ngtskynebula

Behold, your creators! Creators are now revealed, and we have come to the end of Rare Pair Exchange's 2025 round.

You have until the opening of the next round's sign-ups to comment on your gifts to be eligible to participate next year. Please do so!

Thank you all for a great round! We have amazing works in our collection. Please continue browsing and leaving comments even with anonymity lifted! (Maybe consider checking out works from previous years, too!)

The collection is now unmoderated. Treats are welcome!

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Feedback

I have a few things that I'd appreciate feedback on. Please feel free to provide your thoughts on everything or a select few.

1. Rare Pair Exchange currently doesn't have a "home" month. We will clash with exchanges no matter what, but I endeavour not to clash with rarefemslashexchange and raremaleslashex, as we share the same theme.

I'd like to hear from people who participate in both or one if August is a good time of year for Rare Pair Exchange to run. Does it clash? (I don't believe it does.) My goal is to have little to no overlap with those exchanges, but recognise there is a chance we might given delays.

I cannot host this exchange during Battleship or November and December. I am considering moving the exchange to earlier in the year, even if it happens to clash with my other exchange (that's caseficexchange — a shameless little plug).

2. Did the schedule work? I compressed it this year by shortening the nominations, sign-ups, and creation periods as I felt previous rounds were too long for a 1k minimum exchange. I wish to follow this compressed timeline as I felt it worked well.

3. Did you like the extension deadline added to this year's schedule? (I did and will most likely add it again, but would like to hear from participants! I'll be finessing the schedule based on my experience with it and posting pinch hits.)

4. Did Sundays work as a deadline? I live in AEDT/AEST, which means I have to +1 the day (which I'm fine with doing). Sundays EST/EDT meant it was Monday AEST/AEDT. I'm looking to make the deadline either Friday or Sunday. Please let me know your preferences.

5. How do participants feel about being able to request one fandom and one ship, but with no guarantee of receiving a gift?

If we proceed with this, I will be adding to the schedule a deadline for when participants can add additional fandoms/ships to ensure that the workload in finding pinch hitters is manageable for me.

6. I am considering trialling Google form nominations next year. The workload during this phase of the exchange is intense, and I wouldn't have been able to get through the number of nominations without the help of tagmods. I was reviewing/approving nominations during work and I want to avoid doing that next year. (I also don't want tagmods doing that, either!)

If I cannot get a minimum of 5 tagmods next year, I will be pursuing Google nominations as an option. The reason for this is that I continued to get blocked by AO3 for the number of times I was accessing the site, which slowed me down and was understandably very frustrating. By going through Google nominations, the onus of proving the nomination eligibility will be on the nominator and will hopefully cut down some of the time spent working through over 3,900 nominations.

7. I am also considering decreasing the number of fandoms and relationships people can nominate. It's currently set to 10 fandoms with 10 relationships. I'm happy to take suggestions on what number I should decrease this to.

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Please feel free to leave feedback on how you found the round and if you have any further suggestions. I appreciate all feedback, but I will be implementing what works for me as a moderator.

You're welcome to send your feedback to rarepairexmod@gmail.com if you'd prefer it be private.

I will do my best to acknowledge all feedback, but please be patient with me — I intend to take a little break from wearing my mod hat. :)

Thank you again for a great round! See you next year. 🍐