DOINK! 2013 Sign-ups are coming! Changes to our form and policies! Rogue tonberries everywhere!!

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Hello, everyone!

Barring any disasters, regular signups and beta volunteer sign-ups for DOINK! 2013 will open Friday, March 22, 2013 at 23:00 UTC. Click that link to learn what time that is where you live and come prepared!

The Shiny Sign-up Form: Prompts and Content Preferences

In 2011, we made some changes to our signup forms to make them friendlier to folks of all preferences. We're keeping these forms this year, so if you're interested in a run down on the way the forms work or would like some guidance, please check out our post about from last year.

Just like last year, the success of this set up depends on two items:

1. Be respectful. We're all fans alike here; discuss your own preferences in a way that doesn't comment on or pass judgment on those of others.


2. DOINK! is a gift exchange. If you're very particular in what you like, or very limited in the kinds of things you're comfortable offering, please think carefully before entering. We'll do our absolute best to match people, but if a gift slightly outside your expectations would ruin the exchange, or if receiving prompts that don't match your comfort zone exactly would be very discouraging for you, then a gift exchange might not be the best place to play — you might have a better time with one of our prompt-meme activities, or as a pinch hitter where you can pick and choose what prompts to pick up. Nothing wrong with being particular! It's just not suited to every sort of activity =) There will be tons of ways to participate in the coming months!

What's New This Year?

The biggest chance we'll be making in 2013 is a fandom variety requirement. We asked some questions about how to deal with this in last year's exit poll (see — we do use those results!), and discussed internally to come up with a policy we think will work for us. 2013 will be a trial year - we'll definitely poll about it after the round — so we're excited to see how it helps us.

Don't worry, we're not going to ask that each of the four prompts be from different canons! Basically, we're going to require that at least one of the four prompts each participant submits be in a completely different fandom universe. We'll have more information about this in its own explanatory post, very soon, which hopefully will answer any questions you have. Stay tuned!

Chocobo Down

Remember that there's still time to submit work created for the 2012 Chocobo Races to the Chocobo Down 2012 collection! You won't necessarily get points for the Races (congratulations again, Team Ifrit! your shiny banners to herald the 2013 round are coming soon!), but you can still submit your work to the collection!

You can also submit work created for any DOINK! activity to our deviantArt group.

Tumblr!

Fandom has been expanding since last year! This year, we're featuring a brand new tumblr account at ffexdoink, managed by new volunteers and tumblr mods (since your original mods are still learning) owlmoose and fashion-jerk. Our presence on tumblr is also related to a change in the sign-up form.

We're hoping to expand our presence on Tumblr, but we're aware that there are certain customs in terms of posting and reblogging. In the hopes of being respectful and inclusive and awesome on Tumblr, we'll be asking for two things on the sign-up form this year, with regards to work produced in the 2013 round of DOINK:

1. Your Tumblr username. This is optional! But if you'd like to share your Tumblr with us, we'd like to have that in our records!


2. How you'd like us to treat your work on Tumblr. You'll have three choices on the form.
   • "Please post my exchange work on the DOINK! Tumblr"
     This means we will post your work (if fanart) or a link to your work (if fanfiction) using our account, credited to you, for others to reblog.
   
   
   • "Please reblog my 2013 DOINK! work from my Tumblr"
     This means we will check your Tumblr once the 2013 round has been revealed, and reblog your DOINK! work from your account with our Tumblr. (This means you have to give us your Tumblr username so that we know where to look!)
   
   
   • "Please don't do anything with my work on your Tumblr account"
     This means we won't post or reblog your 2013 DOINK! work at all.

We also have intentions to feature work from previous years of DOINK! Final Fantasy Exchange on our Tumblr — we'll be explaining that in a separate post very soon.

Internets! Full of Tonberrys!

As you can see, DOINK! is all over the place! We have so many accounts, we decided to round them up and share them so everyone can know where to find us:

ff_exchange on Dreamwidth
ff_exchange on Livejournal
ff_exchange on AO3
doink-ffex on deviantArt
ffexdoink on tumblr
doink on Pinboard

And, of course, our website, ffex.org, where you'll find signups (once they open), rules, FAQ, unfilled prompts, and everything else you need to make your awesome Doink! experience happen! Additionally, once the round is underway, you'll also be able to join us in our campfire chat room.

Additional Notes

If you need an AO3 account, just send us an e-mail and we'll get one out to you ASAP.

If you're not sure about signing up as a regular participant, you can always sign up to be a pinch-hitter. You can sign up any time — pinch hit sign-ups never close!

Tell your friends! If you would like to help spread the word about the upcoming sign-ups, please do — we'll soon be posting banners you can use to help advertise as well.