This Prompt Meme May Self-Destruct

[kalloway]

I think most people utilizing AO3's challenge features are more familiar with the exchange tool than the prompt meme function.

This is possibly because the prompt meme function is kind of broken. It is certainly less-developed than its sibling.

I made This Prompt Meme May Self-Destruct as a testing ground in case anyone else would like to play around with prompt meme functionality.

All fandoms, relationships, characters, etc. are welcome. However, because there's no attached tagset, the meme is limited by AO3.

Be as creative as you want to work around that. ^_^

And, if you'd like, I'd like your thoughts on the whole thing. I'm not a coder; I can't fix anything. I'm just curious what other people think and maybe if someone sees compiled data, they might take suggestions into account.

(Note: Anything created for the prompt meme is in no danger of deletion even if the prompt meme vanishes in a puff of 0's and 1's as dawn comes on June 1.)

Comments

[pauraque]

I always did wonder why the prompt-claiming function on AO3 seemed to go totally unused, so this is very informative!

The only place I see prompt-claiming fests anymore is in Harry Potter fandom. I think HP culture is quirky due to having such a long history on journal-based platforms, so some things are still done "the old way" just out of inertia (not to mention some fests have been running annually for so long that they significantly predate AO3). Nowadays some prompt-claiming HP fests that run on Tumblr use Airtable or Google Forms or something instead of a journal post for the claims.

[melannen]

Yeah, if you want the claims to be anon until posting, AO3 isn't even all that good for that, either. The ones I remember from LJ didn't have anon claims, but they also increasingly had people being hassled for picking "bad" prompts, so, you know. Good to know HP is still keeping up the traditions! I think all the multifandom ones I used to do died even before AO3.

(I've actually been thinking it might be fun to have a prompt-based fest where the claims remained anonymous forever - the stories were revealed, but you were never allowed to say which prompt/prompter you were writing for, people had to guess. It would be awful to run, though, I think.)