MOD POST: Clean Up Your Act.
Seriously, kids. Clean up your act.
I've been away from the internet for a bit being a grown-up person, but I have eyes and ears on LJ all the time. And... Well, admittedly, ATB has become a bit of a shambles and it's probably my fault for not enforcing the rules strictly enough. So in light of that I'm making a mod post to gently remind you guys of a couple of things. But first I want to just quickly note that I added Amanda ( apodiopsys) as a mod to hopefully help me get the tags in order, which brings me to point the first:
The Tags. Guys. Guys, guys, guys. What is going on with the tags? I have a lot of pet peeves about how things are being tagged right now so I will just make a point form list of things that are incorrect in the tags and direct you to the tagging post if you still aren't sure how to tag things properly.
- Tagging individual characters or the band. You don't need to do it! If people are on ATB I'm going to make an assumption here and say that they probably know who the band is. Plus if you're tagging the pairings correctly like you're supposed to then you don't need to tag characters separately at all. see how that works?
- Tagging pairing names. No. Just no. Because not everyone knows pairing names so it makes it really confusing for people who are new to the fandom or old farts like me who don't keep up with this sort of thing.
- Tagging your username. I'm not going to make you guys do it, but it makes it so much easier to find past chapters of fics if you forget to tag the story or if, like me, you write a lot of related 'verses and don't keep the same title throughout.
Next order of business: The Ratings. I don't know how people seem to miss this considering there's a nifty ratings guide link for you guys to look at. It even has the official MPAA movie ratings, which is the benchmark for fics on ATB, so go read that if you haven't. And please, stop making up your own ratings. There is no such thing as PG-17. It's either PG-13, it's R, or it's NC-17. No one will know what kinds of stuff to expect in your fic if you make up your own ratings. Like. Are people getting their heads blown off (literally or metaphorically) or did you just drop an f-bomb somewhere? So yeah. Please. Please, please, please start using the ratings system already in place instead of making up your own ridiculous ratings.
Finally. Finally. Number of Posts Per Day. I've noticed a lot of people seem to be updating their stories daily, which is fine, but to be considerate of people's friends pages, I think it's time to put a cap on the number of posts people can make per day just to keep friends pages nice and tidy. For now, I'm going to keep it at two chaptered fic updates per day - please note that this does not mean you can post two chapters of the same story in the same day or that you can post two chapters of all your chaptered fics in the same day. It means you can post one chapter of story A that you're writing and one chapter of story B that you're writing. I know how high the temptation is to post a new chapter as soon as you've written it because everyone likes comments (who doesn't like comments? I love comments.) but frankly, it takes me ages to go through my friends page so I think that myself and a lot of other people would appreciate a bit of a slow-down on the constant updates of chaptered fics.
In terms of oneshots, the same logic is going to apply. You can post two oneshots per day. If you've written something of a significant length and it's going to take more than two posts on the comm to completely post it, you can still post it all in one go. Just instead of posting it directly to the comm, I would ask that you post it to your own journal and make a masterpost on the comm instead to keep things nice and tidy for everyone's friends pages and also the people lurking.
And lastly. Silent Readers. Look, okay, I know that a lot of people lurk and don't actually have LJ accounts to leave comments with, but a lot of writers have enabled anon comments so that people without accounts can still comment on things. There's also Tumblr and Twitter, if the writer has linked to it. It's so discouraging when you don't receive feedback for something you've worked hard on, and also it's equally - if not more - discouraging when you write a pairing that isn't Jalex and receive no feedback and a really bad Jalex fic gets, like, 10 comments. It's frustrating. So if you read something and you like it, it's okay to just send the writer a comment saying something like, "This was really good, I liked it" or even constructive criticism if you're into that kind of thing. It's okay! It's not awkward! It makes us smile when people take the time to comment on stuff since we don't get paid for it, so that's our form of payment. It's just... It's just nice to get comments on stuff. So please. It really takes about two seconds to leave a little comment for the author. With that being said, I can't force people to give non-Jalex pairings a chance, but I can ask politely because there are a lot of really good fics being posted that deserve a lot more comments than they've been getting.
As always, if you have any concerns about the comm or anything else writing-related, you can get in touch with the mods via LJ, Tumblr, etc. Thanks for reading, guys!
I've been away from the internet for a bit being a grown-up person, but I have eyes and ears on LJ all the time. And... Well, admittedly, ATB has become a bit of a shambles and it's probably my fault for not enforcing the rules strictly enough. So in light of that I'm making a mod post to gently remind you guys of a couple of things. But first I want to just quickly note that I added Amanda ( apodiopsys) as a mod to hopefully help me get the tags in order, which brings me to point the first:
The Tags. Guys. Guys, guys, guys. What is going on with the tags? I have a lot of pet peeves about how things are being tagged right now so I will just make a point form list of things that are incorrect in the tags and direct you to the tagging post if you still aren't sure how to tag things properly.
- Tagging individual characters or the band. You don't need to do it! If people are on ATB I'm going to make an assumption here and say that they probably know who the band is. Plus if you're tagging the pairings correctly like you're supposed to then you don't need to tag characters separately at all. see how that works?
- Tagging pairing names. No. Just no. Because not everyone knows pairing names so it makes it really confusing for people who are new to the fandom or old farts like me who don't keep up with this sort of thing.
- Tagging your username. I'm not going to make you guys do it, but it makes it so much easier to find past chapters of fics if you forget to tag the story or if, like me, you write a lot of related 'verses and don't keep the same title throughout.
Next order of business: The Ratings. I don't know how people seem to miss this considering there's a nifty ratings guide link for you guys to look at. It even has the official MPAA movie ratings, which is the benchmark for fics on ATB, so go read that if you haven't. And please, stop making up your own ratings. There is no such thing as PG-17. It's either PG-13, it's R, or it's NC-17. No one will know what kinds of stuff to expect in your fic if you make up your own ratings. Like. Are people getting their heads blown off (literally or metaphorically) or did you just drop an f-bomb somewhere? So yeah. Please. Please, please, please start using the ratings system already in place instead of making up your own ridiculous ratings.
Finally. Finally. Number of Posts Per Day. I've noticed a lot of people seem to be updating their stories daily, which is fine, but to be considerate of people's friends pages, I think it's time to put a cap on the number of posts people can make per day just to keep friends pages nice and tidy. For now, I'm going to keep it at two chaptered fic updates per day - please note that this does not mean you can post two chapters of the same story in the same day or that you can post two chapters of all your chaptered fics in the same day. It means you can post one chapter of story A that you're writing and one chapter of story B that you're writing. I know how high the temptation is to post a new chapter as soon as you've written it because everyone likes comments (who doesn't like comments? I love comments.) but frankly, it takes me ages to go through my friends page so I think that myself and a lot of other people would appreciate a bit of a slow-down on the constant updates of chaptered fics.
In terms of oneshots, the same logic is going to apply. You can post two oneshots per day. If you've written something of a significant length and it's going to take more than two posts on the comm to completely post it, you can still post it all in one go. Just instead of posting it directly to the comm, I would ask that you post it to your own journal and make a masterpost on the comm instead to keep things nice and tidy for everyone's friends pages and also the people lurking.
And lastly. Silent Readers. Look, okay, I know that a lot of people lurk and don't actually have LJ accounts to leave comments with, but a lot of writers have enabled anon comments so that people without accounts can still comment on things. There's also Tumblr and Twitter, if the writer has linked to it. It's so discouraging when you don't receive feedback for something you've worked hard on, and also it's equally - if not more - discouraging when you write a pairing that isn't Jalex and receive no feedback and a really bad Jalex fic gets, like, 10 comments. It's frustrating. So if you read something and you like it, it's okay to just send the writer a comment saying something like, "This was really good, I liked it" or even constructive criticism if you're into that kind of thing. It's okay! It's not awkward! It makes us smile when people take the time to comment on stuff since we don't get paid for it, so that's our form of payment. It's just... It's just nice to get comments on stuff. So please. It really takes about two seconds to leave a little comment for the author. With that being said, I can't force people to give non-Jalex pairings a chance, but I can ask politely because there are a lot of really good fics being posted that deserve a lot more comments than they've been getting.
As always, if you have any concerns about the comm or anything else writing-related, you can get in touch with the mods via LJ, Tumblr, etc. Thanks for reading, guys!