good each
match is.
So for instance, let's say Jane also mentioned "Crossover" in her freeform tags, and chose
"M/M". I would be a little more likely to match with Jane than I would be with Sue,
who didn't mention those things.
And that's how the matching prioritises. Again, not guaranteed, it's just the code will do
its best to prioritise that, and hopefully it will be able to.
And that's basically it! Hopefully that's just a little a guide through the complex
new form, and hopefully it'll work well, and everybody will get a great assignment. Bye!