Fan Fiction Update - Week of July 11, 2005

Hello again

Here?s the newest fortnightly update:

1) This is probably not news to most people, but VaderLVR64 is now the newest fanfic moderator. Leona and I are insanely jealous at the enormous size of her welcoming thread But kidding aside, we?re thrilled to have her join the moderating team and have every confidence she?ll do a great job.

2) Summer Fanfic Awards: The three excerpt threads are up, and for those who may still have questions about the timeline for voting and awards, here goes:

Timeline:

Excerpts ? these were posted as of July 11.
Voting ? July 15-July 29
Awards ? Aug 12-14

Excerpt Threads

Before the Saga

Saga

Beyond the Saga

Voting Rules

1. No voting with a sock.

2. You may vote only once.

3. Voting runs from July 15 through July 29.

4. Voting ends at 11:59 pm, July 29 (boardtime). LATE VOTES WILL NOT BE COUNTED. NO EXCEPTIONS.

5. PM the appropriate awards era sock (i.e. Before, Saga or Beyond) with your votes. IF THEY ARE SENT ELSEWHERE, THEY WILL NOT BE COUNTED! *

- Also, Vongchild is looking for volunteers to come up with entertainment. If you?re interested, please check out this thread

3) The Focus Group (the first one) has been rehashing the issue of socialization. The guidelines I?m posting are a compendium of what has been discussed in previous updates (namely April 11 and April 25), with some adjustments made in light of recent re-evaluation and discussion of the rules of socialization.

- After discussion on Focus Group II, it was decided that we would not create separate threads for socialization in Resource, and instead, just allow socialization within threads that exist but we ask that this be kept within reason.

- Therefore, the socialization guideline is as such: Posted conversations within a thread that stray away from the thread?s theme into chat that is either purely personal in nature or strays off the thread's theme completely are considered off-topic and should not be allowed to overwhelm the thread. It is the responsibility of the person who begins a thread or hosts it to redirect the topic of discussion when necessary. If for some reason this is not possible (the host is not online for an extend period of time) and no other user has stepped forward to refocus discussion, a mod may take whatever action necessary to insure that the Fan Fiction boards stay focused on Star Wars. If you're in doubt, your friendly fanfic mods will be happy to help you figure out which conversations on your thread are pertinent and of interest to all, and which ones are likely to be perceived by your readers as off-topic, exclusive, and of interest only to the few involved.

- Two corollary questions are then, (A) what constitutes on topic vs. off topic?: Any discussion of Star Wars either canon or EU (i.e. situations, characters, places, customs related to the GFFA), any discussion of writing, or any discussion of fanfic writing/stories is considered On-topic. Discussion of actors portraying Star Wars characters are considered on-topic only when the discussion pertains to the actor?s portrayal of his/her SW character. i.e. a discussion of the nuances of facial expressions that Natalie Portman brought to her role as Padme is on-topic, but a discussion of her stripper performance in Closer or discussion of a recent sighting in LA is not.

- (B) How much off-topic conversation is deemed der

 

Is too!

 

Thank you for the update! Nice to see that something has been decided about sozialization.

 

Wasn't a sticky when I posted either *grins* Almost commented on that myself...

 

For some reason, it takes a while for sticky threads to stick. It's probably a board glitch that we won't have to deal with when we make the move to vBulletin, whenever it's going to be. I wish IGN would get its act together and give us the darn database. *sigh*

Nice update, LadyPadme. BTW, how's the search for the fourth mod coming along?

- lazy

 

I wish we'd make the move to vBulletin already. I Mod at a site that has it as software, and it's fantastic for the Fan Fic section. I cannot wait to move.

 

Nice update!

Some questions:

It is the responsibility of the person who begins a thread or hosts it to redirect the topic of discussion when necessary. If for some reason this is not possible (the host is not online for an extend period of time) and no other user has stepped forward to refocus discussion, a mod may take whatever action necessary to insure that the Fan Fiction boards stay focused on Star Wars.

JediJainaSoloFel, Knight_Dilettante, myself, and others were discussing on the WHTG thread about what to do when the thread owner has been gone for a really long time, like more than a month or so. That is, the thread regulars are discussing as usual, and the conversation strays - would that be handled in the same way as the situation above? And would the mods ask for someone to be temporary thread manager, as a contact for future reminders? Or something to that effect.

I hope that makes sense.

 

Yes, that makes sense. I think for an immediate action, a moderator might try to contact the thread owner and give a period of time (i.e. 12-24 hours) for the owner to respond. If there was no response, the mod would then step in and redirect conversation and then ask if anyone would be willing to act as temporary thread host until the thread owner returned. If someone hosts a thread and knows s/he will be gone for a while, especially a more popular thread, it might be a good idea to find someone to host the thread for the time period when the host is away.

 

Got it, thanks.

 

Not much news, but quite colorful!

 

We're hoping to have something soon.

That's nice.


Now, this is a bit off-topic, but the following thread was posted in Comms:
[DRAFT] Rules of the Jedi Council Forums

Follow the link. Read the thread. If you have problems with it, do not stay silent.

- lazy

 

None of that sounds too extreme... good update.

 

It's quite useful to know that stuff, thanks for posting a link to it. It's so easy to miss things on forums this big - or violate rules without even knowing about it. Maybe there should be a board speaicicaly to make the rules clear to everyone and put links to the current faqs of the various boards.

If there's one thing I hate is having to dig for these things and I think that they should be made more visible than they already are. One of the problems is that people can violate things without knowing about them - and it's that, in my opinion that can cause arguements between users and mods, which need to be avoided, really.