I need to reach out to all of you once again for advice. As of last night, it's looking like the entire season may be airing in Canada early, with double episodes every weekend. This is... kind of a nightmare on the EQD front. It splits the fandom essentially. We just aren't sure what kind of split that is.
I've started a poll up on the side bar, but I have a few things to mention below the break too. Go read that and vote!
Below, we cover spoilers and followups, two major things we run into here on EQD!
Again, please provide some feedback on this. Even if a section below doesn't interest you. We need your input.
When it comes to anything new in pony leaking, it has always been a challenge to balance who is here early and who is late. When an episode leaked back in the day, we always saw the divide. A LOT of people watch it, but a smaller but still significant portion don't. This year it's essentially "leaks" all season. We have to figure out how a lot of systems on EQD will work going forward.
Spoilers in Fan Content
The poll currently going on should give us an idea of how many people are waiting for USA releases. I'm guessing based on traffic numbers that it will be less than people watching early. This again, puts us in a weird position. The fandom will always make a TON of stuff based on new episodes. It's inevitable. Even trailers for upcoming episodes gets loads of fan art. To spoiler the majority of EQD would be a nightmare, especially when many of the creators out there will be dedicating the following week to what we just saw, as you see from Drawfriend posts.
We can slap a spoiler tag on all the posts, but a lot of this stuff melds togeather with non-spoilery stuff. Especailly when we are getting two a weekend.
Episode Followups
Episode Followup posts are a big deal here. They are super popular, but probably the most time consuming posts on EQD. Having two a weekend is hard. The problem with delaying them for the USA release, is how little interest there will be if they come out so late. It will be super old news in a fandom that blows through news in just a day or two. Do we wait for the smaller faction of readers here to catch up? Or post them the day after Canada as usual, and just suck it up that the people who watched the episode early won't bother with a week late followup?
For the people writing them, it's less worthwhile if you don't get much feedback. A lot of people on EQD are volunteer, and love seeing comments about their work. Of course, we've also had a few dud followups; some from me, some from others. It's one of those post series that always comes with a mixed style of humor vs. analysis, and different writers appeal to different people. The shipping fuel stuff I do is loved by some and despised by others, while Silver Quill, WeAreBorg, and Vicodin's heavier analysis appeals to another group. Some of our writers like to make them more jokey and filled with corny puns like Illustrious Q, Cereal, Ferret, or Couch, while an Aquaman followup might go all out on the writing. Having such an array of styles hurts the series as a whole as the quality can be inconsistent depending on what you like.
With those issue in mind, it's harder and harder to get people to do them as we go forward. It's why you tend to see me writing them more often as opposed to one or two a season like I used to. The more audience we can get reading and commenting on them, the better, which would mean siding with Canadian release. I don't think I could ever keep up with normal EQD duties and two a weekend if the traffic to them drops far enough for the others on EQD to not want to bother. I'm basically just the backup plan, as you've probably noticed from some of my last-minute quickie ones.
Obviously, polling who is best wouldn't be good for the morale of anyone, but it's something I wanted to mention so you could see a bit of behind the scenes.
