Eligibility Rules
These are the final rules governing fandom eligibility in Yuletide 2014.
We know this is a long post, but we wanted to try and ensure that all the different sorts of fandoms are covered and that the rules are clear. Please read this post carefully, including the section on evidence, to ensure that you give your fandom the best chance of being accepted.
A summary of these rules will be added to the challenge page on AO3.
We have tried to take all your feedback into account. We hope that, in most cases, we have been successful. These rules are no longer up for debate.
ELIGIBILITY
Main Principle
Fandoms will be approved if their total number of stories on AO3 and fanfiction.net, added together, is less than 1000. A story must be in English, complete, and at least 1000 words long to be considered in that total.
Character Limit
A character or real person who is tagged in over 1,000 works on AO3 may not be nominated. However, different versions of the character may be nominated in fandoms that are adaptations, reboots, or different universes to the universe(s) in which they are too popular.
Examples:
Related Fandoms
Related fandoms include fandoms that are adaptations, part of a franchise, or otherwise linked to a larger canon.
If the fandom you want is closely related to an ineligible fandom, you will need to explain why it should be considered as a fandom in its own right (see the evidence section).
Some specific types of fandom are covered in the guidelines below.
Further notes on cut-offs: In cases where the nominated fandom has works on fanfiction.net, but we can't easily separate it out from a larger fandom, we will use a limit of 750 works on AO3.
Unreleased Fandoms
If only the promotional material for a fandom is, or will be, available at the time that assignments are due to go out by (November 1 25th October in 2014), that fandom is not eligible to be nominated. For example, a TV show that has aired one episode before the cut-off date is fine; a movie that comes out after then is not.
There are a few reasons for this. The cast may change. A trailer or ad can be quite different to the eventual canon, so when people sign up on spec to write in a fandom like this, the expectations of the writer and reader may change a lot when the canon becomes available. This situation runs a high risk of unhappy writers defaulting, or recipients getting stories in a fandom they’re not actually interested in.
SUITABLE FANDOMS FOR YULETIDE
For the purposes of Yuletide, we need to define which fandom tags are acceptable. This is done to try and prevent too much duplication between fandoms and to facilitate matching.
Too Broad
If fandoms are too broad, they can end up with too many characters nominated, which hurts matching. In many cases, these also cover a huge range of settings, events, or time periods that make people reluctant to offer “any” characters in them.
These fandoms are considered too broad and will not be accepted regardless of numbers:
Guidelines by Category
Real Person Fiction
Character nominations are required.
In addition to fandoms that are disallowed for being too broad (Actor RPF, Ancient History RPF, [country] Actor RPF, Literary RPF, Music RPF, Sports RPF, and History RPF), some RPF fandoms, such as Hockey RPF, are not rare enough. In these cases, you may nominate a more specific RPF category for your characters. Sports teams are acceptable fandoms when the sport as a whole has too many fics.
When deciding how to nominate your fandom, please coordinate with other RPF fans on the Yuletide community (there will be a post for this purpose before nominations open) and keep in mind that a person who is tagged in over 1,000 works on AO3 is not eligible in any RPF category. Please think about whether your fandom is likely to end up with a huge character list, and consider if there is a sensible way of avoiding that (for example, nominate by groups of related people, rather than just by century or profession).
If there are multiple nominated fandoms with the same character list, the fandoms may be merged.
Book and Movie Series
Series that spin off from, or are subsets of, a ineligible fandom may be allowed if they are distinct from the main fandom. See the Evidence section of this post, and the points on “Closely-Related Fandoms”, for how we are measuring that distinction.
Where an overall series or world and a subset of that series are nominated at the same time, we will not approve both, but will look at the nominations to decide which is the most appropriate to send through. Series nominations will be considered too broad when there is little overlap in characters or settings; on the other hand, we may merge smaller parts of canon into a series nomination if they are part of an ongoing story or feature the same characters. We encourage everyone to discuss their nominations with others in order to get fandoms nominated in a way that will cover what you want and help with matching.
Comics
Please nominate comics fandoms by individual titles rather than by universe. We are aware that this does not fit all fandoms perfectly, so if your fandom is an odd case, please explain it on the Evidence Post. For example:
Commercials
Please nominate these by set or by individual commercial. Commercials need to have some recurring element if they are to be nominated together - just having a company in common is not enough. For example, the Allstate Insurance Commercials, with Mayhem, are a good set, but Insurance company commercials in general are not, and the New Era [baseball cap] commercials, between 2011 and 2012, are quite different, so New Era Commercials would be too broad.
Anthropomorfic
Please nominate your group of items or concepts under a clear name. Character nominations are required. Some examples from last year’s tag set:
TV Shows
Single episodes of TV shows cannot be nominated separately. Single seasons may be allowed in cases where the cast is different from season to season (for example, reality shows). Webseries spin-offs may be allowed. Please explain on the Evidence Post why the spin-off or the season should be considered a distinct fandom.
Fanworks
The canons that are nominated as Yuletide fandoms may be both professional and amateur works. However, for fanworks - works like fanvids and fanfiction that derive from another canon and are not (generally) published for profit - a set of special conditions apply. Most fanworks will not be eligible for Yuletide.
To argue for the inclusion of a specific fanwork, you must comment on the evidence post. See the section on evidence (below) for what we need you to put in your comment.
EVIDENCE REQUIRED
The Evidence Post
The Evidence Post will go up just before nominations. If you have nominated something that you think may confuse the mods, because it’s a fanwork, or it’s similar to another canon, or it’s borderline on numbers, we suggest you tell us about it on the post before your nomination is reviewed. We are far more likely to accept a fandom based on evidence on the Evidence Post than we are to restore a rejected fandom in the tag set checking phase.
When commenting to the Evidence Post, please be as clear and specific as possible - the tagmods cannot know all of Yuletide’s fandoms, and if we have to research them ourselves, we may make mistakes. If we can’t understand the case you’re trying to make, we may not approve your fandom.
Everyone is welcome to add evidence for or against the fandoms nominated.
Fandoms the tagmods will find hard to identify
If the fandom you are nominating is very obscure or has a generic name (and does not already have a tag on AO3), please describe it on the Evidence Post, and give us a link to details of the fandom if you can. If we googled your fandom and characters, would we turn up anything useful? If not, please give us some pointers. In these cases, the evidence is not about how rare the fandom is - it is certainly rare enough to count - however, we need to confirm names, etc., to ensure that the tag set is accurate.
Fandoms over 1000 works total on AO3 and ff.net
If you think your fandom is over the limit due to crossposting between ff.net and AO3, or because one person in your fandom has written most of the fic, you can make a comment to the Evidence Post to argue for its inclusion. Please organize your data clearly, with links and lists. Please note that tagmods will need to check all evidence, so if your data is confusing or contradictory, your fandom is less likely to be approved. We will not reconsider any fandoms that are over 1500 works total by the usual criteria.
Closely-related fandoms
If you are nominating a canon that is very closely linked to another canon - say, a set of spin-off comics, or a particular, unique, staging of a play, or an authorized sequel by a new author - please make a comment to the Evidence Post to show why it should be included separately. Some things you might consider:
You do not need to answer “yes” to every one of these questions. But they are factors we will keep in mind when approving or rejecting your fandom. If you cannot make a case that your fandom meets some of these criteria, it will be rejected.
Fanworks
When you nominate a fanwork, you must make a comment to the Evidence Post before nominations close, to show why it should be included. Include a link to the fanwork, and consider the following criteria:
You do not need to answer “yes” to every one of these questions. But if you can only answer “yes” to one or two, and you don’t explain your reasoning, then you may be wasting your nomination.
Fandoms that include multiple media
We realise that there are many fandoms where anime & manga, or anime & games, or similar media, are considered part of the same canon. Some of these already exist on AO3 under a single fandom name, which is fine (for example, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Accel World). If you have a fandom like this, we suggest you describe it on the Evidence Post.
This has been crossposted to Dreamwidth
We know this is a long post, but we wanted to try and ensure that all the different sorts of fandoms are covered and that the rules are clear. Please read this post carefully, including the section on evidence, to ensure that you give your fandom the best chance of being accepted.
A summary of these rules will be added to the challenge page on AO3.
We have tried to take all your feedback into account. We hope that, in most cases, we have been successful. These rules are no longer up for debate.
ELIGIBILITY
Main Principle
Fandoms will be approved if their total number of stories on AO3 and fanfiction.net, added together, is less than 1000. A story must be in English, complete, and at least 1000 words long to be considered in that total.
Character Limit
A character or real person who is tagged in over 1,000 works on AO3 may not be nominated. However, different versions of the character may be nominated in fandoms that are adaptations, reboots, or different universes to the universe(s) in which they are too popular.
Examples:
- Spock cannot be nominated in Rihannsu, because it spins off from Star Trek: The Original Series, and Spock is essentially the same character.
- Bruce Wayne cannot be nominated in many DCU comics (for example, Justice League, Teen Titans, Birds of Prey).
- The Doctor from Doctor Who is generally ineligible; however, separate lives will be considered separate characters, and Doctors 1-8, the War Doctor and 12 are currently under the limit. Some other specific Doctors may be nominated: for example, the Ninth Doctor may be nominated in The Curse of Fatal Death (parody, alternate universe) or in Scream of the Shalka (animated spin-off series that diverges from main canon).
Related Fandoms
Related fandoms include fandoms that are adaptations, part of a franchise, or otherwise linked to a larger canon.
If the fandom you want is closely related to an ineligible fandom, you will need to explain why it should be considered as a fandom in its own right (see the evidence section).
Some specific types of fandom are covered in the guidelines below.
Further notes on cut-offs: In cases where the nominated fandom has works on fanfiction.net, but we can't easily separate it out from a larger fandom, we will use a limit of 750 works on AO3.
Unreleased Fandoms
If only the promotional material for a fandom is, or will be, available at the time that assignments are due to go out by (November 1 25th October in 2014), that fandom is not eligible to be nominated. For example, a TV show that has aired one episode before the cut-off date is fine; a movie that comes out after then is not.
There are a few reasons for this. The cast may change. A trailer or ad can be quite different to the eventual canon, so when people sign up on spec to write in a fandom like this, the expectations of the writer and reader may change a lot when the canon becomes available. This situation runs a high risk of unhappy writers defaulting, or recipients getting stories in a fandom they’re not actually interested in.
SUITABLE FANDOMS FOR YULETIDE
For the purposes of Yuletide, we need to define which fandom tags are acceptable. This is done to try and prevent too much duplication between fandoms and to facilitate matching.
Too Broad
If fandoms are too broad, they can end up with too many characters nominated, which hurts matching. In many cases, these also cover a huge range of settings, events, or time periods that make people reluctant to offer “any” characters in them.
These fandoms are considered too broad and will not be accepted regardless of numbers:
- Actor RPF, Ancient History RPF, [country] Actor RPF, Literary RPF, Music RPF, Sports RPF, History RPF.
- Fandom tags that include the words "- All Media Types", "& Related Fandoms", or "- Ambiguous Fandom", because we want to avoid confusion about what canons are included.
- We realise that there are many fandoms where anime & manga, or anime & games, or similar media, are considered part of the same canon. Some of these already exist on AO3 under a single fandom name, which is fine (for example, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Accel World). If you have a fandom like this, please describe it on the Evidence Post.
- Comic universes as a whole, and comic crossover events (for example, Age of Apocalypse, Civil War.)
- Book series where there is very little overlap in characters or setting (for example, the Dear America series or the Hainish series).
Guidelines by Category
Real Person Fiction
Character nominations are required.
In addition to fandoms that are disallowed for being too broad (Actor RPF, Ancient History RPF, [country] Actor RPF, Literary RPF, Music RPF, Sports RPF, and History RPF), some RPF fandoms, such as Hockey RPF, are not rare enough. In these cases, you may nominate a more specific RPF category for your characters. Sports teams are acceptable fandoms when the sport as a whole has too many fics.
When deciding how to nominate your fandom, please coordinate with other RPF fans on the Yuletide community (there will be a post for this purpose before nominations open) and keep in mind that a person who is tagged in over 1,000 works on AO3 is not eligible in any RPF category. Please think about whether your fandom is likely to end up with a huge character list, and consider if there is a sensible way of avoiding that (for example, nominate by groups of related people, rather than just by century or profession).
If there are multiple nominated fandoms with the same character list, the fandoms may be merged.
Book and Movie Series
Series that spin off from, or are subsets of, a ineligible fandom may be allowed if they are distinct from the main fandom. See the Evidence section of this post, and the points on “Closely-Related Fandoms”, for how we are measuring that distinction.
- Heroes of Olympus - ineligible as it is too close to Percy Jackson.
- Provost’s Dog series - eligible as it has different characters and is set in a different time period to most of the Tortall series.
Where an overall series or world and a subset of that series are nominated at the same time, we will not approve both, but will look at the nominations to decide which is the most appropriate to send through. Series nominations will be considered too broad when there is little overlap in characters or settings; on the other hand, we may merge smaller parts of canon into a series nomination if they are part of an ongoing story or feature the same characters. We encourage everyone to discuss their nominations with others in order to get fandoms nominated in a way that will cover what you want and help with matching.
Comics
Please nominate comics fandoms by individual titles rather than by universe. We are aware that this does not fit all fandoms perfectly, so if your fandom is an odd case, please explain it on the Evidence Post. For example:
- Young Justice - can refer to two separate comic runs; they’d need to be distinguished by date.
- Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate Comics Spider-Man - the former is the Peter Parker run, the latter is the Miles Morales run, and they are essentially one title; nominate under the AO3 canonical Spider-Man (Ultimateverse).
- Back-ups (e.g. Coven of Three) - nominate under the back-up’s title, not the title it was published in (also applicable to the cartoon shorts run during commercial breaks for DC and Marvel cartoons, e.g., Super Best Friends Forever).
- Marvel’s All-New titles - whether they will be treated as separate from the main title will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Commercials
Please nominate these by set or by individual commercial. Commercials need to have some recurring element if they are to be nominated together - just having a company in common is not enough. For example, the Allstate Insurance Commercials, with Mayhem, are a good set, but Insurance company commercials in general are not, and the New Era [baseball cap] commercials, between 2011 and 2012, are quite different, so New Era Commercials would be too broad.
Anthropomorfic
Please nominate your group of items or concepts under a clear name. Character nominations are required. Some examples from last year’s tag set:
- Music Festivals (Anthropomorfic), with characters Burning Man (Festival), Coachella (Music Festival), Electric Daisy Carnival (Music Festival), Shambhala (Music Festival).
- Wines (Anthropomorfic), with characters Bordeaux (Wine), Burgundy (Wine), Chevre (Wine), Green Apple (Wine), Orange Blossom Honey (Wine), Pouilly Fuissé (Wine), Pouilly Fumé (Wine), Sauvignon Blanc (Wine).
TV Shows
Single episodes of TV shows cannot be nominated separately. Single seasons may be allowed in cases where the cast is different from season to season (for example, reality shows). Webseries spin-offs may be allowed. Please explain on the Evidence Post why the spin-off or the season should be considered a distinct fandom.
Fanworks
The canons that are nominated as Yuletide fandoms may be both professional and amateur works. However, for fanworks - works like fanvids and fanfiction that derive from another canon and are not (generally) published for profit - a set of special conditions apply. Most fanworks will not be eligible for Yuletide.
- Fandom has its own etiquette around writing based on other fans’ works. Because of this, you may not nominate anything posted (or cross-posted, or embedded) to fandom-specific spaces. These include the Archive of Our Own, Fanfiction.net, and communities on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth that are specifically organized around fanworks. Further, a fanwork that includes a request NOT to transform it should not be nominated.
- The fanwork must be publicly available - don’t nominate something that’s locked to members of an archive. When you describe the fanwork on the Evidence Post, please provide a link.
- The fanwork has to be distinct from its source fandom - see the section on evidence for details of how this will be measured and the evidence you are expected to provide.
To argue for the inclusion of a specific fanwork, you must comment on the evidence post. See the section on evidence (below) for what we need you to put in your comment.
EVIDENCE REQUIRED
The Evidence Post
The Evidence Post will go up just before nominations. If you have nominated something that you think may confuse the mods, because it’s a fanwork, or it’s similar to another canon, or it’s borderline on numbers, we suggest you tell us about it on the post before your nomination is reviewed. We are far more likely to accept a fandom based on evidence on the Evidence Post than we are to restore a rejected fandom in the tag set checking phase.
When commenting to the Evidence Post, please be as clear and specific as possible - the tagmods cannot know all of Yuletide’s fandoms, and if we have to research them ourselves, we may make mistakes. If we can’t understand the case you’re trying to make, we may not approve your fandom.
Everyone is welcome to add evidence for or against the fandoms nominated.
Fandoms the tagmods will find hard to identify
If the fandom you are nominating is very obscure or has a generic name (and does not already have a tag on AO3), please describe it on the Evidence Post, and give us a link to details of the fandom if you can. If we googled your fandom and characters, would we turn up anything useful? If not, please give us some pointers. In these cases, the evidence is not about how rare the fandom is - it is certainly rare enough to count - however, we need to confirm names, etc., to ensure that the tag set is accurate.
Fandoms over 1000 works total on AO3 and ff.net
If you think your fandom is over the limit due to crossposting between ff.net and AO3, or because one person in your fandom has written most of the fic, you can make a comment to the Evidence Post to argue for its inclusion. Please organize your data clearly, with links and lists. Please note that tagmods will need to check all evidence, so if your data is confusing or contradictory, your fandom is less likely to be approved. We will not reconsider any fandoms that are over 1500 works total by the usual criteria.
Closely-related fandoms
If you are nominating a canon that is very closely linked to another canon - say, a set of spin-off comics, or a particular, unique, staging of a play, or an authorized sequel by a new author - please make a comment to the Evidence Post to show why it should be included separately. Some things you might consider:
- Is it published in a different medium?
- Does it have a different author or publisher?
- Is it marketed as a separate series or distinct sub-series?
- Does it focus on different characters, or characters with only minor roles in other canons?
- Does it have a very different setting or time period?
- Does it feature an alternate universe to the other canons, or significantly divergent events?
- Does it make sense even if you don't know much about the other canons?
You do not need to answer “yes” to every one of these questions. But they are factors we will keep in mind when approving or rejecting your fandom. If you cannot make a case that your fandom meets some of these criteria, it will be rejected.
Fanworks
When you nominate a fanwork, you must make a comment to the Evidence Post before nominations close, to show why it should be included. Include a link to the fanwork, and consider the following criteria:
- Does it focus on original characters, or characters with minor roles in the larger canon?
- Does it have a very different setting or time period?
- Does it feature an alternate universe to the original canon, or significantly divergent events?
- Does it make sense even if you don't know much about the original canon?
Is it based on a fandom that is eligible for Yuletide?
You do not need to answer “yes” to every one of these questions. But if you can only answer “yes” to one or two, and you don’t explain your reasoning, then you may be wasting your nomination.
Fandoms that include multiple media
We realise that there are many fandoms where anime & manga, or anime & games, or similar media, are considered part of the same canon. Some of these already exist on AO3 under a single fandom name, which is fine (for example, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Accel World). If you have a fandom like this, we suggest you describe it on the Evidence Post.
This has been crossposted to Dreamwidth