Re the time-consuming task of listing unarchived stories ... could you maintain a 'running' list? eg Every time a new story appears in the TOCs (and you do a lot of them) note the story and author in a file. Every time a story is archived, remove it from the list.
Such a running list is already being compiled by one of the Index Crew. In recent years, it's become the habit for me to ask her in January for a copy of her list of stories which were posted on the mb during that year but never made it to the Archive.
The list I get just has titles, so I have to spend some time tracking down the authors here on the mbs and getting a hold of their emails/PM. It also takes a bit of time going through the list and working out how many of the stories are by the same author - so that I don't end up sending 20 emails to the same author. It's one of those tasks which is easy to do, but just a little - gosh, I'm blanking on anything but the Scots here...futery.
Very time consuming.
In the first few years of doing this it was a terrific source of submissions, usually producing enough of a batch of stories that would keep us going right into the middle of the year. But in the past year or so, it's hardly produced anything at all.
LabRat
