It’s been about a week since the big blowup with the story necromancy concept and I think that the waters have died down after that particular chumming to the point where we can have some interesting discussions. So I’ll start with my thoughts:
While I have my disagreements on how this site runs on some major points, it’s rare that the management team tends to outright ignore criticisms and points of contention in the userbase. Compromise in good faith is the default metric for the hot button topics we’ve had over the past few years–AI usage being the first big one I noticed, and the story necromancy challenge being the latest. In both of these cases an attempt at compromise was made to make both sides of the board, if not happy, then at least able to define their own experience and express their own voice. AI stories are still allowed onsite, but are mandated to be tagged as such, and automatically blocking/hiding those tags is an option for those who would rather not see them. Similarly, the main contention with the latest challenge concept rooted itself in ideas of consent, ownership, and author’s rights–now authors can choose to opt-in to whether or not they’re open to their stories being expanded upon, translated, or continued–or they can opt out, if they’d rather not.
Personally speaking, I thought that the idea of reviving old stories had both interest and merit, but didn’t like the way it was being handled when first introduced, nor did I like how it was defended when first criticized. I still hold that opinion. “Grace under fire” is always hard to maintain, and there were–well. Let’s call it “instances of communication-breakdown” in how each side treated the other, since I’m less interested in litigating who said what and how, and more interested in seeing if the situation has evolved at all.
Would we as a community of authors and audiences be interested in celebrating the usage of the new infrastructure to give “story necromancy” a second chance in the future? It’s unfortunate that the first attempt didn’t go as administration–or some authors–wished, but I think that may have been inevitable without the infrastructure to ensure consent from participating authors (specifically, authors whose works were inspiring continuations) was guaranteed. Now that we have that, my own personal problems with the challenge are addressed. Take inspiration where you will so long as the rights are granted, yeah? I think maybe a bit of rebranding and unified messaging might be also something that could help alleviate concerns–the imagery of necromancy I think, in hindsight, brought up a certain iconography that rubbed people the wrong way. Necromancers and graverobbing go hand in hand, historically, and those that raise that kind of dead don’t tend to ask for permission from the deceased. Something more like the title of this thread could be a potential path: highlight that the stories inspiring the challenge are old and historied, and are open to fresh ideas and new voices to tell a version of them the author didn’t imagine but could be eager to see!
What do y’all think? @AsisAsio and the team clearly had a lot of passion for this idea, and I don’t personally think it’s at all a bad one inherently. I’d love to see what a lot of us could do with the right circumstances, and we now have the original attempt to help see where to avoid difficult patches. But maybe I’m just easily mollified, or blinded by my own biases being addressed and thus can’t see issues others might still have. I’d love to talk through those issues in a thread where we all feel a lot less pressure to make our voices be the loudest. Now that the need for immediate action is no longer a factor, my hope’s that if there’s any issues or roadblocks with the original idea, we can discuss them here so that if there ever is an attempt to bring it back onto the table, it’s done with consideration and knowledge of what the userbase who voiced their ideas had in mind. 
Thanks for reading!
-Hound