First of all, thanks sooooo much for all your hard work, I can't imagine the effort it must take to stay on top of everything to do with the exchange, and it's very much appreciated! Overall I was really happy with things like timing and writing period, plus the fic I received was amaaaaaaaaazing and matching worked out great for me. I also had no confusion with the due date.

The only thing I didn't like was the anon period. I didn't really get the point of it, and in reading comments on works in the collection I sometimes got the impression that the presence of the anon period had stunted the number of responses (though it may be something else), and I heard from at least one other person that they would have preferred to be able to comment immediately to an author/artist whose identity they knew.

One other negative point, though I don't really see how this can be avoided, is that having the reveal date a week later than the due date means that works posted on or before the due date are pushed down in the automatic AO3 'date posted' searches. Not so much an issue with rare pairs/fandoms, but for people writing in fandoms like OUAT or Marvel etc. where there's a lot of fic produced daily or weekly, the exchange fics get less attention than regular works, because by the time they're revealed they're already a week old and in some cases at least a page back in the search. Checking out comment/hit count, it seemed to me that attention to the exchange works suffered because of this. There's the opportunity to crosspost after of course, but it stills delays things, and I can't really think how it's avoidable, unless everyone were to automatically adjust their AO3 publication date to 'Oct 24' or something after submission. I just found it a shame, especially when the anon period then disallows promotion of our own fics until a week after the week-long buffer period, by which time 2 weeks have passed and some stories have been buried in the influx of additions to the individual tag.

Idk, maybe I'm overreacting with this or maybe no one else sees it as a problem; I don't mean it as a criticism of you guys, who are incredible, or of AO3 which I generally find an A++ platform. Just wanted to raise it in case anyone else had noticed/felt the same about the anon period maybe worsening the problem of works promotion? (Sorry this is kind of rambly, I hope my point is in there somewhere)!

Just change the date of your fic to the current day after reveals :) I think most people in a popular fandom do that.

I'm glad you (mostly) liked the fest and had a good time. I hope to see you again next year, nonnie.

The point of the anon period is that it's levelling, so that people who don't have many friends have as many chances of getting comments as people with hundreds of friends and subscribers, plus there's a small push to read and comment before creator reveals, though I don't know how much of that carries over from yuletide culture. I've also heard that people like commenting without knowing the author, so they go into a work without expectations. One can always promote your stuff after the anon period ends.

(I am personally not as into anon periods as I might be, but quite a few people have said they make fests more enjoyable, and they're really mostly a delay, rather than a change.)

Someone asked me about this on tumblr too, and you can change the publication date yourself on the reveals day so that the work doesn't get buried ten pages back in the tags. I'll put a note about that next year.