Voiceteam 2023 Rules/FAQ

[klb]

Audio of Voiceteam 2023 Rules/FAQ (read by eafay70):

Voiceteam is a Discord-based team scavenger hunt for the podfic community. Teams will earn points for making different voice-based or voice-adjacent creations. For each round, players will get a list of ten point-earning challenges and then will be set loose to strategize, create, and have fun!


TIMELINE


Sign-ups: April 14–27
Discord server opens: April 29
Check In 1: May 1
Round 1: May 2–8
Break 1 and Check In 2: May 9–10
Round 2: May 11–17
Break 2: May 18–19
Round 3: May 20–26
Amnesty: May 27
Tiebreaker: May 28
Results: May 30


Voiceteam runs on UTC. All single dates listed above are scheduled at 12:01 AM UTC of the relevant day. All date ranges begin at 12:01 AM UTC on the first day in the range and end at 11:59 PM on the last day in the range. To get a sense of what that is where you live, you can do a Google search for “midnight UTC in my time zone" or enter your location on this time conversion website. Your mods—airgiodslv, canarypods, cathalinaheart, eafay70, forzandopod, klb, and novalinium—are in EDT (UTC-4), CDT (UTC-5), PDT (UTC-6), and CEST (UTC+2).


MAJOR CHANGES FROM LAST YEAR

• In the event of a tie between two or more teams for first place, there will be a 24-hour lightning round tiebreaker. This tiebreaker will be opt-in for any members of the tied teams who want to participate. During this 24-hour period, players who have opted in will be able to submit fanworks for any of the 3 challenges that have received the least submissions across Voiceteam 2023. There will be no point cap during this time. At the end of 24 hours, whichever team has earned the most points for these submissions (scaled by number of participating players on that team) will win the tiebreaker round.


• In addition to optional icebreakers at the beginning, there will be optional icebreakers offered during each break between rounds.


• We will continue the 15-point “Project Lead Bonus” from Mystery Box 2022. A player qualifies for this bonus if they: a) took the leading role in a multivoice project involving three or more people other than themself and b) did significantly more work than the other people involved in the project (e.g. prepared the script, organized roles, set deadlines, followed up with people, answered questions, and edited together the work).

RULES

1. Each player will have a cap for how many points they can earn for each round’s challenges. You can sign up for a lower point cap (200 points max for each round of challenges) or a higher point cap (400 points max for each round of challenges).


2. Each team member has the final decision about their own creations (including their part in collaborative creations, if they choose to participate in any). There are no requirements about the quality or size of your creations, although sometimes longer works will earn more points!


3. Completed creations should be turned in via an Airtable form. A mod will look over and verify your submission and will reach out to you if we disagree about the point value or need more information from you.


4. Since team sizes and point caps will vary, each team’s final score will be scaled. Points will be determined by dividing the number of points each player earned by their total maximum (based on their choice of point cap), averaging this number for all the players in the team, and then multiplying this number by the average team size.


5. You may take a points break for any round of challenges—just let the mod team know you want a points break within 24 hours of that round’s challenges being revealed. If you take a points break, your score is not included in the team’s scaled score for that round. Players are welcome to take a points break for as many rounds as they want.


6. Players who are absent from the Voiceteam Discord for a whole round and who do not submit any creations for that round will also not be counted in that round’s points.


7. Other than players on points break or players that are absent the whole round, all players’ scores will be counted towards their team’s points for the round, with no exceptions. Please do not ask to have your score for a round retroactively removed from your team’s score.


8. Challenges will sometimes leave room for interpretation. If you are not sure whether something counts, please check with the mods. We support creativity, so we will be generous with what we allow!


9. We will have two check-ins. One will be for group fit and will happen before the Round 1 challenges drop. The second will be after the end of the Round 1 challenges. We will announce in Discord when it is time for each check-in, and you can then check in via Airtable to let us know how things are going and if there are any changes that would make things better for you!


10. Even in between check-ins, please feel free to come to the mods to request support with any issues, including but not limited to: feelings of exclusion, conflict with a group member, and concerns about the rules or structure of Voiceteam. If you suspect a problem might be brewing but are unsure whether it’s worth checking in with the mods, PLEASE give us a heads up about it. We’ll keep your concerns confidential unless you give us the go-ahead to share them, but we can help you think up solutions or make mod-level changes as needed to address the problem. For more serious problems, see our anti-harassment policy

Code of Conduct for Players


This is a community space, and players are expected to act in ways that take the needs and feelings of other players into account. Specifically, players should not publicly complain about their team, give unsolicited critique of another player’s fanwork, or pressure or exclude team members. Pressuring team members includes repeatedly offering ways for the team member to earn points, or repeatedly checking in on a team member's progress, without that team member having agreed to that type of interaction first.

Any player who breaks this code of conduct will be contacted by the mods and asked to stop. If this type of behavior happens repeatedly, they may be asked to leave Voiceteam or asked not to return in future years.

That said, our community will always make space for calling out or calling in of racism, transphobia, or other behavior harmful to historically marginalized communities, and the mods will always work to support players who speak up about this type of behavior. This includes calling out/calling in of the mods.


Code of Conduct for Mods


Mods will not delete any words by players from our Discord unless those words violate our anti-harassment policy and their deletion is requested by the affected community members. In case of deletion, we will keep screencaps of the unedited conversation for accountability reasons. If necessary, we encourage participants to hold us accountable to our own actions. We aim to mod this event from within the community, not above it. We will always be open to suggestions and feedback from members of our community for how to improve in our anti-oppression work and our work on making Voiceteam a fun and healthy community.


FAQ


Where did this idea come from?
Voiceteam is inspired by a combination of Amplificathon, GISH, and the 2000s era sorting and landcomms on LJ. (Name inspiration is from here.) We wanted a point-based podfic event like Amplificathon used to be, and we also wanted an event with excitement, fun, and occasional silliness, where anybody who loved podfic would feel welcome and would have plenty of opportunities to bond and make new friends!

Do I have to be a podficcer to join?
No! You just have to love podfic. There are non-voice ways to participate in audio fanworks for points, like contributing writing, beta, editing, or graphics. There will also be some challenges that can be fulfilled without audio fanworks. No one has to do every single challenge.

How big of a commitment is this going to be?
No bigger than you want it to be! The point of this challenge is to have fun and make friends, and if you end up getting inspired to create a bunch of stuff, cool. If not, that’s also cool.

Okay, but what if my version of fun is to scheme with my team members and Crush The Competition?
Go for it! Just make sure that it’s all in good fun and that team members with different reasons for participating don’t feel pressured.

What is Discord?/Tell me more about how the Discord server is going to work.
Discord is a chat-based platform. Every server (like the Voiceteam server) can host multiple text and voice chat channels. Some of the channels will be open to the entire Voiceteam community and some will be visible only to members of your team.

Voiceteam players will be emailed an invitation to the Voiceteam Discord server on 12:01 AM UTC April 29th. You can spend the first couple of days saying hi and getting to know your team—we’ll provide some optional icebreaker questions you can answer for each other—and then the first round of challenges will be posted at 12:01 AM UTC on May 2nd.

Socializing with your teammates outside of the challenge is encouraged, and we hope this event can be an opportunity for participants to get to know each other better. However, in the interests of facilitating moderation we'd encourage you to take advantage of your team's channels on the main Discord. If you do decide to create a separate Discord for your team, we highly recommend you add one or more of the event moderators so it's easier for us to get caught up in the case of issues - you can always remove us post-challenge.

How do I keep track of when challenge drops and deadlines will happen in my time zone?
We know this can be confusing! We will have a time zone converter set up in Discord in a prominent location to help players keep track of when the next drop or deadline is coming up.

We're also maintaining a Google Calendar with these dates and deadlines that you can subscribe to. (If you just view it, it will show up in GMT (UTC +0), but if you add it to your own Google Calendar, which you can do by clicking the + in the bottom right corner, it will convert to your local timezone.)

How will the teams work?
We’ll use the info you give us in your signups to create teams of around 10–12 people. If you are assigned a team and feel that it is not the right match for you, please let the mods know and we can reassign you.

Once you are assigned a team, anything you create counts toward your team’s point total. Beyond that, being on a team can be as interactive as you want. You can hang out in your team’s Discord channel all the time to chat and scheme and create with team members, or you can just check in every now and again to say hi and see if there’s anything happening you want to participate in. Or anything in between!

I’m not comfortable getting matched to a team of strangers. Can I sign up with a friend?
You can! Each player can pick one sign-up buddy who is guaranteed to be sorted onto the same team as them. Sign-up buddies must be reciprocal, so if person A picks person B, person B has to also pick person A (or at least not pick person C).

What if I have one or more people I’d like to request to NOT be on a team with?
If there are any people you’d like to request to not be on a team with, please mention it on the sign-up form. The signup is private except for your name, so nobody except the mods will see what you type there.

Can I change my sign-up after I’ve submitted it?
Unfortunately, once you have submitted the form you are unable to edit it yourself. If you need to change something in your sign up you can either resubmit the form and let us know to delete your earlier sign-up in the “anything else we should know” field or you can email the mods (voiceteammods@gmail.com) or DM any individual mod and we can update your sign up for you.

Are minors allowed to participate?
Yes, minors (and over-18 folk who prefer to avoid mature content) are welcome to participate in Voiceteam! Where needed, a separate NSFW channel will be provided to a team, which minors on that team will not have access to.

I observe Shabbat in a way that makes me not able to participate on that day (or have a similar situation that means I’d need to take a certain day each week off from playing), but I still want to compete for points! Is there a way for me to do that?
Absolutely! If you will need to take off a specific day each week but still want to play for points, let us know in advance and we will make your deadline for each round a day later than everyone else’s to make up for it.

How do I earn points?
At the beginning of each new round, a list of ten challenges will be posted in the Discord’s public channel. For the seven days that the challenges are open, these challenges can earn full points. Anything submitted after the close of those seven days only earns half-points. After two days of break, the next round of challenges will be posted.

After all three rounds have ended, we will have an Amnesty day. During this day, there are no active challenges, but if you started a project during a previous round and were unable to finish it in time, you may turn it in for half-points.

What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?
You can find examples of past Voiceteam challenges here.

Are there limits or requirements for crossposting creations I make for Voiceteam?
Nope! You may crosspost any works made for Voiceteam whenever and wherever you want. You can also choose to not crosspost at all and only share with the mods, or only share within the Voiceteam Discord. One reminder, though, is that since many Voiceteam works are collaborations, all collaborators should discuss and be on the same page about when/where a work will be crossposted.

What if I was already working on something before Voiceteam started? Is there a way to get points for it?
Any creation can earn points for a Voiceteam challenge as long as it is completed during the time that challenge is active. This includes WIPs you were already working on that happen to align with one of the challenges.

How are multichapter works scored?
For multichapter works, each chapter can be submitted for points separately. Different chapters will each be treated as their own creation, so you can submit any chapter for any challenge, independent of what challenge(s) other chapters of that work were submitted for.

What if I am collaborating on a work with other players and someone doesn’t complete their part by the deadline?
If a good-faith plan is made for multiple people to collaborate on a work and some members aren’t able to meet the deadline, the partial project can be submitted for points by the members who did finish in time.

What are content moderation rules and how do they work?
We have put in place two content moderation rules. If someone finds a fanwork that they think may violate one of the rules, they can report it privately (and anonymously if they want) to the mod team.

We have designed our response plan to prevent this system from being used to harass fanwork creators. We will never publicly share information about any reports, and we will only contact the creator(s) about a report if we are sure the fanwork really is against one of these rules. If it’s unclear to us whether the fanwork violates the rule, the mod team will privately consult with one or more members of the marginalized group impacted, or as close as possible to that group, to assess if harm is being caused to the impacted community by the fanwork. If harm is being caused, we will move forward in private conversation with the creator(s) of the fanwork to discuss the situation together and figure out possible next steps.

If the work is in violation of one of the rules and the fanwork’s creator(s) cannot or do not wish to alter it, any points previously earned by the work will be removed and the work will be removed from the Voiceteam AO3 collection.

What plans does Voiceteam have in place to address racism within fandom and our community?
At the start of Voiceteam, players will have the option to opt into a section of channels intended to be a safe space for creators of color. This space is run by a mod of color, and none of the white mods will have access, nor will any white player in Voiceteam. Most importantly, we ask that everyone - whether you're a person of color or not - respect that space.

We will also continue with the universal bonus of +10 points for any Voiceteam fanwork that centers one or more characters of color. This includes racebent characters.

We are continuing to reflect as a mod team about our anti-racism practices within fandom, which we recognize to be a space deeply shaped by racism. We remain open to suggestions and feedback from members of our community for how to improve in this area.

How do I sign up?
Head to this year’s sign-up post or directly to our sign-up form.

What does the winning team win?
BRAGGING RIGHTS but the real prize is the friends we made along the way.