As the person who actually put out the carnival, I should admit that there were also some behind the scenes personal reasons that the carnival started how it did. I agree that "the relationship between ace and aro history" is not the topic that I might have chosen were I to start a carnival from scratch, for many of the reasons already discussed above.
But on the other hand, I've been bouncing around the idea that I want to have an aro blogging group carnival for years at this point, and even getting to the point of sending out feelers of interest a few times, but then never taking it everywhere. Because of that, frankly, I didn't trust myself to wait and start again with a new theme in few months - based on my own track records with project ideas, I knew that would likely never happen and it would end up getting abandoned, again. And after several years of seeing the proposal passed around with no one having the time or energy to take the reigns, I didn't want to have to wait another 5 or 10 years for something else to maybe make it happen.
So when TAAAP came to us with the idea, and when the folks behind the carnival of aces came to us with the offer to help connect with other users, set up the initial structure, etc. I wanted to get things rolling while I still had that outside support to push me into actually getting it done. I fully admit that choosing to roll with whatever theme was already there because of my own personal failings is not the ideal way to get this started, so that's on me. But my judgement call (though you are free to disagree, and I understand that people will) is that I wanted to at least get things off the ground so that I could actually start getting feedback like this, and making improvements in the future, instead of having no future at all.
As far as why there were no hosts at launch, that's because of a mix of factors - partially because the monthly schedule of the carnival meant that we had a short timeline once we decided to go with it; but it's also because I actually explicitly asked some of the aro aces who had originally volunteered even before launch (including myself) to hold off on signing up for a slot in order to give some lesser known hosts a chance for visibility first, both because one of the goals of the carnival is to promote lesser known blogs, and because I knew of concerns about ace content dominating aro communities and I didn't want to overwhelm the early carnival with a bunch of established aro aces who already had strong ace community followings.
However, I also realize that I never articulated that outside of private communications, when maybe I should have, so it's clear that came across in a way that was unintended.
(As for no themes, that was because traditional blog carnivals are based on allowing each host to pick their own preferred themes, but it sounds like a list of theme ideas to pick inspiration from is something people would be interested in, so I'll add that to the site as I try to build out more support information for hosts. so thank you for the suggestion)
(Also, I know there are other concerns in this and other posts, that I definitely need to respond to, but it may take me some time to properly read through everything and give appropriate answers, so if I haven't addressed a specific point please know that I will try to respond to everything as I can. If anyone else would like to make more direct feedback / suggestions / criticism I can also be contacted directly through my email on the carnival page - I know that this is a rough start but I do want to make this work for all the different parts of the aro community, and I know that it will probably take several iterations of continued feedback and improvements to get there)
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Re: Topic origin, community history, and aroaces with good experiences
Date: 4 Mar 2019 12:04 (UTC)But on the other hand, I've been bouncing around the idea that I want to have an aro blogging group carnival for years at this point, and even getting to the point of sending out feelers of interest a few times, but then never taking it everywhere. Because of that, frankly, I didn't trust myself to wait and start again with a new theme in few months - based on my own track records with project ideas, I knew that would likely never happen and it would end up getting abandoned, again. And after several years of seeing the proposal passed around with no one having the time or energy to take the reigns, I didn't want to have to wait another 5 or 10 years for something else to maybe make it happen.
So when TAAAP came to us with the idea, and when the folks behind the carnival of aces came to us with the offer to help connect with other users, set up the initial structure, etc. I wanted to get things rolling while I still had that outside support to push me into actually getting it done. I fully admit that choosing to roll with whatever theme was already there because of my own personal failings is not the ideal way to get this started, so that's on me. But my judgement call (though you are free to disagree, and I understand that people will) is that I wanted to at least get things off the ground so that I could actually start getting feedback like this, and making improvements in the future, instead of having no future at all.
As far as why there were no hosts at launch, that's because of a mix of factors - partially because the monthly schedule of the carnival meant that we had a short timeline once we decided to go with it; but it's also because I actually explicitly asked some of the aro aces who had originally volunteered even before launch (including myself) to hold off on signing up for a slot in order to give some lesser known hosts a chance for visibility first, both because one of the goals of the carnival is to promote lesser known blogs, and because I knew of concerns about ace content dominating aro communities and I didn't want to overwhelm the early carnival with a bunch of established aro aces who already had strong ace community followings.
However, I also realize that I never articulated that outside of private communications, when maybe I should have, so it's clear that came across in a way that was unintended.
(As for no themes, that was because traditional blog carnivals are based on allowing each host to pick their own preferred themes, but it sounds like a list of theme ideas to pick inspiration from is something people would be interested in, so I'll add that to the site as I try to build out more support information for hosts. so thank you for the suggestion)
(Also, I know there are other concerns in this and other posts, that I definitely need to respond to, but it may take me some time to properly read through everything and give appropriate answers, so if I haven't addressed a specific point please know that I will try to respond to everything as I can. If anyone else would like to make more direct feedback / suggestions / criticism I can also be contacted directly through my email on the carnival page - I know that this is a rough start but I do want to make this work for all the different parts of the aro community, and I know that it will probably take several iterations of continued feedback and improvements to get there)