Place to discuss, rec, and generally squee over fan fiction about Steve Rogers and Tony Stark
Stony Trumps Hate Auction Organizing Thread
There seems to be a good bit of interest, and @boop snagged our url on tumblr, so I think we are a go!
Since the FTH Auction just completed and people are still in the process of paying and creating, I think it would be smart to perhaps set a date at least a couple of months from now for this effort to "go live," as in the auction bidding actually start. In the meantime, we can organize, get the tumblr site up and running, promote it, etc.
@a_sparrows_fall offered to help with the web stuff, which would be great!
Some ideas that have been suggested:
1) Allow fan craft offers like pins, keychains, stickers, etc. 2) Allow creators to offer items from their personal collections and/or things like items from their Society6 stores 3) Some way to allow group bidding...I'm not sure how this would work, but the idea being to allow people to form groups to bid higher (say one person wants an identity porn fic and their friend wants a coffee shop AU, so they go together) 4) A way to signal boost individual efforts by people who are doing other things to raise funds/awareness for various causes 5) Encourage other categories of artists to participate, like people who can do gif sets, fanedits to go with fics, book covers, fan videos, that kind of thing. It isn't just fanart! I know I would personally bid on some of those to go with my fics, so if people were interested in offering those, I think that would be really cool. 6) Set it up so that people can offer various options in separate auctions, so you would have Auction 1: One-Shot fic of less than 5K with a starting bid of $10 and Auction 2: One-Shot fic of at least 10K with starting bid of $20 or whatever.
Okay, so this thread is for organizing and delegating, and by that I mean you kids get hopping, lol. I know several of you are way better at this stuff than I am, so please don't feel like you are stepping on toes. Ideas and suggestions are welcome! Let's brainstorm!




Late to the party because apparently the imzy app can't display this many comments without crashing and I was stuck on mobile for a few days haha.
Thanks to everyone who's been working on this so far! @Mushroom already mentioned it, but I'd also love to be able to suggest that auction winners donate to an international/non-US cause. I wouldn't want to stop anyone from donating to a US organisation if that's what they want to do, but there are e.g. great projects in Germany for Syrian refugees or that help combatting neo nazism and it'd be great if we could at least point bidders in that direction. (And with right wing populist politicians pretty much recreating Goebbel's Sportpalast speech just a few days ago, it's badly needed...)
Also, I skimmed most of the thread so maybe this was already touched upon (or it might seem logical anyway): Are we going to set up 'customer service' in some form? This is much smaller scale than a multi-fandom thing, but from experience with exchanges (and esp those involving money) it was a big help when there were people whose primary job was answering questions and concerns. I've done it before so I'd be up for taking on something like that if we decided to go that route.
It might also help break down potential language barriers? People offering to help act as a go between for different languages if a creator or bidder felt hesitant about participating due to their English skills?
Great suggestions! I love the idea of dedicated customer service people, especially if they have language skills. @boop @ishipallthings @a_sparrows_fall
Having customer service sounds like a great idea, we could do on tumblr through asks, or if anyone has any suggestions for other ways that would be cool :D
Email would definitely be great. If we have a domain, something like help@domain.com or if we want to go more specific you could even divide between creators@ and bidders@
a sub-channel on discord too, maybe?
@boop set up a gmail account (stonytrumpshate@gmail.com), so that could work for customer service, and yup discord would be good too. If we're going by email we could specify a format (what they put in the subject headings), so we wouldn't necessarily have to divide between creators and bidders, but it is one possibility.
So a cool thing you can actually do with gmail is append a plus sign and a word to the beginning of the email address -- i.e. stonytrumpshate+help@gmail.com-- and it will still go the same address. We can link to said emails on the tumblr and the site, and setup filters to flag different incoming emails. We can do this for creators, bidders, anything else we think we'd need.
I think it'd still give us a level of separation without people having to log into multiple accounts.
Could def make a call out for anybody proficient in multiple languages if they want to volunteer their time!
At this point, I can't imagine getting so many inquiry emails that we'd need to compartmentalize them, but if it does help with organization (or just keeping things neat and archived nicely), that's still a good idea! Plus we can have everything divided up by labels and stuff. (Especially since the inbox is going to be a hot mess once we have to start corresponding with bidders and creators and getting donation receipts and etc etc.)
EDIT: Just thinking of some subcategories/labels we should have...
general inquiries (for both creators and bidders and others)
creator sign-ups / auction pages
tech support during auction week
contacting bidders + creators about who won (and getting them in touch with each other)
donation receipts
post-auction inquiries (hopefully we won't need this, but like, if any problems arise between bidders and creators)
I'm all for labels and folders for collective sanity
Here's what I've written in the FAQ:
If you think that could be rephrased better just let me know! I want to make it clear that the creators/bidders are welcome to donate to other organizations/causes. (And ideally I want both the creator and bidders within the same auction to be happy with where the donation is going.)
EDIT: OH. OR we can just change the entire theme of the auction to just be like, the fandom being charitable, rather than a direct response to an issue haha. Would definitely open things up and we can reorganize the suggested list of organizations.
I think that sounds good. Personally, for this first round, I'd like to keep things sort of focused on an anti-Trump and what he stands for vibe, since that is where I think a lot of people are emotionally. If we are able to make this an annual event, then maybe generalize it a bit.
As long as the creator has the ability to pick their own organization(s), I think that works fine! Each creator would be familiar with what groups work in their countries or in areas where they want to try to have an impact.
Okay! I will change the FAQ to say that people can split their donation up among organizations, though, so they can branch out if they wanted to. (In case their creator really wants the donation to be to X but the bidder wants to donate to Y.)
Sounds great!
Everything looks amazing so far! I'm so excited. Thank you, @sabrecmc, for coming up with the idea and @boop and @a_sparrows_fall for working on the site!
I look forward to the auction.
Quick web stuff update: custom scripts don't show up inline on your Tumblr dash. So you'd see all the creator's info in your dash and could absolutely reblog, and then you'd to click to open up the page on the actual STH site to bid.
You also couldn't bid from the Tumblr mobile app, but I checked FTH and you couldn't do that with them either. You can with your mobile browser (for both FTH and us.)
Not as slick as I was hoping, but still maybe a little more streamlined and convenient when you get to the page.
As mentioned, Creator Form trial run will be later tonight.
Here's a fake bidding sheet: http://asparrowsfall.tumblr.com/post/156299839567/dum-e-form
Who wants to help me beta test? I think I saw @shetlandowl offer to help before? :D Or anyone else. Shoot me a tumblr message or email (it's in the thread below)
(BTW if we end up not using some of the scripts I worked on last night, that's fine, FYI, you won't hurt any of my three feelings; I'd rather we work out any possible issues in advance.)
update to the update: you can view the trial spreadsheet here-- for the real thing you probably wouldn't need to see it but I thought maybe potential mods and creators would like to check it out:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mUeUJFmXB_s3qpN2YesWodKe18AbxtG1K_iSyFhBgZo/edit?usp=sharing
hahaha I got excited and submitted a fake bid
but it looks great so far! we can get around the dashboard issue by having the script under a readmore if that's possible? and as for mobile-views, we can just make it clear on the blog description that bids should be made on desktop-view.
oh! just a thought, is it possible to submit bids both as an embedded script and on a third-party site? (like the original google form or something) so we can be like, hey look at the thing below to bid, or go to this site, whichever you prefer!
I will look into those options!
I can definitely host on a 3rd party site, too-- if we think we'll do this more than once (I agree with the marathon not a sprint comment, lol) I can grab a custom domain name, too. We could make it an annual thing for the next couple years :)
Just added validation so you can't bid lower than the previous bidder.
Oh cool! I love the idea of making this an annual event! (Can never give Too Much money to charity, honestly haha)
Looking at the domain now it's like $13/year, so lemme know if you'd like me to throw some money in your direction. But I think it might be better to have a general Cap/IM-themed charity domain name? Just because Stony Trumps Hate might be too specific, and I envision we might want to use it for other occasions too!
stonyauction.com, stonyforcharity.com... "stevetony.gives" is available too but it's $35 BUT I WISH LMFAO (okay if you like the idea too I would def throw money for it HAHAHA)
"stevetony.love" is available too for that price. Help, I love gimmicky things.
I bought Stark.international and I'm seriously considering mariastark.foundation as well...
Oh but I just saw stevetony.gives at the end there I like that too!
All of these are good! I like them all. Don't mind tossing some money towards snagging a good domain name. Whatever you think.
MARIASTARK.FOUNDATION IS SO CUTE DAMMIT
I really love all of these, so! whichever you think is best? stevetony.gives would be more specific/easier to find, but mariastark.foundation does have the Avengers-vibe to it... hehe (and it's REALLY CUTE...)
AHHH all of these are amazing (I also wouldn't mind chipping for an awesome domain name :D)
Stevetony.bid is 88 CENTS a year for the first year. Just to complicate the matter more
HAHAHHA god, that's also a good one... I am leaning towards stevetony.gives now though, just because it rolls off the tongue nicely! What do you think?
I think stevetony.gives is probably the easiest and most representative of the idea here.
I also love the mariastark.foundation one because it is kind of next level in-joke kind of thing for fandom.
But, going forward, stevetony.gives is probably the most self-explanatory and it could be used for non-political fundraising too, in case there was something like a natural disaster like the tsunami or something where fandom wanted to come together and raise money.
stevetony.bid and stevetony.gives are the most representative and versatile, but I think I would pick gives over bid, it sounds better since this is for charity. mariastarkfoundation makes me really happy, but stevetonygives is more straightforward.
(I DID, TOO.)
Hm, this doesn't load for me--I mean, I only get the "loading..." info; I checked both on firefox and chrome, but I'm on ubuntu, if that's a problem? (Alternatively it's my shitty connection in play again, in which case sorry, ignore me >.< )
Probably a bug, I'm seeing it on mobile too. I'm at work and can't fix it now but I'll check it out later
EDIT yeah I totally broke it, haha, will fix shortly
Should be back up laire 😄fingers crossed
Yay, it is! Thanks! Looks great :)
Okay I don't think I was here quick enough - but I submitted a fake bid and requested access to the sheet, was that what you wanted me to do? I will learn this & how to help, have no fear, but I'm a little unaware at the moment :-/
Oh you're fine! Mostly I just wanted you to reach out to me so we can take some formal beta testing convos offline; kinda hard to follow in this threaded format. Mind if I email you?
Seems like we are all feeling warm and fuzzy about stevetony.gives-- want me to grab it? I will happily chip in on the yearly costs as well!
We will need an s3 bucket which will probably cost about 4 cents a year to host... I can cover that 😉
I say grab it. Let me know how to contribute for the cost.
It's ours! 💖 GoDaddy had it on sale for 15. 8 bucks for privacy protection, and 84 cents optional charity donation to Hope to Haiti, coming out to $24 total, not bad!
Yay! We are official!
Please do! You have it, right? How.swede at gmail. Today is my last day of classes for the week, so I will be much better & responsive =)
I'm happy to contribute to the cost as well! Just let me know how to contribute
If you don't me butting in, feel free to email me if you need help with beta-testing as well :D (ishipallthings@gmail.com), or you can message me on tumblr :)
Just wanted to say that the STH tumblr page looks great already! This fandom is so awesome. Hats off to @boop and @a_sparrows_fall!
The site is all @boop! I agree, it looks great! The important information is really easy to find IMO. Love the sidebar.
I'm so excited this is going through! Thanks for all your work :) Just a note that RBB claims are on Feb 18, and it's a super popular event for both artists and writers, so I think it'll be good to schedule this in March at the earliest so people know what fannish obligations they'll have when signing up as a contributor.
That's a good point about the RBB. @boop @a_sparrows_fall
I think sign-ups going live in April or mid-March sounds good!
That should be perfect.
Since RBB finishes up in the last week of April, how about
OR
Any thoughts/preferences? I think the earlier dates could be more advantageous, just because it'd be fresh on people's minds? BUT the latter would fit the RBB schedule better? (after writers get to decompress from working on their fics, after the fandom is done looking at all the RBB works, etc.) and would be better on the overall...fandom schedule? HAHA (and if it seems a little late, we can argue that this is a marathon, not a sprint. got a looong couple of years ahead of us, oof)
I agree the latter works better with the RBB schedule (posting happens in May, so we should be done panicking about deadlines ;) ). Also, while of course a part of me goes "I want this ASAP", realistically I think the later dates are also better because more time will have passed since FTH? So fandom won't be overloaded with the auctions. (Uhh, I don't like how I worded that but I can't think of a better way.)
Definitely don't want anyone fatigued, and it would be nice to have the separation between this and FTH to give creators and bidders a chance to recover.
Plus, think of how pissed we will all be at whatever Trump has done in the meantime! Sadly, I wish I were jesting.
@laireshi @sabrecmc : Excellent! (I prefer the latter for personal scheduling reasons too, haha) I'll put those dates in for now!
I'm in the process of booking an international vacation for the auction timeframe but I will try my best to be available for tech support and bidding anyway! The dates aren't set in stone anyway, so I am happy to work around it
we can move it to a week or two later if that works better for you! since tech support will be crucial during the auction week. just let us know which week you think will be best!
Yeah, I'd rather have tech support when the auction is live. I don't think anyone minds the extra time!
This sounds so exciting! One question - can it be noted somehow it might be better to have more than one prompt for the writers? Like, just in case. Because I'm scared someone would ask me for something that might not be on my DNW list, but I can't do. (I might be overthinking and worrying for no reason.)
Yep that's a good idea in general! We'll have it as one of the things we remind bidders of as we're contacting them ("consider giving your creator more than one prompt"), but you can also put it in your notes so they know that's something to keep in mind! (Like, "I work best if I have multiple prompts to choose from" or "there's some stuff I don't think I can write with ease, please check in with me beforehand!")
Wow, all of this brainstorming looks amazing, thank you for working hard on this! I have to run now, but I'm definitely up for helping out with the organizing/modding if needed :D I was planning on offering to beta fics anyways, but how would offering to beta as a fanwork work?
Modding help will be great! I know I'll be awol for April/early May for the most part, so I might not be able to do much during that time!
As for beta-ing, I looked at what FTH contributors wrote in their tag, and looks like doing word count per bid amount seems to be a good idea! (like 1k for every $1)
I'm excited! I have to go to bed so I can't read through everything until later on, but I wanted to talk about fan crafts because I think those are great, but there's some stuff that you guys might need to keep in mind. FTH touched upon this in their FAQ so I was wondering what you guys thought.
My general attitude is that STH would be more of a middle-man and the exchange between the creator/bidder would be the same way it'd be for any commissioned work! Re: if anything goes awry, that's between the two of them haha (or like, if you own an Etsy shop and your stuff doesn't get delivered, you would resolve it the same way). Plus there is a bit more accountability because the S/T fandom is smaller.
Okay yeah, that makes sense!
I don't know why there is an issue with fan crafts, if someone is offering a thing for sale, it's pretty much assured they will send it, much like anyone writing or drawing is assured to do those tasks.
Yeah, I honestly think it would be fine. I understand why FTH didn't want to deal with it, but I think we are a small enough fandom that it would work.
That's true!
Also it just occurred to me: I'm not american, and i live in an even more conservative nation (the Philippines).
1) can I still join and 2)is it possible for the cause to have an international and intersectional dimension?
Sorry for all the questions!
1) Of course, and 2) if you have a suggested organization dealing with international affairs, that'd be great!
Maybe something like Amnesty International or one of the groups helping refugees or working on stopping human trafficking?
Médecins Sans Frontières - Doctors Without Borders
I'd also be in favour of non-Americans (and Americans too if they wish) having the option of asking for donations to organisations outside the US. Not that I'd mind Planned Parenthood receiving money, but there's local/international projects I'd love to see getting money too.
OK, I just got a draft of the server side script (Jocasta) and the client side Form & scripts (DUM-E) up and running on my personal account; I'll port it to the STH site and Google account when we're a little closer to the final version.
DUM-E fetches the latest bid from the auction's sheet without exposing the top bidder's information, and pre-populates the form with a bid that's 5 dollars higher (or, if as a creator, you wanted each minimum bid to be different, we could have that be dynamic).
Then DUM-E passes the form data back to Jo, who will probably run some additional validation before saving it with a timestamp to the Spreadsheet.
Oh, yeah, and the callback function name is 'assemble' (it's a call to Assemble, heh, get it?)
We can keep all the auctions in a single Google doc with one page/tab per auction.
This is all, uh, kind of held together with the industry standard of duct tape and hope, hahaha, but it does pretty much work.
@boop and everyone-- are there other params you'd want to customize on a per auction basis? Minimum overall bid, minimum additional bid (i.e. you must bid at least 'x' more than the last bid)... anything else?
Also, how would you all like to handle creator signups? I was thinking a normal Google Docs form.
If you want, I can use DUM-E to grab the data dynamically for the creator pages, too... Which might be nice, because 1) an admin wouldn't have to create all those pages, and 2) creators could hypothetically go back and edit their responses, if they made a typo or wanted to clarify, etc. DUM-E is EXTREMELY useful for grabbing things on the fly. :)
Wow, that's awesome!! I think for the sake of consistency, the only parameters I could think of would be a starting bid of $5 and then each following bid should be a multiple of 5?
OH YEAH I forgot to comment on the tag thing, but since we'll probably have a manageable number of contributors, it's probably okay if we don't have extensive tag filters? But we can see after all the contributors signed up!
We'll definitely tag for types of fanworks available, but I think it might be too chaotic if we start tagging by tropes/universes (especially I imagine people being cool with writing for any trope/universe, haha)
If you go up in dollar increments, people spend more, because it seems more affordable, that's why Ebay works that way.
Dollar increments work too!
we don't have to pick; it could be on a per auction basis as long as the scripts work out.
Sounds good! So we'll let each creator decide?
Yep, like you were saying earlier, if someone wants to say, "detailed art piece, bidding starts at $15, in increments of $5" for one piece, and then "simple sketch, bidding starts at $5 in increments of $1" for another we can accommodate that easily, it'll be built in.
Perfect!
That sounds perfect! I've written out what I think should go on the sign-ups here, but feel free to suggest changes!
Haha I don't mind making the creator pages too--are we thinking rebloggable posts like on FTH? or Tumblr sidepages? (rebloggable posts would be good since we'll save time w/ making signal boosting posts for each creator)
Ooh, good point, if we want them to be rebloggable, I don't know if we can also make them dynamic... I have an idea how we can still make them pretty efficient to create.
I think rebloggable is definitely the way to go.
Also it might be hard to do the full sign-up via google docs, since for artists (well, I'm speaking for myself haha), it'd be like, here's 5 tiers of things you can get and here's 10 hyperlinks to each specific example HAHA. But a mix of google docs (just to get their contact information down and general info) and contacting them via email would be good! Then we can show them how their page looks, if they have any changed they'd like to make, etc.
Well, I mean, we can get all their information via the google doc (since for writers I imagine it'd be a lot simpler), and then have an option if they want us to get in touch if they need to be specifically accommodated for something. (If they want to send us a specific image to use, is high maintenance like me, etc.)
That sounds fine. Let me take a shot at the form tomorrow, and use it to generate a page... and then if people want additional formatting, we can always add it in later.
Awesome! :D Thank youuu
I put 'crafts' on the list of acceptable fanworks 👌 ! So right now, the list is:
Let me know if you think something else should be made available!
Just wanted to say thank you for all the legwork! I look forward to catching up on this tomorrow, but if in the meantime something comes up, please feel free to delegate my way.
I would like to join but hopefully artists can also gave a bit of freedom for the prompts? :)
Yep! Here's the rough list of things we'll ask for from contributors, but please let us know if you think something else should be added on (or clarified)! So ideally you can indicate like, "I'm best at drawing MCU semi-realism" or "I'd prefer to draw them out of costume" or "creaturefic stevetony or nothing at all", HAHA. I'm not sure if I answered your question or not, sweats...
Thank you so much for arranging this!!!! 💖
As for the launch date: I'm stealing this idea from a friend, but launching on February 14th would be reaaaaally cute! But very soon, so maybe not.
OR! The first issue of Captain America was published March 1, and the first appearance of Iron Man was March 10, so doing it early March COULD ALSO BE REALLY CUTE. (I wanted to do my own 10-day stevetony-themed extravaganza during that 10 day period, but why not both!)
Otherwise, I'm down with any launch date! I might hold off on finishing the promo art so we can release it a week or two before then.
So just scheduling wise:
So we should figure out when that 4~5 week period should be and start actively promoting it about 2 weeks ahead? So creators can look at their schedules, people can look at their budget, etc haha.
Okay my own questions/suggestions:
Should creators be allowed to have "preferred organizations to donate to"? Like, if they're a very strong advocate of reproductive rights, should they be able to encourage their auction winner to donate to specific organizations for it? (And of course, if they don't have a preference, they can just say 'no preference.)
And secondly: it would be very cute if we made banners for each auction page! Like, artists can choose something they've drawn, and we can have a bunch of images for people to choose from. Then it'd say their name and whatever work they're offering :D (It'll be more eye-catching than just a block of text too!)
I've been giving this whole thing a lot of thought HAHA
I don't have an issue with preferred organizations, but I think they should perhaps pick like 3? Or at least 2, I guess.
Banners would be great!
Cool! I've made a note on the page that it should be a minimum of 2 suggested organizations!
I followed the FTH guidelines and said 'no' for that, but I think considering that this auction will be for a smaller community, that sort of exchange should be alright? Meaning people can actually be held accountable for it, haha.
I think the best way to address that would be if they just organized it among themselves and had one representative to do all the auctioning and communicating. So, not the auction's concern, haha
I've put a link to the sidebar!
I've listed the following as available works/services:
Yep! I think every creator should be able to customize their auction page as they see fit :D (Personally I was thinking something like: "$49 or less, drawing with tones or slight coloring. $50-$99, drawing with coloring. etc. etc."
I can probably do minimum bid validation in the form, too... I'll see if i can't get a trial run up in the next few days.
are you still leaving out fan crafts? because I find it really insulting that people assume fan crafters won't deliver, but people who make fic and arts, etc, automatically are more trustworthy
crafts & fanmade merchandise has been added earlier!
okay I have a problem because I basically...did the thing LMFAO Still need to add the graphics and stuff but I wrote a lot of text 💧
https://stonytrumpshate.tumblr.com/
Feel free to read through and tell me to change anything! And if you think I should add more Q&A's to the FAQ that haven't been addressed. I can add whoever else wants to be an admin. I also took the email address stonytrumpshate@gmail, so! I can email the log in and password to whoever else is modding (just let me know your email haha).
Cool! The only thing I would add is maybe since this is a specific fandom, maybe we have specific tags for Want/DNW? And Universes?
I can write probably write some code to display the highest bid right on the creator's page, and probably the form, too, so you don't have to jump from listing to GForm to Gspreadsheet to see what's up-- it'll all be on one place. I'll do a proof of concept on my Tumblr, but I've written lots of apps with a Gdocs backend so this should be totally feasible.
I can also write a little script filter so if we make a page with all the tags on it, a bidder can filter it down easily.
Yep! I've included that in this page, so we know what to ask from creators when we get around to that!
And that's awesome! Is your tumblr just asparrowsfall? I can add you as an admin so you can work on the blog too!
that's me! :D
Done and done!
Oh could I get your email so I can send you the gmail login stuff? It might be easier to have all the spreadsheets and forms in the same place! (or if you don't want to throw your email out in the open, you can send an email to stonytrumpshate@gmail!)
sure, it's asparrowsfall [at] gmail (edit: I'm switching over my email)
This looks great! If I could have a suggestion though, could the font size be a bit bigger?
Good point! I'll edit the html in a bit!
(late to this party and all but THANK YOU FOR TAKING THE INITIATIVE TO MAKE THE PAGE AND EVERYTHING! :'D)