Voiceteam 2021 Rules and FAQ
Apr. 17th, 2021 03:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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voiceteamVoiceteam is a Discord-based team scavenger hunt for the podfic community. Teams can earn points and/or badges for making different voice-based or voice-adjacent creations. Each week in the month of May, teams 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 17–27
Discord server opens: May 1
Superchallenge posts: May 2
Round 1: May 6–10
Round 2: May 13–17
Round 3: May 20–24
Round 4: May 27–31
Amnesty: June 3–5
Results & Celebration: June 6
Voiceteam runs on GMT (UTC+0), which means that all challenge drops and deadlines will happen at midnight GMT. This means, for example, that Round 1 challenges will post right when it ticks over from being May 5th to being May 6th (in GMT). Your facilitators—canarypods, cantarina, flowerparrish, forzandopod, klb—are in EDT (UTC-4), CDT (UTC-5) and PDT (UTC-6).
RULES
Additional Rules for Those Playing for Points
Code of Conduct for Players
Code of Conduct for Facilitators
FAQ
Where did this idea come from?
Voiceteam is inspired by a combination of Amplificathon, GISH, and the 2000s eras 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. Every week’s challenges will include some non-voice options, like feedback or graphics. 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 May 1st. You can spend the first day 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 list of challenges will be posted at midnight (GMT) on May 6th (as the clock is ticking over from the 5th).
How will the teams work?
When you sign up, we’ll get some information about your fannish likes and your preferred group dynamics, along with whether you want to play for points and if so what point cap you’d prefer. We’ll use that to form teams! The exact numbers and sizes will depend on the number of sign-ups, but our ideal is 10–15 people per team. If you are assigned a team and feel that it is not the right match for you, please contact the facilitators and we can reassign you.
Once you are assigned a team, if you are playing for points, 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 B (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. This field for that question is set to private, so nobody except the facilitators will see what you type there.
I observe Shabbat in a way that makes me not able to participate (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 badges?
We are going to have badges this year that any player can earn, whether or not you’re playing for points. We will post a list of badges and how to earn them, and we might update with new badges as the month goes on. To earn them, you just need to prove to the facilitators that you did the task on the badge—for example, “Complete one challenge from each round”—by submitting your works on Airtable.
How do I earn points?
At the beginning of each new round (midnight GMT), a list of ten challenges will be posted in the Discord’s public channel, along with an update on point totals for each group so far. For the five days that the challenges are open, these challenges can earn full points. Anything submitted after the close of those five days only earns half-points. After two days of break, the next round of challenges will be posted.
There will also be one superchallenge, which is a challenge that is active for ALL of Voiceteam. The superchallenge will be posted at the beginning of Voiceteam and can be submitted for full points at any time until the end of amnesty, in order to allow for creating a larger group project that a team can build over time.
After all four rounds have ended, we will have a few Amnesty days. During these days, there are no active full-point challenges, but you can still turn in anything you want for half-points.
I don’t live in GMT. How do I keep track of when drops and deadlines will happen each day?
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.
What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?
Here are all of our of past Voiceteam challenges.
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 facilitators, 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.
What are your 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 facilitator 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 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 facilitator 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 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 cannot or does not wish to alter it, any points previously earned by the work will be removed and the work will be removed from our Voiceteam AO3 collection.
How else will Voiceteam work towards being an antiracist event?
We will have an area in our Discord that is accessible only to players who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Any BIPOC player who is interested will be able to opt into this space privately during sign-up, and it will be run by our Black facilitator. White facilitators and players will not be able to see this space.
We will also be hosting 4 discussions on the Discord across the span of Voiceteam where we will talk together about articles, posts, or other sources written by BIPOC about antiracist practice.
Finally, we will be hiring paid antiracism consultants!
How do I sign up?
Head to our sign-up post!
What does the winning team win?
BRAGGING RIGHTS but the real prize is the friends we made along the way.
TIMELINE
Sign-ups: April 17–27
Discord server opens: May 1
Superchallenge posts: May 2
Round 1: May 6–10
Round 2: May 13–17
Round 3: May 20–24
Round 4: May 27–31
Amnesty: June 3–5
Results & Celebration: June 6
Voiceteam runs on GMT (UTC+0), which means that all challenge drops and deadlines will happen at midnight GMT. This means, for example, that Round 1 challenges will post right when it ticks over from being May 5th to being May 6th (in GMT). Your facilitators—canarypods, cantarina, flowerparrish, forzandopod, klb—are in EDT (UTC-4), CDT (UTC-5) and PDT (UTC-6).
RULES
- Players will all choose whether they are going to play for points or not.
- Those who are not playing for points will still have teams, can still earn badges, and can also set and work toward any personal or team goals they choose. Or they can just choose to hang out with their teammates and have creative fun without any specific goals in mind!
- When playing for points, individual players will have a cap for how many points they can earn per week. If you’ve capped out for the week, you can still participate by supporting and cheering for your other team members! When you sign up, you can choose between having a lower cap and a higher cap. (For those who played in previous rounds, the higher cap will be around the level of those rounds. Those who think they will have the most fun trying to *win* Voiceteam should choose the higher cap.)
- You will be matched onto teams with others who have made the same choice (no points vs. lower cap vs. higher cap) as you.
- Minors (and over-18 folk who prefer to avoid adult content) are welcome to participate in Voiceteam! Where needed, two Discord channels will be provided to a group: a general-access channel and a NSFW channel.
- 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.
- Group dynamics can sometimes be tricky, and facilitators are here to help with that! Please feel free to come to the facilitators 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. We will keep your concerns confidential unless you give us the go-ahead to share them, but we can help you think up solutions or make changes in Voiceteam’s rules or structure to address the problem. For more serious problems, see our anti-harassment policy.
Additional Rules for Those Playing for Points
- Completed creations should be turned in via a form we will link on Discord once the challenge begins. A facilitator 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. You are also encouraged (but not required) to share your creations within the Discord so that other players can see and enjoy them!
- If team sizes vary, each team’s final score will be determined by dividing the number of points the team earned by the number of players and then multiplying by the number of players on the largest team.
- This challenge is all about adding fun and connection to our lives, not adding stress! If you choose to sit out a couple days or to only take on a single challenge for the whole event, that’s perfectly allowed. If you decide to just hang out in chat from time to time and cheer on your team, and you end up not making any creations, that’s allowed too. That said, players on a points-earning team do need to meet the minimum participation level of checking in with your team to say hi once per week, or you will be removed from that team. If you are removed for non-participation, there is no stigma attached (really really) and you’re welcome to move to a no-points team this round and to sign up for points-earning teams again in future rounds.
- Challenges will sometimes leave room for interpretation. If you are not sure whether something counts, please check with the facilitators. We support creativity, so we will be generous with what we allow!
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. If a player publicly complains about their team, pressures or excludes team members, or gives unsolicited negative feedback on the fanworks of others, they will be contacted by the facilitators 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 marginalized communities, and the facilitators will always work to support players who speak up about this type of behavior. This includes calling out/calling in of the facilitators.
Code of Conduct for Facilitators
- Facilitators 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 facilitate 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 eras 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. Every week’s challenges will include some non-voice options, like feedback or graphics. 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 May 1st. You can spend the first day 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 list of challenges will be posted at midnight (GMT) on May 6th (as the clock is ticking over from the 5th).
How will the teams work?
When you sign up, we’ll get some information about your fannish likes and your preferred group dynamics, along with whether you want to play for points and if so what point cap you’d prefer. We’ll use that to form teams! The exact numbers and sizes will depend on the number of sign-ups, but our ideal is 10–15 people per team. If you are assigned a team and feel that it is not the right match for you, please contact the facilitators and we can reassign you.
Once you are assigned a team, if you are playing for points, 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 B (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. This field for that question is set to private, so nobody except the facilitators will see what you type there.
I observe Shabbat in a way that makes me not able to participate (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 badges?
We are going to have badges this year that any player can earn, whether or not you’re playing for points. We will post a list of badges and how to earn them, and we might update with new badges as the month goes on. To earn them, you just need to prove to the facilitators that you did the task on the badge—for example, “Complete one challenge from each round”—by submitting your works on Airtable.
How do I earn points?
At the beginning of each new round (midnight GMT), a list of ten challenges will be posted in the Discord’s public channel, along with an update on point totals for each group so far. For the five days that the challenges are open, these challenges can earn full points. Anything submitted after the close of those five days only earns half-points. After two days of break, the next round of challenges will be posted.
There will also be one superchallenge, which is a challenge that is active for ALL of Voiceteam. The superchallenge will be posted at the beginning of Voiceteam and can be submitted for full points at any time until the end of amnesty, in order to allow for creating a larger group project that a team can build over time.
After all four rounds have ended, we will have a few Amnesty days. During these days, there are no active full-point challenges, but you can still turn in anything you want for half-points.
I don’t live in GMT. How do I keep track of when drops and deadlines will happen each day?
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.
What’s an example of what a challenge might look like?
Here are all of our of past Voiceteam challenges.
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 facilitators, 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.
What are your 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 facilitator 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 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 facilitator 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 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 cannot or does not wish to alter it, any points previously earned by the work will be removed and the work will be removed from our Voiceteam AO3 collection.
How else will Voiceteam work towards being an antiracist event?
We will have an area in our Discord that is accessible only to players who are Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). Any BIPOC player who is interested will be able to opt into this space privately during sign-up, and it will be run by our Black facilitator. White facilitators and players will not be able to see this space.
We will also be hosting 4 discussions on the Discord across the span of Voiceteam where we will talk together about articles, posts, or other sources written by BIPOC about antiracist practice.
Finally, we will be hiring paid antiracism consultants!
How do I sign up?
Head to our sign-up post!
What does the winning team win?
BRAGGING RIGHTS but the real prize is the friends we made along the way.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-17 10:00 pm (UTC)I'd like to suggest two edits to this post:
-We switched to Daylight time last month, and I believe your time zones are EDT (UTC-4), CDT (UTC-5) and PDT (UTC-7).
-Links are more accessible, especially for folks using screen readers, if they use unique and specific text like "our anti-harassment policy" and "signups" rather than "here" or "this post".
Yay Voiceteam!!! Thank you so much for putting this on.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-18 02:10 am (UTC)Also, that's a super helpful tip about screen readers. Fixing now!
time zones
Date: 2021-04-22 11:57 pm (UTC)