Harry Potter Suggestions forum

I have some thoughts and suggestions as we've been going farther and farther along.

1. While it's good to have a winner, of course, or this wouldn't be a contest, I think it's also good to have an MVP for each team. This would be chosen by you all based on who was the strongest writer so that strong writers on teams with weaker writers won't get angry or give up because there's no chance of them winning. As we have an ESL person on our team, though her English is great for communicating, you can sometimes tell she's not a native speaker when she writes. If I was super competitive, I'd be upset and next time would stack my team with only the best writers. And while this might be more fun for you all to read, it's not really in the WdC spirit. Plus, it would be super awkward if the "best" writers didn't want to be on MY team. Anyway, some sort of recognition for the strongest writer on each team might be a good way to encourage folks, especially on the losing teams.

2. This is honestly getting pretty long and I'm ready for it to be over with...no offense. I had no idea what I'd be doing 6, 7, 8 weeks from when we started. Consider maybe the option of us submitting our stuff privately (so other teams can't peek and improve their ideas based on ours lol), but that each team can work at their own pace. When we submit the 1st activity, which is due in 1 week, we can go ahead and get started on the 2nd. Ultimately, it lasts 8 or whatever weeks, but if a team works fast, they can get through the whole thing much faster. Then you just judge and announce winners after each team has submitted their entry for each round, so even you might finish faster if all the teams finish faster. Though there would still be the 1 week deadline for the slower teams. Of course, this would suck more for you and be more to keep up with, but you can make check boxes for the teams and we can all just see where everyone is.

3. As someone who is terrible at fan fiction and writing in other people's voice, I vote not too much where I have to write as a character, though some is understandable. But when I had to write from Hermione's perspective (can't recall which one, but I think maybe week 2 or 3...maybe?), my team was like, "Well done...but that is not Hermione you wrote.) Uhhh...uh-oh. lol

4. I appreciate the variety: Campfire (which our team had previously considered for one activity, but then decided it would be too hard to do--little did we know, we'd be doing one later anyway ), reviewing, newspaper article, us as a character, us watching other characters, us with the characters, etc. I definitely appreciate that. It helps keep it more interesting instead of, "Great--I have to write another poem because none of us are poets and I logged on last so I got the leftover task." I really liked things like welcoming a newbie and stuff.

5. I DEFINITELY appreciate that you seem to be choosing things from the movies! I've been able to find clips from each thing I have to write about (that needs to be based on storyline events). I certainly appreciate that they aren't some obscure scene in the book! I also appreciate that I don't have to be a hardcore HP fan to participate! Whew!

6. I think it's ideal not to have time-based tasks like we did at first. That way, no one can be mad at the 1 teammate who is 12 hours off from the WdC time zone or is the only teammate with a job so they can't devote more time to doing things sooner. If you want to have time-based tasks, then maybe only the 1st week (so people are more likely to be able to predict their schedule at the start of the contest), which I think is what you did, but in our case, one teammate wasn't able to get to it for most of the week because of work, so I feel like that might have really hurt our score. Maybe something like a time-based week, but each person can turn in their own so at least some of them can count for more points based on less time?

7. Thank you for the encouraging emails, especially when we are running close to time. I'm pretty sure at least one of those made me go, "Oh crap! I forgot about this!" If my team captain wasn't so good, I'd probably have screwed our team at some point by not turning anything in.

I think that's all my comments for now. Yes, I have a lot of opinions, but hey, you asked for them. Thank you for what you all are doing!!!