206_bones Membership Guide
This page is designed to be a central resource for the rules for 206_bones. If you're looking for more about who "we" are, this community's history, quick links to our Picture, Transcript, Music, Sides, or other archives, or a brief overview of our rules, please go see our community profile.
In order to try to make it easier for those who are new to the community, or who have been around a long time and don't really have a reason to revisit our profile, we've compiled this comprehensive guide to our rules, which also includes some of the methods to our madness, as well as some answers to questions that we regularly receive.
We've also highlighted the rules which are most likely to get you put on our bad sides are in bright shiny bold red. Call them our pet peeves, nit picking, or what you will, regardless, these are also the items for which we most frequently receive complaints, concerns or questions.
If you're using either Internet Explorer or Firefox, press CTRL+F to use your keyword search to jump through this. Otherwise, you will find the rules broken down into these categories:
General Topic Rules - Respect, RPF policies, friending memes, pimping, contacting us, and watching Bones online
Spoiler Rules - Warnings, what is a spoiler and how not to spoil your fellow Vultures
Graphic Art Rules - Icons, wallpapers, and general image size restrictions
Fanfic/Fanvids/Fanmixes - Header information, beta services, and formatting for vids, fic, and mixes.
Posting, Moderation and Membership - The moderation queue and you
Miscellaneous/Other - Formatting and other tips on being a 206_bones member
General Topic Rules
1. We are a hate-free community. While we do encourage respectful criticism, we do not allow the bashing of characters, actors, directors, writers, anyone working for the show, or any of our members. If you see any type of bashing, hateful speech, threats, or anything you feel goes beyond healthy criticism, please do not hesitate to leave a comment for us with the link to the page in question on our Comeback Feedback page, which we all track and monitor.
2. We are not a real-person-ship community. It's not that we all disapprove or hate on it (I've written some myself), it's just a decision that was made by community vote early on and we still stick to it. There are some lovely communities out there that cater to the needs of those of you who enjoy real-person fic/vids/art/etc which you can find on our affiliates page.
3. This is a Bones community. Posts to this community should be directly related to Bones or Bones fans. We do occassionally host open posts for celebrations/comments/other situations where we let loose, but for the most part, if it's not clearly related to Bones, it doesn't belong here.
4. In many cases, we do exercise some discretion regarding content. This being said, questions, comments, trials, or tribulations should all be directed to our Comeback Feedback post. We do our best to reply to all comments left there, though we are but unpaid regular people, so sometimes it does take time.
5. Pimping communities/blogs/websites: We ask that you do not pimp a given community more than once per month unless you consult directly with the mods regarding something specific. We very rarely allow posts pimping blogs or websites not located on livejournal (or dreamwidth) because of the question of required registration, possible receipt of profit/revenue from the site can be very unclear and we simply chose not to allow this.
6. After a vote, this community no longer accepts posts pimping friending memes. Most of these make the rounds through fandoms through people's personal journals, but we do offer a 206_bones community friending meme which we periodically renew. Look for an update soon.
7. This community does not allow discussion or links to any online version of Bones not explicity approved as legal by the FOX Network. This includes asking for links to downloads, torrents, torrent sites, or online streaming sites other than Fancast, FOX, or Hulu..
8. We are an all ages community. Please keep this in mind when posting material that may not be suited to children. If you are posting fic/art that is not appropriate for minors, we recommend that you link to a post in your personal journal which can be designated set to block those who are under 18 from viewing the material. [ Click here to see how to designate an entry as 'adult']
9. Asked to edit your post? Once a post has been posted to the community, one of our mods may leave you a comment requesting that you edit this post. In cases of spoilers which are viewable outside of a cut, pornographic material, or some other major rules violation, your entry may be deleted immediately. If the issues is more minor, you will typically have 24 hours to edit your post. If you refuse, your entry will be deleted. [ Click here to learn how to edit your post]
10. Linking to any friends-locked entry or to any site which requires registration, a password, or payment is strictly not permitted in this community. Either you want to share or you don't. Linking to these types of materials quickly leads to dead links and this is often a way that spammers are able to target large communities on sites like livejournal. As a result, this rule also applies to posts which are locked after a certain time period. Any entry found to be linking to locked, inaccessible, or moved material will be deleted. If this is a repeated issue, it will likely lead to being banned from this community.
Spoilers Rules
1. Spoilers should always be behind a cut and have a clear warning about the content, including the episode name/number and season that it applies to. Sorry to be picky, but when spoilers span 2 full seasons plus future episodes, someone trying to avoid certain spoilers can get very paranoid if all you ever say is just - "SPOILERS!"
2. In order to keep it all friendly, we currently consider anything S4 and on to be a spoiler in order to be kind to new Vultures and Vultures lurking in other countries who do not have the desire/bandwidth to download the episodes. Do we miss things occassionally? Sure. But we try and if you find yourself being spoiled, use our feedback post to let us know.
3. What's a spoiler? Images, icons, descriptions, animations, screencaps, and even hints at significant events in the show. This could be related to the case, their personal lives and relationships, guest stars, who gets hurt, who dies, who does something so hilariously funny/adorable/cute that you just had to squee... Yup, all that counts. So... if Booth suddenly appeared with a gold tooth? You'd have to hide that sucker behind a cut.
4. Please don't give away a spoiler in your spoiler warning. For example, if you were talking about the premier, 1x01, you should not describe it by saying "The one where Bones beats up the security guys at the airport". Or "the episode where Brennan shoots a guy in the leg". Please always use the official episode name or the episode number/production code. Our screencap archive or our tags list can be very helpful in determining this if you are unsure of the name.
5. Please do not spread spoilers into unrelated posts. For example, if you read an article regarding spoilers for 6x01 in one post, please only discuss those spoilers in other posts which have a warning through that episode. Also, when in our episode discussions, please do not give away spoilers you've read in the discussion post until after you have seen them aired on television. Specifically, this means during the Eastern Standard Time airing of the episode in the country the post is for. Meaning, just because you're in Canada and saw it the day before, doesn't mean you should be dropping spoilers in the American post the next day until after that portion of the episode has aired there.
6. Sides: Discussion of spoilers from the episode sides should only be discussed in the sides posts. Because of the very specific nature of these spoilers, we try very hard to keep these isolated only to these posts and appreciate if you would help us to enforce that. [ What are sides?/Sides archive]
Image/Graphic Art/Icon Rules
1. Be kind to friends lists everywhere. Big images can slow down a friends page pretty quick if you're on dial up or even just slow DSL, so we do have some strict limits on how big an image shown outside of a cut can be. Here are the maximum values:
You may also divide these dimensions into multiple images. But the total size cannot excede those values. If it loads on a post when someone pulls up their f-list, it should be equal to or less than the values described here. See a sample image here.
2. Preview Images - Preview images should not contain protected spoilers unless they’re hidden behind a cut with a warning. Generally, for icons, please use only 3 previews, all of which must be directly related to Bones. For all other graphic art, please ensure that the total dimensions of your previews do not excede the size restrictions if they’re outside of a cut, but otherwise, we leave it up to you.
3. Minimums: With multifandom icon posts, you must have at least 10 Bones related icons in order to post to this community. If you are only posting Bones icons, we occassionally allow slightly less on a case by case basis. For larger artwork, posts with 1 or 2 Bones related items must be posted directly at the community, not linked elsewhere. With 3 or more larger artwork pieces, you may do as you wish.
4. Headers: Graphic art requires at minimum a brief description that includes the type of artwork and any and all applicable spoiler warnings, including the season, episode number, or episode title. The number of art pieces is also always appreciated.
Fanfiction/Fanvids/Fan Mixes
1. The text of your actual fic, regardless of length, should either be behind a cut or linked on another post. For videos, we prefer that the video be embeded behind a cut or linked. Videos should never be set to autoplay.
2. Header: All fanfiction or fanvideos should have a header. Here is our recommended header:
Title:
Author/Creator: [required when different from just your LJ username]
Song/Score/Music: [required for vids]
Pairing/Characters:[highly recommended]
Rating:
Timeline/Spoilers:
Summary:
Bolded items are 100% required.
3. Even if your story/vid does not contain spoilers from a spoiler protected season, we still ask that you include at least a season during which you conceived the story to be set, or the seasons the clips came from. If it doesn't matter for your fic, you can state that. Primarily the goal is to ensure that the category was not left out mistakenly.
4. Fanmixes - Make sure any previews of your cover art do not excede our image size restrictions (see above in image size restrictions) and that you clearly warn for any spoilers that you give away. If your cover art contains spoilery images, you must keep it behind a cut, or provide a spoiler warning with a preview small enough that the spoilers are not visible without clicking. Other than this, we do not have any other specific requirements for fanmixes.
5. Beta-reader requests/services - Please do not make an individual post for these. We keep a central post for beta reading services here. If you are willing to beta-read, we recommend that you leave a comment there about yourself, or track the entry. You can do that by using the button on the post, or by clicking here.
Posting Access, Moderation, and the Shiny Shiny Ban Hammer
1. New members here are moderated until they make at least 3 successful posts. If you've made three good posts and have not received auto approval, do not dispair. With so many members, updating our auto approval list takes quite a bit of time. As a result, our mod in charge of all things posting access related does them in large batches, waiting until she has a good number of them to update at once. Also, if you have made three good posts, but also have had a good number of rejects as well, we may delay your auto approval until you're fully up to speed.
2. If your post is rejected, don't worry! Check your email. Included with the email from Livejournal stating that your post was rejected, further down in the body of the email, will be a description of why your post was rejected, or a list of the rules that were broken by your post. Occasionally we are lazy/half asleep/under caffeinated/or LJ is being wonky and we don't explain ourselves and in that case, if you have a question, go on over to our feedback post.
3. Members who have posted items that violate our rules frequently enough to have caught our attention can be placed on permanent moderation, or banned depending on the severity of the issues at hand. Permanent moderation simply means you will not be placed on the auto-approved list, even if three of your posts are approved. However, if you are banned, you will no longer be able to post, access locked community entries, or comment on posts. If after being banned you are found to have left the community and rejoined, or to have created a new user name and rejoined, we will immediately ban you without comment, message, or other communication.
Miscellaneous/Other Rules
1. Rules for submitting articles, interviews, or other news - The ideal format for posting a Bones related article to this community is to include the title of the article with a brief spoiler-free description, appropriate spoiler warnings and the full text of the article behind a cut, as well as a link to the original source. This is to avoid the content being lost if the site being linked were to take it down or change the URL. At minimum, you should include a link to the article and a spoiler free description of what your linking, and a warning regarding any applicable spoilers.
If there are images with your news post, please refer to the art rules for the image size restrictions.
2. Please try to make your post as neat as possible. This means things like ensuring that your links have text, not the bare URL. Also, please do not create a LJ-cut if the only thing behind it is a link.
3. All links posted in this community should be direct to the content being posted in a single click, and should be deep linked to the specific content, rather than the main site. For example, if you posted a fanfic to your personal journal, your link should jump directly to the post you put up (http://exampleusername.livejournal.com/1234.html), not to your overall journal (http://exampleusername.livejournal.com). Using any type of click-through or click counting for advertising/revenue purposes is strictly prohibited.
4. You posted something and it didn't show up immediately? You're still on moderation. In case you don't know, this actually means that one of us, usually C, has to physically look at your entry, check your links and such, and approve or reject it. Now, sometimes this can take up to 24 hours or a bit more if you happen to catch us all claiming hiatus at the same time. If you are concerned about where your post has gone and it has been more than 24 hours, or if you have reason to believe that Frank the Goat may have eaten your entry, leave us a comment on our Feedback post.
5. Posted something to the moderation queue and realized you made a mistake? Once it's there you can't access it any more to edit it. Just go ahead, post the entry again, and leave us a note on our Feedback post so that we know which one to use.
5. Respect your mods. (Maybe this should be #1??)
You don't have to agree with us. You don't even have to like us. However, we put quite a bit of work into this community and try to do what we feel is right. This community has over 9,000 members now and has a fairly high number of people who visit, comment, or participate in some way. As a result, not everything can be voted on, discussed, debated.
Most concerns, including reporting of spoilers in the community, reporting overly large images, making suggestions, asking general questions, etc should be directed to our Comeback Feedback post here. This post is tracked by the majority of our mods, so a comment here will general get you a fairly quick response.
Please reserve contacting us through our individual personal accounts to more serious issues such as harassment, threats, or potentially damaging or pornographic spam being posted to the community.
If after all this, are you still confused? Think we missed something? Just want to leave us some bribes? Come see us at our Comeback Feedback post.
In order to try to make it easier for those who are new to the community, or who have been around a long time and don't really have a reason to revisit our profile, we've compiled this comprehensive guide to our rules, which also includes some of the methods to our madness, as well as some answers to questions that we regularly receive.
We've also highlighted the rules which are most likely to get you put on our bad sides are in bright shiny bold red. Call them our pet peeves, nit picking, or what you will, regardless, these are also the items for which we most frequently receive complaints, concerns or questions.
If you're using either Internet Explorer or Firefox, press CTRL+F to use your keyword search to jump through this. Otherwise, you will find the rules broken down into these categories:
General Topic Rules - Respect, RPF policies, friending memes, pimping, contacting us, and watching Bones online
Spoiler Rules - Warnings, what is a spoiler and how not to spoil your fellow Vultures
Graphic Art Rules - Icons, wallpapers, and general image size restrictions
Fanfic/Fanvids/Fanmixes - Header information, beta services, and formatting for vids, fic, and mixes.
Posting, Moderation and Membership - The moderation queue and you
Miscellaneous/Other - Formatting and other tips on being a 206_bones member
General Topic Rules
1. We are a hate-free community. While we do encourage respectful criticism, we do not allow the bashing of characters, actors, directors, writers, anyone working for the show, or any of our members. If you see any type of bashing, hateful speech, threats, or anything you feel goes beyond healthy criticism, please do not hesitate to leave a comment for us with the link to the page in question on our Comeback Feedback page, which we all track and monitor.
2. We are not a real-person-ship community. It's not that we all disapprove or hate on it (I've written some myself), it's just a decision that was made by community vote early on and we still stick to it. There are some lovely communities out there that cater to the needs of those of you who enjoy real-person fic/vids/art/etc which you can find on our affiliates page.
3. This is a Bones community. Posts to this community should be directly related to Bones or Bones fans. We do occassionally host open posts for celebrations/comments/other situations where we let loose, but for the most part, if it's not clearly related to Bones, it doesn't belong here.
4. In many cases, we do exercise some discretion regarding content. This being said, questions, comments, trials, or tribulations should all be directed to our Comeback Feedback post. We do our best to reply to all comments left there, though we are but unpaid regular people, so sometimes it does take time.
5. Pimping communities/blogs/websites: We ask that you do not pimp a given community more than once per month unless you consult directly with the mods regarding something specific. We very rarely allow posts pimping blogs or websites not located on livejournal (or dreamwidth) because of the question of required registration, possible receipt of profit/revenue from the site can be very unclear and we simply chose not to allow this.
6. After a vote, this community no longer accepts posts pimping friending memes. Most of these make the rounds through fandoms through people's personal journals, but we do offer a 206_bones community friending meme which we periodically renew. Look for an update soon.
7. This community does not allow discussion or links to any online version of Bones not explicity approved as legal by the FOX Network. This includes asking for links to downloads, torrents, torrent sites, or online streaming sites other than Fancast, FOX, or Hulu..
8. We are an all ages community. Please keep this in mind when posting material that may not be suited to children. If you are posting fic/art that is not appropriate for minors, we recommend that you link to a post in your personal journal which can be designated set to block those who are under 18 from viewing the material. [ Click here to see how to designate an entry as 'adult']
9. Asked to edit your post? Once a post has been posted to the community, one of our mods may leave you a comment requesting that you edit this post. In cases of spoilers which are viewable outside of a cut, pornographic material, or some other major rules violation, your entry may be deleted immediately. If the issues is more minor, you will typically have 24 hours to edit your post. If you refuse, your entry will be deleted. [ Click here to learn how to edit your post]
10. Linking to any friends-locked entry or to any site which requires registration, a password, or payment is strictly not permitted in this community. Either you want to share or you don't. Linking to these types of materials quickly leads to dead links and this is often a way that spammers are able to target large communities on sites like livejournal. As a result, this rule also applies to posts which are locked after a certain time period. Any entry found to be linking to locked, inaccessible, or moved material will be deleted. If this is a repeated issue, it will likely lead to being banned from this community.
Spoilers Rules
1. Spoilers should always be behind a cut and have a clear warning about the content, including the episode name/number and season that it applies to. Sorry to be picky, but when spoilers span 2 full seasons plus future episodes, someone trying to avoid certain spoilers can get very paranoid if all you ever say is just - "SPOILERS!"
2. In order to keep it all friendly, we currently consider anything S4 and on to be a spoiler in order to be kind to new Vultures and Vultures lurking in other countries who do not have the desire/bandwidth to download the episodes. Do we miss things occassionally? Sure. But we try and if you find yourself being spoiled, use our feedback post to let us know.
3. What's a spoiler? Images, icons, descriptions, animations, screencaps, and even hints at significant events in the show. This could be related to the case, their personal lives and relationships, guest stars, who gets hurt, who dies, who does something so hilariously funny/adorable/cute that you just had to squee... Yup, all that counts. So... if Booth suddenly appeared with a gold tooth? You'd have to hide that sucker behind a cut.
4. Please don't give away a spoiler in your spoiler warning. For example, if you were talking about the premier, 1x01, you should not describe it by saying "The one where Bones beats up the security guys at the airport". Or "the episode where Brennan shoots a guy in the leg". Please always use the official episode name or the episode number/production code. Our screencap archive or our tags list can be very helpful in determining this if you are unsure of the name.
5. Please do not spread spoilers into unrelated posts. For example, if you read an article regarding spoilers for 6x01 in one post, please only discuss those spoilers in other posts which have a warning through that episode. Also, when in our episode discussions, please do not give away spoilers you've read in the discussion post until after you have seen them aired on television. Specifically, this means during the Eastern Standard Time airing of the episode in the country the post is for. Meaning, just because you're in Canada and saw it the day before, doesn't mean you should be dropping spoilers in the American post the next day until after that portion of the episode has aired there.
6. Sides: Discussion of spoilers from the episode sides should only be discussed in the sides posts. Because of the very specific nature of these spoilers, we try very hard to keep these isolated only to these posts and appreciate if you would help us to enforce that. [ What are sides?/Sides archive]
Image/Graphic Art/Icon Rules
1. Be kind to friends lists everywhere. Big images can slow down a friends page pretty quick if you're on dial up or even just slow DSL, so we do have some strict limits on how big an image shown outside of a cut can be. Here are the maximum values:
You may also divide these dimensions into multiple images. But the total size cannot excede those values. If it loads on a post when someone pulls up their f-list, it should be equal to or less than the values described here. See a sample image here.
2. Preview Images - Preview images should not contain protected spoilers unless they’re hidden behind a cut with a warning. Generally, for icons, please use only 3 previews, all of which must be directly related to Bones. For all other graphic art, please ensure that the total dimensions of your previews do not excede the size restrictions if they’re outside of a cut, but otherwise, we leave it up to you.
3. Minimums: With multifandom icon posts, you must have at least 10 Bones related icons in order to post to this community. If you are only posting Bones icons, we occassionally allow slightly less on a case by case basis. For larger artwork, posts with 1 or 2 Bones related items must be posted directly at the community, not linked elsewhere. With 3 or more larger artwork pieces, you may do as you wish.
4. Headers: Graphic art requires at minimum a brief description that includes the type of artwork and any and all applicable spoiler warnings, including the season, episode number, or episode title. The number of art pieces is also always appreciated.
Fanfiction/Fanvids/Fan Mixes
1. The text of your actual fic, regardless of length, should either be behind a cut or linked on another post. For videos, we prefer that the video be embeded behind a cut or linked. Videos should never be set to autoplay.
2. Header: All fanfiction or fanvideos should have a header. Here is our recommended header:
Title:
Author/Creator: [required when different from just your LJ username]
Song/Score/Music: [required for vids]
Pairing/Characters:[highly recommended]
Rating:
Timeline/Spoilers:
Summary:
Bolded items are 100% required.
3. Even if your story/vid does not contain spoilers from a spoiler protected season, we still ask that you include at least a season during which you conceived the story to be set, or the seasons the clips came from. If it doesn't matter for your fic, you can state that. Primarily the goal is to ensure that the category was not left out mistakenly.
4. Fanmixes - Make sure any previews of your cover art do not excede our image size restrictions (see above in image size restrictions) and that you clearly warn for any spoilers that you give away. If your cover art contains spoilery images, you must keep it behind a cut, or provide a spoiler warning with a preview small enough that the spoilers are not visible without clicking. Other than this, we do not have any other specific requirements for fanmixes.
5. Beta-reader requests/services - Please do not make an individual post for these. We keep a central post for beta reading services here. If you are willing to beta-read, we recommend that you leave a comment there about yourself, or track the entry. You can do that by using the button on the post, or by clicking here.
Posting Access, Moderation, and the Shiny Shiny Ban Hammer
1. New members here are moderated until they make at least 3 successful posts. If you've made three good posts and have not received auto approval, do not dispair. With so many members, updating our auto approval list takes quite a bit of time. As a result, our mod in charge of all things posting access related does them in large batches, waiting until she has a good number of them to update at once. Also, if you have made three good posts, but also have had a good number of rejects as well, we may delay your auto approval until you're fully up to speed.
2. If your post is rejected, don't worry! Check your email. Included with the email from Livejournal stating that your post was rejected, further down in the body of the email, will be a description of why your post was rejected, or a list of the rules that were broken by your post. Occasionally we are lazy/half asleep/under caffeinated/or LJ is being wonky and we don't explain ourselves and in that case, if you have a question, go on over to our feedback post.
3. Members who have posted items that violate our rules frequently enough to have caught our attention can be placed on permanent moderation, or banned depending on the severity of the issues at hand. Permanent moderation simply means you will not be placed on the auto-approved list, even if three of your posts are approved. However, if you are banned, you will no longer be able to post, access locked community entries, or comment on posts. If after being banned you are found to have left the community and rejoined, or to have created a new user name and rejoined, we will immediately ban you without comment, message, or other communication.
Miscellaneous/Other Rules
1. Rules for submitting articles, interviews, or other news - The ideal format for posting a Bones related article to this community is to include the title of the article with a brief spoiler-free description, appropriate spoiler warnings and the full text of the article behind a cut, as well as a link to the original source. This is to avoid the content being lost if the site being linked were to take it down or change the URL. At minimum, you should include a link to the article and a spoiler free description of what your linking, and a warning regarding any applicable spoilers.
If there are images with your news post, please refer to the art rules for the image size restrictions.
2. Please try to make your post as neat as possible. This means things like ensuring that your links have text, not the bare URL. Also, please do not create a LJ-cut if the only thing behind it is a link.
3. All links posted in this community should be direct to the content being posted in a single click, and should be deep linked to the specific content, rather than the main site. For example, if you posted a fanfic to your personal journal, your link should jump directly to the post you put up (http://exampleusername.livejournal.com/1234.html), not to your overall journal (http://exampleusername.livejournal.com). Using any type of click-through or click counting for advertising/revenue purposes is strictly prohibited.
4. You posted something and it didn't show up immediately? You're still on moderation. In case you don't know, this actually means that one of us, usually C, has to physically look at your entry, check your links and such, and approve or reject it. Now, sometimes this can take up to 24 hours or a bit more if you happen to catch us all claiming hiatus at the same time. If you are concerned about where your post has gone and it has been more than 24 hours, or if you have reason to believe that Frank the Goat may have eaten your entry, leave us a comment on our Feedback post.
5. Posted something to the moderation queue and realized you made a mistake? Once it's there you can't access it any more to edit it. Just go ahead, post the entry again, and leave us a note on our Feedback post so that we know which one to use.
5. Respect your mods. (Maybe this should be #1??)
You don't have to agree with us. You don't even have to like us. However, we put quite a bit of work into this community and try to do what we feel is right. This community has over 9,000 members now and has a fairly high number of people who visit, comment, or participate in some way. As a result, not everything can be voted on, discussed, debated.
Most concerns, including reporting of spoilers in the community, reporting overly large images, making suggestions, asking general questions, etc should be directed to our Comeback Feedback post here. This post is tracked by the majority of our mods, so a comment here will general get you a fairly quick response.
Please reserve contacting us through our individual personal accounts to more serious issues such as harassment, threats, or potentially damaging or pornographic spam being posted to the community.
If after all this, are you still confused? Think we missed something? Just want to leave us some bribes? Come see us at our Comeback Feedback post.