FYI, there appears to be a problem with our server such that it returns a 500 Server Error when trying to email copies of comments to you. Your actual comments should go through just fine, but you may not get an email copied to you as usual. We're aware of the problem, and I hope it will be resolved before too long!

I have currently finished all corrections that I've been asked to make, barring three that are waiting to hear back from the requesters. Actually, I've been mostly done for over a week, but 1) I forgot to post, and 2) a couple more came in that I put off until today. *g*

If you made a request for a change and haven't heard back from me, please make the request again.

If you've sent a note about requested corrections to stories, I'm still working on those. My time is more limited after the holidays, but I will get to them, and I will let you know when they're done! I may or may not have let you know that I received your request; when I finish all the requests I do have, I will post here to say that I'm caught up. If, at that point, you have not heard from me, then please contact us again at yuletide@yuletidetreasure.org

If you've requested a correction to author information, title, etc., these may take a little longer, as they are more complicated.

Thanks!

astolat has brought back the dynamically-updated NYR listing, so requests will now drop off as NYR stories are uploaded, and you can pull up the Special Requests, which are those of our non-Yuletiding pinch hitters and the 15 or so Top non-Yuletiding Commenters!

The top Yuletider Commenters each got an additional request this year, and I've added the ones for those from whom I've heard. Except me. We're apparently not talking at the moment. Or thinking. Something. Ish.

If you are one of these and have not yet replied to my email asking for requests, get it in when you have time, if you're interested. If you haven't heard from me, and think you should have, or if you wrote back to me, and yet your requests do not show, also email me! yuletide@yuletidetreasure.org

You can now upload any 2009 NYR stories, and the counter will show how many have been posted throughout the year!

These stories will trigger notifications to be sent to their recipients, and will be noted in the next "Story of the Day" post in yuletide.

Upload was down again briefly today, when a change to the db unexpectedly triggered an older protection (it panicked!), but it should be fine now.

Right now, the NYR prompts page is static, so once you can upload (temporarily still locked, I believe), prompts won't automatically drop off until 1) the page is manually updated, or 2) traffic has gone down enough to allow the dynamic cgi page to be reinstated.

If you do not see your prompts on the page of prompts, this may be because:

1) You defaulted and never uploaded a full-length story. This is standard.

2) You technically defaulted, but did get a full-length story uploaded.

3) You defaulted in a previous year, but uploaded a full-length this year, without defaulting.


If you fit under #2 or #3, contact me at elynross@gmail.com, including your signup name, and I can fix it, although your prompts won't show up until the page is updated/changed back to dynamic updating.

ETA: PLEASE DO NOT POST ERRORS OR PROBLEMS HERE. I am not following comments on this page, sorry, and have now disabled them. Email them to us at yuletide at yuletide treasure dot org and we will handle them as we have time.


Just so you all know, the server is under extremely heavy load right now from everyone jumping on it at once. Please:

1) Do not repeatedly refresh script pages (ie, the ones ending in ".cgi"). If you are get an error message or a page is taking a long time to come up, hit the stop button on your browser and wait half an hour before trying again.

2) Do not upload NYR stories until after the first rush has died down considerably. If you are getting any errors on any other pages, do NOT post.

3) Finally, please DO go to the reveal post in the yuletide community and link or post your "reveals" (ie, the "I wrote x y and z") there, linking directly to your story pages, which will greatly help reduce load on the server if people use those rather than the search engine.

And please do go use those links or links off your friends list, whether in recs or in reveal posts, rather than the search engine! (That includes the "see all stories by this author" link in the contact info pages; please avoid those for now too!)


Things should calm down later today and tomorrow, but for a bit things will be sporadically breaking or very slow to load. It's not broken code, it's just Dreamhost killing off processes because we're using too much of the server. :/ The only thing that will fix it is patience, alas! But things should calm down after today's first rush and begin to work smoothly again. :)

One of the things we like to do is reward the top commenters who aren't Yuletide participants with the option to contribute 3-4 requests for the NYR Challenge. There are no guarantees of stories, of course, but there's always hope!

This year we've expanded to the top 15, and we're also letting the top 15 Yuletide participant commenters add an extra request.

I've not yet contacted the Yuletiders, but I'm seeking the following possible non-participants. If you know one of them, or are one of them, and can give me a valid email address, please write to elynross@gmail.com and let me know. Thanks!

All authors have been revealed! Names are available on individual story pages and the quicksearch pages are regenerating as we speak! (Note -- this will take a while, so be patient if author names don't immediately appear. You may also have to force a refresh either of a story page or quicksearch page to get the updated version.)

The New Year Resolutions 2009 challenge is now open, where anyone (whether you participated in Yuletide or not) is welcome to take one of the unfilled requests as a prompt. You can see the entire list of unfilled requests or get a random request.

The Yuletide Stories of the Day posting has begun. Each post is made to the yuletide community and links to a batch of Yuletide stories, working its way through the entire archive over the course of the next year, in order of when stories were posted. When the entire archive has been gone through, it will loop around to the beginning. If yuletide is too high-volume for you, you can get these posts by subscribing to yuletide_daily, which is just the story-of-the-day postings, or you can use livejournal tracking and sign up to be notified by email -- just subscribe to entries tagged story-of-the-day.

The author name reveal won't be until tomorrow after sleep has been had! Just in case you wanted to scramble around and read a few more things while they're still anonymous or want to know if you should try and stay up for it.

I hope you'll continue to read and enjoy (and comment on!) stories after the reveal, as there's so much there to enjoy (I haven't read half what I want to!)

Here's information on posting your story outside the Yuletide archive after the name reveal -- you're completely free to do so.

I'm also planning to do a collective "Thank your commenters" post on yuletide, as a place to easily thank your commenters for whom you didn't receive individual notifications, as some did still go astray. You can also reply to your own story, but the individuals in question may or may not be likely to see them there. Note: we ask that you not make individual thank you posts on the comm, but of course they're entirely appropriate in your own LJs!


The Stories of the Day post will start to show up in the new year, listing a portion of the Yuletide 2008 stories in order of their posting to the archive, plus a random older story of the day, plus a random unfilled request of the day, plus announcements of any NYR stories posted the previous day!

See the FAQ for more information on the New Year's Resolution challenge, which is open to anyone, Yuletide participant or not.

Also, if you were a pinch hitter who was not signed up for Yuletide, and you didn't get my query about requests of your own to go up for the NYR challenge, please let me know at yuletide@yuletidetreasures.org

If you haven't yet thanked each of your Yuletide Authors, whether for your main story or a treat, please take time to do so, even if it's just a simple "thank you for writing this for me." When someone has taken their time to try and write something for one of your prompts, it's disheartening to never hear, especially if they know you've commented on other things.

You might even do a search by recipient, just to make sure you didn't miss anything!

Since this has come up a couple of times, I'll point it out: the fandom searches (when you click on a fandom header) are keyword searches. Because of this, if you click on a fandom that contains the same keywords as another fandom, say, Angel, you'll get not just Angel stories, but also Dark Angel (although I'm not sure why not Angel Sanctuary), "Greek" also pulls up Mythology - Greek and Roman, etc.

It doesn't happen often, because most fandom names don't completely overlap that way, but it does occasionally.

We're using an email relay system this year, but all notifications that go out should arrive looking as though they came directly from the commenter -- if they left an email address. Otherwise they'll show as coming from the yuletide address (and if you keep this in mind when it comes time to reply, and check, I will not have to mock you for writing to us to say thanks for comments we didn't leave! *g*)

Early on a few follks were getting these bounced back with notes from the internet that basically said "We're trying to deliver this, and have for four hours, but we haven't gotten through! Never fear, we shall keep trying, and you needn't do anything!"

These have been successfully diverted/turned off, so you shouldn't be getting those.

However, if the author's email box is full, or broken, or rejecting email from the yuletide address, it will ultimately bounce, and having bounced, instead of coming back to us, it comes back to you, the commenter. And quite honestly, better you than us! *kof* So, yes, there's some compromising of anonymity, but no system is perfect. *g*

If you've read the story Lock and Keys (Burn Notice), you might want to take another look. Due to some inadvertent symbols that the archive read as html coding, a number of lines were left out of the middle of the story. This has now been rectified!

We have two other nifty toys here at Yuletide! (and they take a bit to pull up)

The Top Commenters List

This lists the top 15 commenters for participants and non-participants. Note: some of the supposed non-participants are participants, they're just "signing" their comments with a name other than the one they signed up with.

The Give Love page!

This lists stories that have no comments as of yet. NOTE: this covers all stories in the archive, not just the Yuletide 2008 stories!

Both of these are intended to encourage the leaving of comments, as those of you who are writers probably know how much brighter things seem when you get a new comment in your inbox. *g*

Tests of Power
Eastern Promises


Remember, don't reply to comments yet, but save those emails! And if you trip across stories that have left author names or other non-story text on them, feel free to drop me an email.

That Which Binds was tagged as Sunshine (2007), but is actually Robin McKinley - Sunshine

And three new stories have been added, due to thingie:

Fandom: Eastern Promises
Obedience

Fandom: Stardust (movie)
To Sir, With Love

Fandom: Eastern Promises
Dal'she v les - bol'she drov

All of the quicksearch pages have now been regenerated, and I've put the quicksearch browser back into place, so there should be no more broken links off the front page or the quicksearch pages -- if you see any, please email us at yuletide at yuletide treasure dot org!

\o/

ps: remember that comment counts on the quicksearch pages are NOT up to date!

Reminder about Which Story is Listed as Your Main Story!
This year we had over 400 more participants, and one day less time between the deadline and the reveal. Something had to go, and part of what went were the hours I spent last year making sure that the DB/software knew who the designated pinch hitters were for the flood of pinch hits that went out after the deadline on the 20th.

So, the DB/archive had to guess! If you were lucky enough to get multiple treats, and the DB/archive had choices, it assigned one of those randomly as your "main" story. That means that the story listed as your primary story in your notification letter may actually be a Yuletide Treat, thrown up during the last flurry of Yuletide Madness, and may not even be 1000 words. I know this is confusing, but if that's the case, it's okay to not treat that Treat as your primary story; I suspect the authors don't expect it. *g*

Please check out earlier entries from early this morning, to be up-to-date on Yuletide!

Leaving Comments, and Notes to Authors and Recipients

Do not respond to comments until after the 1st! Do not delete emailed comments if you want to respond to them! (if the commenters left their emails)

And I shall sum up:

If you get a 500 error while leaving a comment, please don't try and submit additional comments. The servers are still overloaded, but your comment may well have gone through, and resubmitting will just lead to multiple comments and dismayed authors, who think they're getting additional comments! Please wait, go back, refresh the posted comments page, and see if your comment made it through before submitting again. We will not be deleting extra comments at this time.

The Yuletide Browser will be available later, but it's offline now to conserve resources.

We know that the individual fandom pages are not all updated, so please don't email to let us know! In order for this year's fandoms to display, the Quicksearch pages have to be regenerated. Given the numbers of stories, this has to be done in sections, and part of it must be done manually. This will take a while, so please use the main searches, sorted by fandom, author, recipient, then search the page for the desired fandoms.