Round 2 Nominations are now open!

[reading221b-mod.livejournal.com]

Happy November, everyone!

Nominations for Round 2 are officially open. We will be discussing seven stories over the course of five weeks (you can take a look at our skeleton calendar here.) The seven streams are listed below, with links to the nomination threads. Some of these posts are members-locked, so you won't be able to see them if you're not a member of the comm. But our (metaphorical) doors are always open - you can always join, and we hope you will!


We are going to keep nominations open for the entire week - until the evening of Sunday, November 9th - and then the community will be able to vote for their choices on Monday and Tuesday of the following week (November 10th-11th).  We will announce the winning fics and the discussion schedule on November 13th.

Here are the streams we will be discussing in Round 2:
PWP/Sex-Focused
ACD fics
Mystrade
Rare Pair
Hidden Gems (stories with <1k hits)
SHORT Casefics (casefics under 20k words)
SHORT AUs (AUs under 15k words)

If you're curious about how and why these streams and this schedule were selected, take a look here.

And if you're interested in our older discussions - which have mostly slowed down, but which you are welcome to join! - take a look at our Master List of Discussed Fics.

We look forward to seeing your nominations!

Comments

[unovis.livejournal.com]

For "hidden gems," how do you determine the number of hits for fic that only appears on LJ/DW? Under 100 comments, not counting author response?

[reading221b-mod.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Good question. Are you absolutely positive the fic does not have a presence on AO3 or some other platform where hit counts are visible to the public?

Let me converse with the other mods and get back to you.

--azriona

[unovis.livejournal.com]

Not every author has an account on AO3 or FFN. There are thousands of stories by anonymous authors on sherlockbbc_fic alone that have never appeared elsewhere (at least a dozen have been recced on 221b Recs and more have been recced on sherlockbbc Sunday recs). Not all the stories produced for exchanges or as remixes have been posted to AO3... and lesser-known works are more likely to have been posted where a thousand readers haven't seen them.

[reading221b-mod.livejournal.com]

We are aware that not all authors use AO3 to post their fics, and it's certainly true that there are some wonderful fics on other sites that haven't been widely read simply because they do not exist on AO3, which certainly is the primary source for Sherlock fic for much of the fandom. However, AO3 the only platform that allows us to quickly determine how often a fic is read and therefore if it could be considered a "hidden gem" in terms of exposure to readers - and we admit that has its downsides as well as advantages for the fic itself. We also agree that what constitutes a Hidden Gem is a moving target, and will be different for different people.

But we do want to make room for as many fics as possible, so we are going to say that any fic posted to LJ/DW/FFN with fewer than 25 total comments/reviews (across all chapters, and including author comments) is eligible for the HG stream, this time around.

We know that's a much lower number than you suggested. In the event, the 25 comment cutoff may turn out to be too low, just as the 1k hit limit may be too low; we figure that the best way to find out is to give it a try and see how the round plays out. If it turns out to be too stringent, we'll figure that out as a community and shift our parameters for future rounds.

[unovis.livejournal.com]

Lovely. Thank you.