An Adjustment of the Rules.

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

Over the last few days, we've had several posts requesting stuff that had already been requested a rather short time ago.

Our Rules are thus:

2. Before you post, check out past searches in the tags. Certain fan favorites get searched for on a regular basis, like first times, crossovers or character whump. We do not want to see the same requests popping up twice a week, so check the tags to make sure your request hasn't been looked for already.

You are, however, free to ask for updates on your genre once a reasonable amount of time has passed (let's say two months).

While we do have a fairly extensive tagging system, we do not have tags for every little thing. You won't find a tag for WIPs, nor will you find a tag for series, or completed stories, or unhappy endings, or even crack fic.

So here's the deal: if you don't find a tag you could check for the exact same thing you're looking for, check a similar one. If you can't find a similar one, try looking for the pairing (and feel free to ask debris_k for additional tags). We also have a search box on our user info that enables searching of not only our comm's posts, but sgastoryfinders and other SGA fic comms as well.

Yes, checking the entries for the past two months will take you a few minutes. So does compiling recs for you, or to have debris_k tag the posts of people who can't be bothered to do so, just so that finding stuff will be easier for you. Think of it as quid pro quo.

To clarify: from now on, rather than giving a person fifteen hours to edit a post that fails to meet the rules, I'll take a leaf out of sgastoryfinders' book and delete "with extreme prejudice and without notice". That will include banning your ass for a week for editing your posts to delete your requests and say you've deleted them.

L'état, c'est moi. Well, and debris_k.

Comments

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

What you said, yeah. *thumbs up*

[darsynia.livejournal.com]

The no exceptions rule really works out best in the long run, because it saves either of you from having to spend any large amount of time upset over something that could have been avoided if someone had just read the rules.

This bit confused me, though--and it might be my having just woken up:
That will include banning your ass for a week for editing your posts to delete your requests and say you've deleted them.

I keep trying to come up with an example of what this means and ending up with examples that don't apply, and I don't want to be frustrating, so I'll just ask for a clarification? I apologize in advance if this is annoying :)

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

:)

It means that someone made two request posts, got only one comment each, and decided to make a third post repeating their original requests and adding another one. Instead of simply deleting their original requests, though, they just deleted the text of the posts and replaced it with "This is just to say I made another post, sorry for the inconvenience" or something like that.

So that in the end, we had one post with three requests and another two posts with no content at all except an announcement that the content had been deleted. It's perfectly fine to do that in one's own journal, but in a community, not so much.

I didn't ban them this time, since they mentioned somewhere they were sleep-deprived, but as you said, no more exceptions from now on.

[darsynia.livejournal.com]

Ew, yes, that's awful and so transparent! Blegh. I'd have never figured that out, thanks.

*is worried*

[ssauei-ssui.livejournal.com]

I haven't posted to this comm before and, in general, I'm a fairly obsessive person about following the rules. If I ask for fics involving one SG-1 character among a list of SGA requests, and said SG-1 character is requested in such a way as to allow/encourage crossovers, does this break the rules? Did I just completely confuse you? (I'm deleting the lines in question from my post until I know for sure.) I also wondered how strict the "two months" rule is. If I waited three days, I wouldn't be breaking said rule, unless someone else beat me to it. Since my request is fairly specific and can't be determined from previous requests, and considering the timeline, I'm guessing it doesn't apply. Am I wrong? Should I delete my post?

Re: *is worried*

[ssauei-ssui.livejournal.com]

And is there a rule about LJ-cutting for length?

Re: *is worried*

[debris_k.livejournal.com]

I'll let lavvyan field your other questions, and focus on the lj-cutting and the entirety of your posted request in particular:

No, there's no rule about cutting for length, but we encourage common sense in our members and hope they recognize that the tl;dr syndrome will not help their request any.

As for your request, the thing about it is: you said you've seen the past searches for Sentient crossovers and fusions at this comm. If you've checked the recs they got, you had to notice that there's not all that many stories to go around of any genre within that spectrum. That said, your post with its unique looks on the topic is all fine and interesting, but the fact remains that if some of the fics already recced in previous searches hadn't matched some of your points, there's an extremely slim chance that new stories will crop up out of the blue.

While your post is OK from the novelty point of view, I guess, unless you're gunning for folks to sort the (undoubtedly already recced) SGA/Sentinel fics into the categories you listed, the chances your post getting a decent number of responses is pretty slim.

To be honest, it looks more like a wish list of plotbunnies, which would be fine if it weren't focused on a niche of this fandom that has a very limited number of stories. I won't say every single fic in it has been recced before, but coming up with new and novel ways to basically post about requesting "new Sentinel!fics, anything goes, just gimme moar!" is not going to help much, either, sorry.

Basically, I'm gonna leave it up to your and lavvyan's judgement what happens with the post - I'd love to see it moved to a place where plotbunnies are encouraged to grow into stories as I think it would gain its optimal potential there, but that decision is neither up to me nor in my power to make. You two are up - whatever you decide, I'll be cool with it.

Re: *is worried*

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything wrong with that post. It's looking for pretty specific stuff - yeah, the chances of finding anything new are slim, but that's part of what this comm is there for, right? The long shot. *g*

Re: *is worried*

[lavvyan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for asking. :)

Generally, asking for SG-1 characters is only allowed if they do in some way get involved with the Atlantis characters, i.e. the Atlantis people are back on Earth or the SG-1 folks come to Atlantis.

I'm guessing you're referring to your Sentinel search? That one looks perfectly fine to me, as it's pretty specific in what you're looking for. By and large I do tend to take the two months rule pretty seriously, though I'm not going to delete a post because you "only" waited one month and twenty-eight days. ;)