Welcome Back & Brainstorming Post

[morbane]

Hello! I am so excited to start Jukebox up again for this year. I can't believe it's the fifth year already.

Journal style changes

You may notice that both this community and the LiveJournal community look a little different. With a bit of help, I re-jigged the theme and colours and added link lists. My hope is that the new design is a) more legible and useful, b) more consistent across the two communities, and c) a little prettier (though that is a very distant third). I'm happy to take further feedback; otherwise, if you add ?style=mine to the end of a URL in this comm, it'll show you the page in your own journal style. Maybe there'll be a sticky post with a nice picture later.

Currently, the links list includes the collection, the tag set, and the schedule; later I'll add other things like the canons, the letters post, and the beta post. Suggestions welcome. What makes the community easy to use for you?

Rule changes

Small changes for this year include:
Art minimum
I tweaked this to remove the pixel requirements, which didn't really work last year, and specify that if you are submitting graphics, at least 3 separate pieces are required; otherwise, please just ensure that the work is checked for obvious problems (don't draw on lined paper, make sure you have a reliable scanner or camera, check resolution, etc) and is complete. EDIT: Now changed to: collages, manips, and similar graphics may be given as treats to people who are open to them, but may not be used to fulfil an assignment.

Nominations limit
Last year I allowed 8 nominations; I'd prefer to make it 7 this year. That is solely because it seems to take around the same number of total hours for me to put together the link tables as there are nominations per participant. Weird, I know, but it's consistent. I can commit to 7 hours in one day to put the tables together, but 8 was stretching it and I don't want to delay sign-ups. If this is a large disappointment to y'all, I'll reconsider.

Requests limit
Last year you could request 3-8 pieces of music. It occurs to me that 8 is a bit arbitrary since AO3 goes up to 10 easily. Does anyone want me to change the possible request maximum to 10? The minimum will not change.

Pinch hits
Are you all happy with me continuing to post them to the community?

Any other feedback is welcome.

Brainstorming

Since nominations will open on Friday (approximately), please use this post and its Dreamwidth equivalent to share what you're thinking of nominating! This is an optional part of the exchange and so is nominating, but it's a good way to get ideas, see if other people are excited about your music choices - or at the very least, bring your favourite music to other people's attention.

This post on LJ

Comments

[merryghoul]

No opinion on art, since I don't draw, but I'm happy with the nominations and requests limit. (I will probably nominate and request less than the maximum, anyway.)

I'd prefer pinch hits posted to the community, because I have issues with sites like Google Groups (Google Groups either takes a long time for me to load or it doesn't load for me at all, especially on mobile).

As for songs, I was thinking of nominating a lot of songs nominated in previous years (by myself or from others):

* Perfume Genius -- “Queen” (video)
* The Smiths – “This Charming Man” (song)
* Taylor Swift – “Out of the Woods” (video)
* Andrew Bayer – “Superhuman” (video)

And I was also thinking of nominating Solange – “Cranes in the Sky” (song) and Father John Misty – “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” (song).

[moetushie]

Oh man, Cranes In the Sky was really important to me last year -- I kept listening to it after the US elections, and somehow it really helped.

[alexseanchai]

* Taylor Swift – “Out of the Woods” (video)

Sold

[morbane]

Thanks! And yeah, I was surprised Out of the Woods didn't net any works previously. I remember the Andrew Bayer video.