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Midwinter Update


DemonGoddess

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Firstly, I'd like to welcome all the new users we're seeing daily! Glad to have you here! Please do familiarize yourself with the Terms of Service and Content Guidelines. This IS a moderated archive.


Moderation Status (2013)

Please follow the link. This topic is updated monthly.

Dribs, Drabs and Doggy Tales

This is now in its 3rd year! There has been a bit of a change to it. Rather than a weekly one word prompt, it's now every two weeks, and three words. Use any or all of them for your submission!

Rules Recap (for some of the rules)

Tagging Issues

We go through the archive weekly to check new additions and edits for Terms of Service/Content Guidelines violations. A recent change that has been added is that if your story is improperly tagged, it will be IMMEDIATELY hidden until the proper tags are added to the story. The countdown clock is slightly different, as the user is not given the 7 days to fix before hiding, so instead a story that is not corrected from this is given 40 days for correction while being hidden before the story is deleted for non correction.

Tagging is important as it lets the reader know what they're in for, if the content is not something the reader is comfortable with, or that he or she is looking for specifically. It's also a good tool to protect authors from getting less than pleasant (flame) reviews for NOT giving the appropriate content warnings.

Repeat Violations

As the archive is moderated, we do keep track of violations. Repeated violations of the same nature can get you deleted.


Profile Vomit

By profile vomit, I'm talking about those "repost" chain letter type things that people are putting in the profiles. They're unsightly, and have not a thing to do with the fanworlds, or the fiction. So, we don't allow it.

Story Rewrites -

This applies to stories ON SITE ONLY, that an author revisits and wants to rewrite. In this for instance, the story duplication is allowed, provided we know about it, and have a timeline for merging. The duplicates are merged, so that there is still only one copy, but this also allows the member to keep his or her hits/rates/reviews from the original version.

Additions to the wrong archive/subdomain

When those are found, they are deleted. Please do be careful as to your story placement.

Duplicate Accounts

Should these be the result of returning users, who do not remember what email they signed up with, the user needs to contact tech support to have the data looked up so that we can merge 'em. The best option, of course, is to contact tech support BEFORE creating an additional account. Extra accounts are ONLY allowed in very specific circumstances, and permission must be obtained before creating them.


Joint/Shared Accounts

BEFORE CREATING one of these, you MUST contact staff and get permission to do so. Joint accounts created without permission can and are subject to deletion without notice. Should you get an email regarding an older joint account, please DO respond and comply with the instructions contained. Any information we ask for is kept completely confidential.

Co-authored stories

When asked to provide your co-author's information, please do so. As with other things such as bad disclaimers, uncited sources and the like, if that information is not received within a timely fashion (7 days from the day the mail is sent), the story in question is hidden. If the information is not provided at all, the story is then subject to the "30 days after it's hidden, it's deleted" policy.

Permissions needed

There are many instances where permission from someone else is needed to post your work. For example, you are using a unique world and/or unique characters created by another user. Before basing your own work on theirs, you do need to obtain permission from the user. We do ask for a copy of the permissions, which is kept on file and confidential. If you do not HAVE permission from the user or users, you could easily be accused of plagiarism. We've certainly seen that before. Most users, when approached, are quite agreeable to providing permissions needed when they are ASKED. Having said that, if they are unwilling, do not post the work.

Disposable email used in registration

Accounts found registered using disposable emails are deleted as soon as we find them. No exceptions.

Underage users

This is an 18+ (eighteen years old or older) archive. When underage accounts are found, there is NO notification of deletion. The accounts are deleted and the user is banned until his or her 18th birthday. It sometimes can (and has) taken us a bit of time to find
the necessary proof, but the accounts will still be processed regardless.

This brings me to what we refer to as “Old Minors”. These are users who registered through December 2008, and we find now that they were NOT 18 at time of registration and/or data posting. The cutoff date is set where it is to allow for the current staff placement, which did not start until end of August 2008. There was a period of time (2005 through September 2007) where the archive was only moderated at the whim of then staff, if at all. This is WHY there is such an issue with “OLD Minors”. Following that, the site was (and still is) understaffed enough that there was more than a single person could handle within a timely manner. There truly WAS only one or two people handling all of that until 2010.

When an old minor is found, all pre-18 content is deleted. No exceptions. It doesn't matter what age the user is now in determining this, what matters is the age at the time of POSTING. This does include reviews left, which is why the user deletion tool used is set up to allow for leaving reviews behind as well. However, that's only after looking at the review by date in the database itself, and deleting any pre-18 content from it (this is for user deletions). Where there is post 18th birthday content, the user profile is modified, not deleted; and all pre-18 content is deleted. This brings me to the next item regarding old minors, meaning data storage. AFF is NOT a data storage site, it's a story archive. If the user did not back up his or her data, and it had to be deleted because that user was underage, don't ask for retrieval as we don't have it. Once it's deleted, it's gone.

Clean Up

I am in the process (slowly) of moving stories from subdomains where they don't belong, as well as repairing the data in buffy (still).
I've also started to move stories from the general listing within subdomains, to the subcategories they belong in, such as het, m/m,
AU, etc. As there is me, myself and I doing this, I appreciate the continued patience you've shown.

Software rewrite

The coder has hit a snag with part of it, where the changes she wants to make, should she do it now, will break the archive. While she works out this issue, we thank you for your continued patience.

Donations

Current status is here. We always appreciate any help that can be given, though it's certainly not a requirement. Thank you for your support!

Lastly, please remember to feed your authors! They get nothing from writing for you, but the reviews you leave!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I had a question reguarding Tagging. If we wanted to go back in and add tags to stories like that it has sexual content, angst, etc, how do we do that without having to erase all of our summary? The character limit won't let me go in and add tags on several of my stories and as far as I can see, unless I'm missing a particular place to do so(which is very likely), there generally isn't character room in the 'Summary' which in the edit details section is the only place I can see to add additional tags. I'm sorry to be difficult, that's something I've been curious about for a while, especially so when I've wanted to go in and adjust my summary or content tags only to find out there is no character space left to make any adjustments without having to delete parts of the summary or other tags in order to make adjustment. An example would be wanting to go in and make a note that the story was now complete. A lot of times to do so, I have to delete in order to have the space to add in the tag of the story being complete. I do apologize if this has been asked before, but I don't have the will to sort through a million forum threads to look for it and I thought it better to ask since you seem to be cracking down more on tags. Thanks in advance.

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You can tag it in the story itself. What most do is put something like (Additional Tags; blah, blah, blah) in an authors note in the first chapter. That way you can easily add to it if they are needed. Or you can do it in an authors note in the chapter itself where something appears.

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Generally speaking, an author knows which tags apply to his or her story, and we expect them to tag appropriately. However, we also understand that writing is a fluid process, and that you may end up going in a direction in your story you didn't expect, and then need to add additional tags/warnings. Sentences/paragraphs such as this, added to give additional warnings and whatever, are not counted as author notes.

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