Marta and other admins... can you please please take off the requirement for the authors to write a statement as to why their story landed in the category 5 of any rating? You now have the luxury of having a large ratings panel and in the past this panel has done an excellent job. A very simple instruction to the liaisons can be given that any rating above 4 can be spotted by a liaison to put forward the panel. Let the ratings panel do their excellent job and do not add an extra burden for the authors where the forms are already quite a task as it already is.
I am not asking this for myself since I will not be participating due to personal reasons, but for those authors who do write stories that possibly could fall under the category 5.
That way, rather than making the ratings panel read the whole work, which might be 70 chapters long, they could see the author said 'chapters XYZ might be a problem,'
That is what I am saying exactly does not work. Suppose I am given several paragraphs of chapter X, all of chapter Y, and a snippet from chapter Z. A person who could read that in the novel and see how it worked might judge those harshly out of context. It's the way naughty children over the centuries looked for the "good parts" in a classic work and giggled--salacious satisfaction in that case garnered from a well-respected work as far from PWP as anything could be. Poor, poor basis for censoring a work.
It's the way naughty children over the centuries looked for the "good parts" in a classic work and giggled
LOL! Sorry, that gave me a much needed giggle. Good analogy!
That is what I am saying exactly does not work.
You know better than I. As I said, I wouldn't dream of volunteering for that panel. I'd be so hopeless at it.
And sorry to make you answer the same question three times. I saw only after I posted my comment (long-winded typer that I am) that you'd already answered it.
I know how the ratings panel worked and it didn't work very well for me. But I was not included this discussion. I always read all of short stories and a much greater percentage of the novels we considered than was suggested to me. I cannot emphasize that too much.
If MEFAs were going to discuss any changes or alterations it should have been opened up to at least a broader selection of people if not mass democracy and, bottom line, everyone can profit from a professional copy check. The stuff is way too complicated, long, unclear, and folds back upon itself. Needs a hard line edit even if I agreed with the thrust of it, which I do not.
Right now, if your story has a "5" in any area I will look to see if it's hosted at one of the archives that let you skip the ratings panel.
I need to point out that most of those archives are self-rated, that is, they allow the author to rate his or her own story without admin oversight. I daresay that you would find stories right now on Fanfiction Net (even after the recent purge) that exceed the criteria for FFN's definition of M, if not the MEFA's criteria for M.
Is there any reason you didn't include HASA and Archive of Our Own?
Thanks, Rhapsody. I added LOTRFF and Faerie. Ficwad's TOS doesn't actually explain what the different ratings mean, so far as I can tell, so I can't add them. (If I missed it please do point it out!)
Someone up-thread asked why I didn't include HASA and AO3. That's for the same reason I didn't include Ficwad just now: if an archive doesn't have a formal statement of what the different ratinggs mean, I can't use them to verify that your story meets MEFA eligibility guidelines. It's nothing against that particular archive; I'm archived at both HASA and AO3, and have a special place in my heart for HASA in particular as my first fandom home. If anyone does know of a place where either of these archives define what's appropriate at each rating, give me a link and I'll look at it.
No worries, I couldn't find anything on Ficwad either. :) As for AO3, is this helpful? Scroll down to section K. Ratings and Warnings. As for HASA, this was the closest I could find.
Thanks for tracking down these links, Rhapsody. That's a real help.
On Archive of Our Own: They don't really tell you what they think is appropriate for those ratings, do they? They just list what the available ratings are, explain how to go about filing a complaing. (Unless I'm missing something... I'm going on minimal sleep here.) That doesn't really give me enough to know what ratings are appropriate or not.
On HASA: Did you have a certain FAQ in mind? The closest I can see is "What kind of stories are here?" That just says that all types of content are accepted (with a few exceptions like MST), and that authors can choose between two ratings, but it doesn't say where the line is between those.
I'm not at all against those archives and certainly don't expect every archive to have a guideline for what rating is appropriate or not. But without it, I can't really judge which ratings match up with which MEFA content advisories. Sorry about that!
They don't really tell you what they think is appropriate for those ratings, do they? They just list what the available ratings are, explain how to go about filing a complaing. (Unless I'm missing something... I'm going on minimal sleep here.) That doesn't really give me enough to know what ratings are appropriate or not.
I am sorry, but neither does the SWG. If you read the guidelines on the SWG carefully we're not stating an opinion on what should go there or what is appropiate and what not, nor do we monitor the archive if folks are applying it correctly. We simply trust that the members know what they are doing. Basically the SWG encourages self-regulating behaviour. The only thing that we do have a breakdown for are guidelines for what is Silmfic and what not.
And I hear you on minimal sleep... I hope you can catch up soon!
As for the HASA, I was just trying to help, but unless you can give me a clear definition on what you see as mature vs adult (for me they are the same), the HASA rating is quite straightforward. Imho.
I need to point out that most of those archives are self-rated, that is, they allow the author to rate his or her own story without admin oversight
That thought has also occurred to me. As an example, most of my stories are archived a Twisting the Hellmouth. This has a very well described ratings policy and so if one of my longer stories was nominated I could just give Marta the link to both the story listing there and the ratings policy - she could see it was rated FR15 and read FR15 - The sexual exploration begins! But nothing explicit, and the violence is kept to Super Mario levels. and say 'fine'.
Except that TtH has 21,229 stories there at this moment - and so if I really should have chosen FR18 - Violence ho! But nothing extreme. Be reasonable. If it'd give an 18 yr old nightmares, move it on up a level. Nookie, but not porn. no-one is likely to notice
( ... )
That, and there's also the simple fact that what I call Adult and what someone who normally reads Gen fiction calls Adult are probably two different things - how much detail is too much?
I've just commented in a different thread, that my daughter, at 16, was studying the atrocities of the Nazis - this was compulsory for her history exams - but had her text books been considered under the rules fanfic writers use to police themselves they would, certainly, have been classed as 'adult'.
So I welcome the splitting of violence and sex - although I would have been much happier for her to read descriptions of consensual sex, of any sort, at that age than descriptions of gratuitous violence!
I'm working under the assumption - possibly naive! - that authors follow their archives' rules most of the time. I know that even at larger archives where I probably wouldn't have gotten caught, I still would have felt guilty going against the what my archive said was appropriate. In the past whenever a story has been removed from competition, it's always seemed to me like the author simply hadn't understood our ratings, not that they were trying to get something through under the radar.
Since that's always been the bigger problem, it's the issue I wanted to address.
Btw, is Twisting the Hellmouth an archive for Tolkien stories? I'd never heard of it. If you want me to add it to the list send me a link (by email please; I have too much other stuff to do right now to follow this thread like I'd like to), and I'll go ahead and make it an archive people can use to skip the ratings panel.
I think there is a tendency in some fandoms and archives to 'interpret' ratings - so if you think more people on a particular archive read FR18 stories than FR15 you might 'upgrade' a little - but then the same story might appear on a different archive as 'teenage' as they don't permit 'adult' and so on. And some archives have only 3 classes where others have 5 or 6.
I think a 1-5 rating is actually more sensible - and whether or not the more explicit end of the scale for violence, or sex, should be part of the MEFAs is a different topic - although, as you will know from my comment back in January when there was a request for feedback, I do think it would be best to allow all stories that readers feel are good enough to nominate, as long as they are clearly marked at whatever rating their writer feels is correct - and perhaps all stories should be subject to random checks by the ratings panel to check the self-rating is correct... Something worthy of consideration
( ... )
I am not asking this for myself since I will not be participating due to personal reasons, but for those authors who do write stories that possibly could fall under the category 5.
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That is what I am saying exactly does not work. Suppose I am given several paragraphs of chapter X, all of chapter Y, and a snippet from chapter Z. A person who could read that in the novel and see how it worked might judge those harshly out of context. It's the way naughty children over the centuries looked for the "good parts" in a classic work and giggled--salacious satisfaction in that case garnered from a well-respected work as far from PWP as anything could be. Poor, poor basis for censoring a work.
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LOL! Sorry, that gave me a much needed giggle. Good analogy!
That is what I am saying exactly does not work.
You know better than I. As I said, I wouldn't dream of volunteering for that panel. I'd be so hopeless at it.
And sorry to make you answer the same question three times. I saw only after I posted my comment (long-winded typer that I am) that you'd already answered it.
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If MEFAs were going to discuss any changes or alterations it should have been opened up to at least a broader selection of people if not mass democracy and, bottom line, everyone can profit from a professional copy check. The stuff is way too complicated, long, unclear, and folds back upon itself. Needs a hard line edit even if I agreed with the thrust of it, which I do not.
Reply
I need to point out that most of those archives are self-rated, that is, they allow the author to rate his or her own story without admin oversight. I daresay that you would find stories right now on Fanfiction Net (even after the recent purge) that exceed the criteria for FFN's definition of M, if not the MEFA's criteria for M.
Is there any reason you didn't include HASA and Archive of Our Own?
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Someone up-thread asked why I didn't include HASA and AO3. That's for the same reason I didn't include Ficwad just now: if an archive doesn't have a formal statement of what the different ratinggs mean, I can't use them to verify that your story meets MEFA eligibility guidelines. It's nothing against that particular archive; I'm archived at both HASA and AO3, and have a special place in my heart for HASA in particular as my first fandom home. If anyone does know of a place where either of these archives define what's appropriate at each rating, give me a link and I'll look at it.
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On Archive of Our Own: They don't really tell you what they think is appropriate for those ratings, do they? They just list what the available ratings are, explain how to go about filing a complaing. (Unless I'm missing something... I'm going on minimal sleep here.) That doesn't really give me enough to know what ratings are appropriate or not.
On HASA: Did you have a certain FAQ in mind? The closest I can see is "What kind of stories are here?" That just says that all types of content are accepted (with a few exceptions like MST), and that authors can choose between two ratings, but it doesn't say where the line is between those.
I'm not at all against those archives and certainly don't expect every archive to have a guideline for what rating is appropriate or not. But without it, I can't really judge which ratings match up with which MEFA content advisories. Sorry about that!
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I am sorry, but neither does the SWG. If you read the guidelines on the SWG carefully we're not stating an opinion on what should go there or what is appropiate and what not, nor do we monitor the archive if folks are applying it correctly. We simply trust that the members know what they are doing. Basically the SWG encourages self-regulating behaviour. The only thing that we do have a breakdown for are guidelines for what is Silmfic and what not.
And I hear you on minimal sleep... I hope you can catch up soon!
As for the HASA, I was just trying to help, but unless you can give me a clear definition on what you see as mature vs adult (for me they are the same), the HASA rating is quite straightforward. Imho.
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That thought has also occurred to me. As an example, most of my stories are archived a Twisting the Hellmouth. This has a very well described ratings policy and so if one of my longer stories was nominated I could just give Marta the link to both the story listing there and the ratings policy - she could see it was rated FR15 and read FR15 - The sexual exploration begins! But nothing explicit, and the violence is kept to Super Mario levels. and say 'fine'.
Except that TtH has 21,229 stories there at this moment - and so if I really should have chosen FR18 - Violence ho! But nothing extreme. Be reasonable. If it'd give an 18 yr old nightmares, move it on up a level. Nookie, but not porn. no-one is likely to notice ( ... )
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So I welcome the splitting of violence and sex - although I would have been much happier for her to read descriptions of consensual sex, of any sort, at that age than descriptions of gratuitous violence!
Reply
Since that's always been the bigger problem, it's the issue I wanted to address.
Btw, is Twisting the Hellmouth an archive for Tolkien stories? I'd never heard of it. If you want me to add it to the list send me a link (by email please; I have too much other stuff to do right now to follow this thread like I'd like to), and I'll go ahead and make it an archive people can use to skip the ratings panel.
Reply
I think a 1-5 rating is actually more sensible - and whether or not the more explicit end of the scale for violence, or sex, should be part of the MEFAs is a different topic - although, as you will know from my comment back in January when there was a request for feedback, I do think it would be best to allow all stories that readers feel are good enough to nominate, as long as they are clearly marked at whatever rating their writer feels is correct - and perhaps all stories should be subject to random checks by the ratings panel to check the self-rating is correct... Something worthy of consideration ( ... )
Reply
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