regarding fanfests
Hi GS staff, I have been wondering about one aspect of fanfests for a while. The question is, what is GS's long term policy regarding fanfest original post maintenance? Under the current system, the OP in a fanfest can only be updated by either a moderator, or its original poster. No re-adopting is allowed, unless the OP has been banned / is GS staff.
However, I have been wondering to what extent this status quo is sustainable in the long term. There are two question marks that I see:
- the rapidly growing number of fanfests for new skaters while the older ones remain. The fanfest forums expand very fast. The threads remain, but the original posters are not always around anymore to keep them up-to-date. Can a small team of FF maintenance staffers really juggle all that in a couple more years, for many more skaters? Add to that -
- the recent purge of videos on YT, maybe in other sources as well. Videos and their uploaders keep getting banned, many links in the OPs lead nowhere and need to be deleted/substituted for working ones, in addition to the ever-changing (or at least once-in-a-season changing) result lists. Only the still active 'adoptive parents' and the staffers who update fanfests, can do that at present.
Now, this quote of gsk8 caught my eye in another recent thread: "We hope that Golden Skaters will adopt their favs, and will add active videos of them to their threads." There are people who would enjoy maintaining their favorites' threads, but cannot, unless through a moderator via PM. I did that multiple times. And it takes time to explain what you want changed/deleted/added/substituted. Twice as much time than when I can simply and quickly edit in the updates I come up with. I am willing to give it the time, but there are no doubt people who cannot spare it. Sometimes one stumbles upon working videos on several individual ocassions, and in the current system, it means contacting a mod every single time... which is impractical IMO.
Therefore I ask: Is there really no way to make OPs re-adoptable, or at least maintainable by interested active users? I know there are potential issues such as the OP returning and deciding they don't like the new layout/want the thread back. But in my eyes, the pros (less work for the fanfest mods who could just check the new posts instead of spending hours updating OPs; users not having to go through mods to update various small things; FF OPs being up-to-date more easily and more often...) outweigh the cons in this case. I beg that GS staff at least consider this. Thank you.
