Important Announcement Regarding Guest Riffs

Hello, Patrons.

We’re going to be implementing some changes to the way guest riffs are handled in the near future. Details can be found in the Enlistment Office page, but expect the following (bolded terms are to improve legibility, not to be patronizing or imitate Frank Miller):

• NONE OF THESE CHANGES APPLY TO ANY CURRENTLY IN-PROGRESS RIFF. That is, any fic for which you have already submitted at least one riff installment will not be subject to the new requirements, but any new fic you intend to start riffing will.
• We intend to start taking quality control more seriously. Some guest riffs we’ve been getting recently are light on critical content, humor, and technical writing quality. The plan is not to reject riffs (unless they’re in seriously desperate shape), but we do intend to have a more active revision process before anything goes live.
• To that end, we are unfortunately going to have to ask that all riffs be submitted to the main guest riff box (not individual Librarians’ accounts, as some of you are still doing; you’re still welcome to reach out with other concerns, but it’s easier to handle a guest riff when any of us can work on it) as Google docs so that we can leave comments and make changes quickly and you’ll be able to respond to them.
• People (even full-time Librarians, granted, but keep in mind that we have a more rigorous posting schedule to keep up) have been starting riffs of really long fics and not finishing them, which is kind of unsatisfying. Depending on the length of the fic, we’re going to implement a minimum number of completed riff installments that must be submitted to us before we post anything.
  • For riffs that will take five or fewer installments to complete, we will require all installments to be submitted before we post any of them.
  • For riffs that will take six or more installments, we will require at least one-third (rounded up) of the expected number of total installments to be submitted before we post any of them.
  • Note that we’re talking installments, not chapters. So if something has five chapters, but they’re all ungodly long and you’ll need three parts to cover each, that’s going to be in the second category. On the other hand, if it has twenty-five chapters but they’re all one paragraph and you can cover it in one or two installments, it would fall into the first category. Which means that, in either case, you need to start working and get a feel for how long the chapters are and what you’re comfortable tackling in one swoop before anything hits our inbox.

We understand this sounds a little draconian, but the idea is to improve the overall quality and completeness of our own content and to help you put your best work forward. And, among other things, the hope is that more riffers will choose to read the fics they are thinking of riffing ahead of time so as to head off any potential problems which might lead to fic abandonment later on.

Keep in mind that we do understand the need for the occasional one-shot break. As such, one-shots will be always be accepted for review, even from guest riffers who are currently mid-series.

Thank you for your patience.

P.S. Bullet points are a pain in the ass to format on WordPress.

P.P.S. Which is one of the reasons why we are implementing such stringent requirements for formatting- we want to make sure riffs come in as a format that WordPress can play nicely with.