I am begging you, please remove the "less than 250" rule entirely. In another rarepair exchange this year, I used AO3 filters to re-nominate a rare ship. In the end, I was completely drained of energy and didn't bother signing up for the exchange (but I am writing a pinch-hit for them so all is not lost). And that's why I can't imagine wasting so much time again to convince people that my rare ship is in fact rare.
You are aware that most people tag background or off-screen ships and pairings, which skews the numbers badly. You seem sensible and reasonable. So please trust your participants. We won't deliberately nominate characters/ships that are well-represented. A day or so before the sign-ups open, just show us the final list of nominated characters/ships, I will definitely let you know if there are any characters/ships that don't qualify as rare. I'm sure other participants will too.
I participated in a small Asian fandoms exchange in 2012. She trusted us to use our judgement during the nomination period. And in case there were any doubts we all discussed with the mod which fandoms qualified and which didn't. She did the same thing in 2013 and this year too. Please follow her example.
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Date: 2014-07-01 01:26 pm (UTC)You are aware that most people tag background or off-screen ships and pairings, which skews the numbers badly. You seem sensible and reasonable. So please trust your participants. We won't deliberately nominate characters/ships that are well-represented. A day or so before the sign-ups open, just show us the final list of nominated characters/ships, I will definitely let you know if there are any characters/ships that don't qualify as rare. I'm sure other participants will too.
I participated in a small Asian fandoms exchange in 2012. She trusted us to use our judgement during the nomination period. And in case there were any doubts we all discussed with the mod which fandoms qualified and which didn't. She did the same thing in 2013 and this year too. Please follow her example.