FictionAlley Wants You!

[sistermagpie]

Are you a stickler for good grammar? Are you obsessed with the proper
spellings of HP-canon terms? Do you understand the difference between
question marks and quotation marks?

Then please, please, please take the FictionAlley Fic
Intake Team Quiz/Application and volunteer for Team FA. A
commitment of eight hours a week is all that is required, and you can
split it up among as many days as you wish. We really need new
staffers, because during the launch of our new system, we didn't
actively recruit, which leaves us a little short-staffed now. The more
people we have on the team, the shorter the turnaround time for newly
submitted fics!

Comments

[zachanassian.livejournal.com]

I know I'm kind of late here, but I've been thinking of applying for the Fic Intake Team for months and months, but was always too daunted by the application form.

So since you seem to know a lot about the application progress, I just decided to ask: Is it really as hard as the application form makes it sound? Is there a certain leeway so that someone can still work for the team even though they don't fulfill *all* of the requirements? For example, I'm pretty good at spelling, but I completely suck at picking the right prepositions, because English is not my first language and that kind of thing just doesn't come naturally to me. And while I'm fairly knowledgeable about Canon, I don't know a lot about other sources, like the stuff JKR published on her website.

I guess what it all boils down to is: Do you think they're desperate enough to take me?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

I think you should go ahead and try the application! They're big sticklers for grammar and spelling and such because the fic intake people are the ones catching mistakes, but English not being your first language shouldn't be a problem if you can catch grammar mistakes that someone else has made. (They would probably have different weak spots if they were native speakers anyway.) And you don't really need an extensive knowledge of canon, just the normal amount--we don't require fics to incorporate anything not from the books themselves.

You could just take the quiz and then go from there. Give a try!:-)

[zachanassian.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your kind advice :-).

I found an old document on my harddrive from when I first started to fill out the application 3 months ago, but now I'm stuck *again* on the questions in section #5 (the interpunctation ones). *sigh* Looks like I don't know nearly as much about English punctation as I thought I did. Time for some internet research. Well, at least I might learn something, which is always a good thing.

One other question (hope you don't mind my pestering you): Is the actual work on the Fic Intake Team as much work as the application form seems to suggest? What I mean is, when you get a fic that's as bad as, say, #8, do you actually have to catch and correct every single mistake or can you just tell the author to please come back when they've found a beta reader?

[sistermagpie.livejournal.com]

No problem! I know people are often just told to do their own fixes and resubmit something if there are too many mistakes. After all, you're not getting paid to copyedit!