The Sunnydale Herald

Our Monday editor rhymeswithlungs is taking a Heralding hiatus of at least the next few months. We thank her for over three years of help so far, and hope that Real Life's rude demands on her time will cease soon and she'll be able to return comfortably.

In the meantime, we are looking for someone to step in as Monday editor or potentially take another day of the week. (If we end up with an extra editor after rhymeswithlungs returns, we'll figure out the schedule - we've never had too many volunteers for as long as I've been here to witness.)

Being a Herald editor means making one newsletter post a week, which may take roughly 2-4 hours depending on one's level of perfectionism. Most of the potential links come to us pre-gathered in one tidy Dreamwidth reading page. You'll also have help with turning the day's selection of links into a formatted list: you can either paste everything into our HTML template that already contains all the formatting tags, or use some alternative tools (including the fabled Pinboard!) that will do part of the pasting and sorting for you. We're happy to explain and show how everything works from the ground up. :)

To find out more, feel free to contact me (thenewbuzwuzz) on any site where you've lately seen me around or via email at thenewbuzwuzz@protonmail.com, comment on this post, or send sunnydaleherald an ask on tumblr. We'll be thrilled to hear from you, and you won't have to commit to anything until you're sure!

We love to see the variety of Buffyverse events in the past few months, and it has given us a clearer idea of the limitations in how the Herald editors find out about works posted to Archive of Our Own. So here's a summary, because I don't think we have explicitly stated how this works, and it may be useful to know.

(1) We *generally* know about new AO3 works in these fandom tags:

• "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)"
• "Angel: the Series"
• "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)"
• "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics 1998)"
• "Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics 2019)"
• We weren't subscribed to the "Slayers: A Buffyverse Story" fandom tag until just now, but now we are.

Our track record with noticing chapter updates, however, is less consistent: we don't get automatic notifications about new chapters in an existing work, although some of us go check manually if we have time. Sometimes we link only newly completed works in the Herald and skip middle chapters of WIPs.

(2) We don't get automatically notified about AO3 works that have the lock icon (can only be accessed by logged-in AO3 users).

(3) And last but not least: if an AO3 work is in a collection and gets revealed some time after it was posted, there's a good chance we won't get a notification from AO3 about it. So it's very helpful to us when event mods (or participants) link the revealed works somewhere we'll see, for example, in the "btvs", "buffy the vampire slayer" or "angel the series" tag on tumblr or in a LiveJournal/Dreamwidth community or journal that su_herald_reading is subscribed to.

As always, things can sometimes slip through the cracks even if we theoretically should have seen them, so if you've posted something but it didn't get included in the next Herald, feel free to submit a link to us! :) (You don't need a tumblr account in order to use the submission box, and even though it asks for an email, you don't have to enter a real email address.)

Thank you to veronyxk84, who has volunteered to take up Herald editor duties! We can enjoy her hand-crafted artisanal Buffyverse links on Wednesdays from now on.

This means we now have an editor for every day of the week! 🎉 We're no longer in urgent need of new editors, until one of the current editors decides to step down.

(However, if someone is keen on joining, we could always use a backup or every-other-week editor for now, and we are still looking for tumblr-only volunteers to reblog things to sunnydale-digest.)

A friendly reminder that the Herald could use a new editor, because one of us would prefer to step down. As the current person keeping an eye on the schedule and logistics side of the Herald, I do try to not ask for more than the editors can comfortably do, so she's free to retire even if we don't have a new volunteer yet. At that point, we'd be down to six editors for seven days of the week - something we can handle as long as it's temporary. So we're not in the direst of straits, but we could certainly use some help.

If you'd like to find out more about what it means to become a Herald editor, feel free to read our previous mod post or contact me - for example, by commenting on this post. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have, and we wouldn't expect you to commit to any responsibilities until you're sure. :)

Thank you to burnhername for her kind offer to take up Herald editor duties! We can all enjoy burnhername's hand-crafted artisanal Buffyverse links on Wednesdays from now on.

This means we now have an editor for every day of the week, yay! We're no longer in urgent need of new volunteers, until one of the current editors decides to retire. (However, if someone was keen on joining, I'm sure we would find space for a backup or every-other-week editor or otherwise.)