Anonymous Coward · 2y
hello, I feel like I'm not understanding something. if this zine is free and digital, why are the contributor spots limited? the normal circumstances of having to account for production costs don't apply, and it's really not that difficult to set deadlines and say "if your piece is done by X time you're in and if not you're out." feels really...gate-keepy to reject people for a free/digital zine.
Thanks for your question! We understand the confusion, but we have a few reasons to limit the number of contributor spots. For one, we intend to provide individualized feedback to each contributor. We only have one writing mod and one art mod, so it would be unfeasible to do so with a greater number of contributors than we're currently planning to accept. Additionally, managing check-ins and extension requests can be a complicated process, and we'd feel uncomfortable having to personally keep track of the schedules of over 40 contributors.
Finally, we have one layout mod who will be formatting the entire zine, and we don't want to overwhelm them with too many submissions: we intend to format this with care, which takes a large amount of time, effort, and individualized attention to each piece so that the zine as a whole flows well.
We understand it can be frustrating to potentially face rejection from a digital project, since there's no production costs that can result in a 'hard limit' for the number of contributors, but we want to be able to provide a smooth experience for our contributors, and this is how we can best ensure that we're capable of staying on top of things.
