On Posting to FKFic-L

[brightknightie]

Three people have posted their fkficfest stories to fkfic-l so far!  Congratulations, guys.  I'm confident that the list is enjoying your work!

It's been years since I posted the FKFic-L rules, and I never did get around to publicly sharing my personal favorite FKFic-L posting tips.  This looks like a useful time!

What is FKFic-L?

The original Forever Knight email list was (and is) ForKni-L.  Originally, ForKni-L was for both discussion and fanworks.  After a while, fanfiction and fanpoetry moved to their own email list, FKFic-L.  Both lists have always been hosted at PSU, and were created by the much-appreciated J.  When I first joined FKFic-L during third season, an ordinary day saw two to five stories post, and there were over 2000 subscribers.  Nowadays, we average perhaps one story per month, and there are over 200 subscribers.

The FKFic-L Listowners

If you need a hand or have any questions, please contact our respected List Gardener Don F. (listgardener / phase-6 / net) or List Manager lisamcdavid.  For tips on managing your subscriptions, please visit Don's List Gardener page.

The Official FKFic-L List Rules

Don used to post the rules to the list every Sunday.  Lately, he posts them every other month or so.  The rules appear in roughly the order in which they accumulated:

1. FK Only, Fiction Only.  FKFic-L is for Forever Knight fanfic only, and the occasional listowner-authorized informational post.  Notes to authors go to private mail; discussion and requests for parts go to ForKni-L.



2. FK Specifically.  Fanfic must be specifically about Forever Knight.  There must be specific references.  If this is not possible, than an explanation should be given at the beginning.



3. Crossovers.  FK may be crossed only with movies and television shows.  It cannot be crossed with other shows which are based on print-published media, including comics.  (Books and comics based on the movies or TV shows do not normally cause crossing to be prohibited.)  Disney characters and movies are never acceptable for crossing.  Crossovers must have the subject header XOVER: at the beginning of the subject line.  It has to be spelled that way because the listserv doesn't recognize "crossover," and it must have the colon.  Crossovers must state with which show FK is being crossed.



4. Universe Sharing.  Posts based on fanfic previously posted to FKFic-L must have the written permission of the previous writer.



5. Adult Content.  Sex scenes must have an adult topic header.  This means the subject line begins like this -- ADULT: -- and it must, repeat must, have the colon.



6. Real People.  No real person may be depicted by name without the express, written permission of the person.  Email counts as written permission.



7. Subject Line.  Story parts should be numbered in the header after the end of the title.Assorted Recent Real Examples:
     Comfort and Joy 1/1
     In a Family Way (01/02)
     XOVER: No Strings Attached 1/3
     ADULT: The Relapse 3/5
     A Father's Truth 6/?
     The Macedonian Vampire in India (10/14)
   


8. Posting Limits.  No more than three parts of a story may be posted in 24 hours.  Parts should not be more than 1,000 lines.  REPOSTS MUST HAVE THE LISTOWNER'S PERMISSION.



9. Signatures.  Please sign all parts at the end with your name and email address.  Not all mailers show the original poster of listmail in the headers.  Names of FK characters may not be used to sign posts; other names are okay.  Signature lengths are limited to six lines.



10. By Listmembers Only.  In general, posts must be written by subscribers . If you want to post something by a non-subscriber, you need permission from the listowners.  (And of course from the author!)



11. Archiving.  To have your fiction archived, be sure to include a permission statement at the top of your story.  It is possible to have work archived in certain places only, but you must say so in the permission statement.(The archive historically most closely associated with FKFic-L is the Former FTP Site.)
    


12. Actual Story Text.  FKFic-L posts must be the actual fanfic.  Posting just the URL for fanfic posted elsewhere is not acceptable.  (FK fanfic which listmembers have previously posted on another list or site is fine.  This rule just means it has to be reposted to FKFic-L as text instead of as a link only.)  You may give the link as well as posting the text.

Some Unofficial FKFic-L Tips

These are just a few things that I have found useful, myself, in posting to FKFic-L.  None of them are required in any way!

• The current list manager is more cautious about the "ADULT:" header tag than her predecessors years ago.  You may wish to err on the side of caution in tagging stories with sex concepts as well as content.  (I knew someone who was told that her story should have been tagged "ADULT:" because it contained the word "erection," although no sex took place in the story.)



• I always paste my own story posts from my wordprocessor into a TXT file to strip formatting before pasting them into my email and sending them to the listserv, just in case.  I consider this imperative.  The listserv still reacts badly to any formatting and most special (non-English-language) characters.  (ASCII convention: asterisks mean *bold* and underscores mean _italics_.)



• If you set yourself "ACK" (for "acknowledge") before posting, you will get an automated reply post telling you as each of your story posts successfully goes through to the list, and this post will also note to exactly how many listmembers your story part was sent.



• The allowed length per post doubled to 1000 lines per post not too long ago.  After a decade of the other, I'm still getting used to it!  The listserv will still reject a post if it tops the maximum number of lines, as it always used to, but I haven't run into that myself since the limit doubled.  (The old limit was related to the length at which AOL automatically tucked post body text into attachments.)



• Because of the line-count maximum, and because of services like Hotmail and some others inserting hard line breaks at 65 or so characters, I usually take an extra step to ensure that my story has hard line-breaks in it at a width of 60 characters, and then count the lines.  (I've got a function in my email application that inserts hard breaks where I say, and MS Word will count lines just like it counts words; I've been doing this since long before the line-count doubled, back when it mattered.  However, I doubt anyone else does it anymore!)



• Newbies: I encourage you to please consider taking a minute to think about the name in your email header.  When I got online, I didn't know better (Yahoo was new, Google not yet imagined).  I learned the hard way.



• Given the low list traffic these days, I try not to post my stories while someone else is posting hers or his in multiple parts.  I like to wait until the other story is done, unless there's some sort of deadline to meet or anniversary to mark.  This is partly just because there's generally plenty of time and attention for us all these days, but it's also because of the digests -- people who are set digest receive all the little posts in one big post, consolidated in the order in which they reached the list, and these listmembers can't sort out one story from another.  Letting a story finish uninterrupted makes it easy on listmembers set "digest."  Again, that's just me; mileage may vary.



• If you're re-subscribing, or subscribing for the first time, you will have to confirm your subscription with a reply email to the listserv, following instructions, and then your first post to the list will have to be approved/released by Don or Lisa.  This is to to prevent spam.  Subsequent posts will not be held up.  Periodically -- I don't recall how often; every two years? -- list subscriptions run out and you must reply to an email notice from the listserve to stay subscribed.



• Anecdote?  The rule allowing posting for non-listmembers under special circumstances, with permission, came into play memorably when a listmember was deployed on a US Navy ship, and could send fanfic to a friend to post, but could not email the list directly.

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