MOD Pimping/Promoting Policy Discussion - Everyone please participate!

Thanks for the comprehensive replies mavjade and Briannakin and thanks for putting the policy draft out there so soon!

I'm quite happy with the draft as it is. I may come up with more comments later (my lawyer brain goes in overdrive when I see a text of rules that needs editing ), but I have a few quick points.

About monopolizing threads

(As Trak said) I would suggest instead "if discussion of a specific story is monopolizing the thread, please consider taking it to PM" or something along those lines, just to acknowledge that some people genuinely need help and shouldn't feel that they're bothering others by asking for it. The case of a writer shamelessly promoting their work falls under the rest of the rules anyway.

About linking

This is no biggie to me, so I'm not going to make an issue out of it, but I'll say just this once that I find it unnecessary. It adds an extra layer of bureaucracy where none is needed and it will result in multiplying (and ultimately weakening) mod edits. I think that public mod edits have more weight when they're as seldom as possible, whereas multiple edits may end up being dismissed as a mod going on a power trip, but maybe that's just me.

Re-tagging
Re-tagging some threads is a great solution to the issue of specific threads outside the "resource", "characters" and "index" categories where people may want to mention fics. Random examples from the "discussion" list: "fanfics you wish were completed or had a sequel", "favourite type of fanfic to read", and... well, from the first page, that seems to be pretty much it, so I guess we're sorted out.

Need for an example
Mav's example with the Falcon on Wayland was a good example of unnecessary mentioning of a fic, and I think it should be included somewhere in there because these examples are really helpful and I don't see that we have many problems with those items where the rules provide an example (sexual depictions, torture and violence for instance.)

Advertising threads
I like both Jedi_Lover 's idea of an "advertise your fic" thread and mav's idea of reviving the Prolific Writers' thread, but I think they're different things. Because of the one-post-per-person rule, to be truly useful the Prolific Writers's thread would need an index, and by its very nature it's a slow-moving thread, whereas "advertise your fic" would be a fast-moving thread because people would be adding new things all the time. I vote in favour of doing both (and I may even volunteer to manage the index!)

Other people's fics
What has not been clarified in the policy draft is how these rules apply to mentioning other people's fics. I don't see any reason they should be different, but this should be specified.

Phrasing of the policy
Lastly, (but this is something that can be taken up again later when everyone has chipped in about the details of the policy) I would recommend writing the policy the other way around, i.e. stating what people can do and cannot do first, and then giving the definitions and examples. The main problem with the Fanfic FAQ in my view is that it starts straight away with a long list of definitions and the rules are thrown in there but they get lost in the avalanche of info. In many of the longer posts in these boards you'll find a "too long, didn't read" section towards the end, but I believe it would be more efficient if it were done the other way around, i.e. simple "dos and don'ts" in the beginning, and details afterwards.

That's it from me for now (I lost count of the drachmas, but I assure you we're not any richer for all this ) but I may or may not be back, depending on how the discussion goes

 

Need for an example : That is part of the plan! We feel that examples really help, which is why they are so abundant in the FAQ.

And on that note, as far as the FAQ goes, that's the exact plan. It's going to be the short version with the most pertinent info up top and then the examples and more little detail things (fun and games section, etc.) down below.

Re- Changing the wording of monopolizing threads- I think that's a good idea. It's one of those things that it would be removed if it was someone who continued to do so after we asked them to take it to PM, not immediately.

We added this for the exact reason of the Han and the Falcon example, which history says is the most common way people will try and slide things in(either on purpose or by accident). It also gives us our wanted rule to point to.

 

We can certainly change the wording of the monopolizing point. When I wrote it, I was thinking about someone who might continue to derail a discussion in a character index by talking about their fic, or post a excerpt there in hopes to generate readers in their upcoming fic (which has happened to me, and I saw it as, although innocent, very annoying). I can see someone maybe needing a couple posts in the Writers Desk, but that thread was never supposed to be in lieu of a beta. So, revamping the beta thread and the creche thread are on Mav's and my to-do list (and if you want to volunteer for this, it would be a great help). So, if someone clearly needs a lot of help in the Writers Desk, we, or any one else really, can say, "hey, I see you need a lot of help. Perhaps a beta or a master may be better than continually posting here." If they ignore the advice, then mav or I may give a stronger warning, then edit any further posts.

As for the example, yes, that should be in there too. I'm playing with the idea (which I still gotta discuss with mav) about shortening the FAQ by having links to example posts (particularly the longer 'how far you can go with romance and violence'), instead of having them bog down the FAQ. And having links to the stuff like the disallowed word list, instead of re-listing them.

 

Throughout this thread, I have seen one thing that has been brought up multiple times, and that is the hypothetical situation in which we will get someone who will exploit the rules. This is continually brought up, and has been used as a constant example of why you seemed (at first) very resistant to at the very least modifying the existing rule to add at least a modicum of leeway.

This hasn't been brought up quite as much in these last few posts, but I still see it hovering over this thread like a dark and ominous cloud.

I'm going to put it out there and then address it: You are worried that someone will take advantage of the new rule and screw everything up.

As a moderator, I can assure you that you are getting worked up over nothing. This situation has not happened yet. You are getting anxious over something that—while it may have happened in the past—has not happened yet. It may never happen. This type of anxiety generally leads to a mod becoming overly vigilant and cracking down on behavior that only very loosely correlates to that hypothetical situation. I've seen this happen before.

As a fellow moderator, I ask you to do something: Take a step back, take a breath, and relax. Don't let this hypothetical situation rule every decision that you make, regardless if that decision even makes sense to the rest of us. You are basing this new policy entirely around that one situation.

I agree that we need to have a contingency. However, that is again where administrative autonomy comes into play. If this situation occurs, then deal with it. Deal with it when it arrives. Until then, relax. You'll just get yourself all worked up over nothing, and it will impair your administrative decisions. As a mod, you are staff. Look at it with a clinical detachment, and try not to become too emotionally involved.

Anywho, looking forward to more of Chyntuck 's thoughts. I just wanted to address that one thing that's been bothering me about this whole thread.

 

We were never resistant to do it, we both said multiple times we thought the rule needed to be changed, but that we had some concerns and we wanted to address those concerns. Part of our jobs as mods is to think of the things that are likely to happen that would create problems and figure out what is going to work best for the boards. If we didn't do that, we are not doing our job.

In addition we have the historical archives of the previous mods, as well as the living memory of current and former mods that tells us that they made the rule for a specific reason. We've decided to change that rule and you will be allowed to link to fics in the vast majority of resource threads.

Though we have decided to change the rule, it was put in place to combat a very specific issue that existed. Though we agree that the rule is being changed, it will be done subject to judgement calls, and therefor we thought it in everyone's best interest to provide clarity by giving some examples of what people might expect.


It might be a bit rock in the beginning for everyone but we are confident that this is the correct direction.

 

These are not hypothetical situations. I’ve seen them and while I (personally) can’t pull the “I’ve been here longer so I have seen more”, I have seen the mod archives and these rules were put in at a time when they were necessary. As I have said before, somewhere down the line, these rules have been applied, by us, out of hand. Probably because no clear distinction was ever made about where you can and can’t mention fics – this is really why we are here. We are partly to blame and I am sorry.

Mav and I have tried to make it clear that we think the existing policy was stupid and we too wanted it to change. However, we also felt that we wanted to explain why our predecessors put the rule into place and why we continued to follow it.

We know people are going to pimp their fics. But when we do, we want to be able to give a clear “no, you can’t do that – here is why.” So that people can learn.

 

I was typing up a very lengthy response as to why I made that post and as to why I think that you two need to relax. But, you know what? Screw it. I said what I wanted to say. You read what you read and took from it what you did. I'm done.

I'm glad we're finally addressing a problem. I'm glad we're making headway, here.

 

I don't want to monopolize this thread so this is just a quickie.

Just to avoid confusion: I was talking about having different rules for mentioning and linking, which I personally think is not a very good idea. I would be more comfortable about a single rule for "referencing fics" (which includes both mentioning and linking).

I've been writing and updating the counsellor manuals for my NGOs for... well, I won't say how many years because it makes me feel old, but in any case the formats are something that could be helpful for this. Unfortunately I can't link to that here because it's on a password-protected intranet (and it's Greek to you anyway ) but I can PM you some concepts if you want. As a side note, kudos of even thinking of updating the whole FAQ -- that's a mammoth project.

One more thing about TrakNar 's comment. As I said before I've been lurking around here for ages and I remember very well the time when all forms of self-promotion were a pain in the backside, and when you want to crack down on a situation that's completely out of control (which I think is a fair description of what used to happen), you need of course a draconian rule and you want to enforce it as strictly as possible, and a side-effect of that is that a mod is expected to consider any mention of a fic as pimping. But now what we have is an entirely different situation, with a relatively small group of writers on whom you can count to have interesting, productive discussions about writing fanfic and to establish, shall we say, an ethos for these boards to which newly registered writers will be expected to conform. That changes completely the dynamics of how rules will be followed by users and enforced by mods, and I think that it's something that should be taken in consideration in shaping the content but also the wording of the new policy.

And now I'm stopping for real. I contributed at least 5 cents to this thread (adjusted for inflation) and I'm known to be stingy.

 

I don't have much to add, but as a general feedback thing: what I understand of the information so far on the new rules (mentioning or linking as appropriate in resource threads etc. but not in others, moving the most relevant rules to the top and examples to the bottom of the page, etc.) sounds good.

 

I tend to support the 'no story pimping' rule, especially for thread-bumping and posting links just because both of those can really get out of hand.

But other then being desperate for readers, writers here have a very good reason to want to pimp theirs; it's really hard to find older story threads on the back pages here, and in a really busy forum newer ones, too. Is there any way to automate some kind of index for story threads here? Even just subject titles, author names and start dates would be a help. Speaking from experience, manually posting thread links in a thread here is a huge amount of work and never gets maintained.

Remember that tool index that Lazy did a few years ago on the old board? That was great, especially for finding older things, or just stories to nominate for awards. Is it possible for something like that to be set up on these boards? That would at least reduce the demand for making story links more visible.

We an author links thread here, where an author could have one post for links to their stories and update them. I haven't seen it here lately (and a lot of older links now go to truncated stories now, so that's not very helpful), but was there a problems with updates on these boards? That was a reasonable way to allow authors to post their links in one place, one time, in a place where people did not have to claw through all the back pages to get to the story they wanted.

One thread where posting story links doesn't seem to get out of hand is the "Looking for stories . . ." thread, but that's probably because the posts are originated from people looking for stories, not authors trying to make their stories stand out.

 

Just FYI in case you didn't see it, the rule as has been updated and is stickied at the top of resource.

As far as an automated system, nothing that I'm aware of, if there was something it would have to be someone with way more program skills than I. I have no idea how Lazy did that, and he hasn't been around in quite a while.


We have a few ideas in the works for some new threads that will allow for more things to be linked, like the prolifc authors index is what I think you are thinking of. Traffic isn't nearly like it used to be, there are still things on the first page right now from Tuesday and that's with all the Era's together. Used to be with the eras separated, things would fall off the first page in hours. Combined with that and the ability to search now, finding things shouldn't be as hard as it used to be. (Not saying we can't make things easier, just pointing out that we have a lot more abilities that are built into the way things are now that make things easier.)

 

I wish there was a way to search for stories by author. When you put in a person's screen name you get any posts that they made. It would be nice if the system can be tweaked so you can search for threads started by a particular person. Unfortunately, I really doubt this system is easily tweakable or else we would not have the truncation problem around still.

 

There is... Kind of. If you go to a user's profile page, click the Information tab you can select to see all threads created by the person. So unless the person is really active in creating other threads in other parts of the boards, it tends to be a list of all their fics. Sometimes it doesn't work if search is being stupid. And for some reason, I don't know if this is a widespread issue, but one of my MMM fics never shows up.

 

There's actually an even easier(ish) way that you can do this.

Click in the search field
Before typing anything click "More" (beside the search button)
Click the tab "Search Threads and Posts"
Type their screen name in under "Posted by member"
Click the box "Search threads started by this member only"
Under Search in Forums, click: FanFiction- Before, Saga, Beyond
(You could also click thread prefix if you know what era you want to search by)
Then click search


It's not as complicated as it looks, but it works really well!

 

Thanks guys! I did not know that! Wow! I wrote around 50 stories.