Okay, so… going to level with everyone. Currently there are 35 unanswered draft threads on the forums. Most of them were posted today; there were 30 new threads created on the 21st. I'm trying to plow through a few myself because that's what I usually do and that's what usually has to happen for the forums to continue plugging along—me and a few others taking the lion's share of the work.
I have no intention of trying to beg people in chat every day for help (honestly, usually only a couple people respond anyway since everyone else is either not there, working on their own stuff, or has IRL things like studying and sleep to attend to) during the holidays.
How does everyone feel about having the draft forum closed to new posts for a week during the holidays? People can still post on current threads, but creation of new threads will be closed so the crit team can get in some much-needed, much-deserved R&R. We'd post a stickied thread notice explaining this and pointing to other avenues of receiving feedback.
I'm hoping that this buffer time will also give staff a moment to address the many other problems with the writing help forums leading up to this. I don't want to point fingers, but something needs to change before next year. In a month my work hours will be lengthened and I will have a lot less time to handle site stuff. It's not fair or sustainable if it's just me and a handful of exceptional, but also overworked Junior Staff handling everything that the rest of the team (and the site, honestly) should be chipping in for.
(account deleted)