fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1987 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1987 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

__________________________________________________

02.

__________________________________________________

03.

__________________________________________________

04.

__________________________________________________

05.

__________________________________________________

06.

__________________________________________________

07.

__________________________________________________

08.

__________________________________________________

09.

__________________________________________________

10.

__________________________________________________

11.

__________________________________________________

12.

__________________________________________________

13.

__________________________________________________

14.

__________________________________________________

15.

__________________________________________________

16.

__________________________________________________

17.

__________________________________________________

18.

__________________________________________________

19.

__________________________________________________

20.

__________________________________________________

21.

__________________________________________________

22.

__________________________________________________

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 096 secrets from Secret Submission Post #284.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Their submission guidelines are sort of hidden, considering how important they are. I think you only get to see them when you sign up?

And they only mention briefly really important things without explaining them well.

For example, if your story has a curse word in the title or in the summary? It gets deleted. Even if the rating was M.

Explicit sex scene? Cut. The M-rating doesn't allow that.

Song lyrics in your fic? Cut.

A chapter consisting of author's notes? Cut.

Script format fic? Cut. (It's when the fic is like this:

Character A: Dialogue.

Character B: Dialogue.)

Terrible spelling, punctuation, grammar, all in one go? Cut.

Gore-levels type of violence? Cut.

Excessive swearing? Cut.

Challenges (where people don't actually post the story, they only issue a challenge)? Cut.

But you wouldn't know looking at the thousands of fics breaking the rules.

I've reported so many stories and they were still there years later. They only go on deleting purges every few years or so, and only hit the reported stories or use bots to automatically search for specific words.

And there are only so many reported stories because there are dedicated communities to that, some of which are troll-level sort of harassing.

The staff doesn't really care. But ff.net is the biggest community and the best bet to get noticed (with very few exceptions for specific fandoms), so people keep using it.

Other alternatives have popped up (ArchiveOfOurOwn.org, um, there are others but I don't remember their names from memory sorry), but they all run into some common problems:

1. No matter how hard they promote them, people still don't use them as much as ff.net.

2. They don't really have the money to keep large traffic. (AO3's main problem is this.)

3. Successfully moderating and administrating such a site is more effort than most people think, and most people who try it aren't prepared for it.

So, yeah.

Hidden? You have to agree to them every 3 days, and if you haven't within those 3 days, it won't let you upload. So effectively, every time you upload a story you have to scroll over them.

It does suck that they haven't been consistent, but that doesn't mean enforcing them now is wrong. People knew it was against the rules, or didn't read the rules at all. Their fault. Time to finally face the consequences. I don't have a scrap of pity for people whose rule-violating fic is deleted.

(Wrongly reported is a different story, but most of what I'm seeing is WAAH NOT MY SMUT/SCRIPT FORMAT/SONGFIC!!! Which has always been clearly against the rules.)

Huh. I didn't know that. I haven't uploaded a story in about ten years, so it's either changed or I don't remember any more.

Oh, I don't pity the authors of deleted smut/script/song-fics either. I only really feel bad for authors who, after being told by friends that they were breaking the rules, they changed their story to stop breaking them, but because they had been reported months earlier, they still got their stories deleted and their account frozen. THAT I don't like.

Of course it's a good thing that they're enforcing their rules! What I'm complaining about is that they only do it when they feel like it, letting years -literally- go by between one purge and another, instead of moderating the site regularly, like they're supposed to.

Well, yes, but how explicit is explicit? I myself have always tried to keep within their rules, but it's hard to judge where that line is drawn when the other fics on the site one can look to as examples of what is permitted may themselves, it ends up, not be within guidelines.

I mean, okay, so no songfics/scripts, that one's pretty easy to determine. But what precisely is meant by "coarse" language, for example, is sort of subjective without a list of "Don't ever use these or it'll come down" words. I mean, I for example consider "damn" pretty low-grade, permissible cursing, but then I did have a reader complain about it. So is it allowed or not? You know?

I'm honestly not trying to be nit-picky about it; I'm just saying that it can be difficult to figure out precisely where that line is and I wish they'd define it better. Ideally with concrete examples. :-/

I have to say, while I understand completely pulling a fic that contains plagiarism with no warning, I am really upset to hear that a fic might get pulled simply because a character might be saying "Fuck." in it somewhere, no matter how justified it might be. I honestly have no idea if "fuck" makes something T, M, or MA :-( (I thought it was T if it was only used once or twice) and I hate to think that I may get a story pulled with no warning, no chance whatsoever to go and fix that one stupid word in a 30,000 word story. The more I think about it, the more it really ticks me off.

You do see the guidelines every time you post a story (unless you do them within a couple of days of each other; they make you go over the ToS if you haven't looked at it within a few days) but, thing is, so far as I could tell from them, I've been keeping within their guidelines. I haven't had anything pulled yet, but it's bloody nerve-wracking, I tell you, and I don't need any additional stress in my life right now. I can't understand why they wouldn't just drop the author a PM with a warning and so long to fix it? Do they honestly get so many reports in each day that they just can't keep track of everything to be able to say, "Yeah, this fic has had their warning and ignored it so pull that one but this one hasn't so give them their warning first"? I am pretty damned positive that it is possible to automate that shit. Hell, it ought to be possible to automate a curse-word detector for the title/summary so it fails right when you try and post it! At the very least, it ought to have a specific warning for that too, if words used there which might be fine in the body of the piece would get it pulled. And dammit, can't they have a list up somewhere of the kids of words they don't like? I had one reader complaining about all the cursing in one of my fics, and for the most part, all they were saying was "Damn"! Chapters in which they only said "damn" she complained about. And yet, I am pretty damned sure that "damn" doesn't merit an M rating (let alone an MA).

Urgh. No idea where I stand now. *Pulls hair*

I have no idea if that would make it T or M. That's what I mean about them not explaining their rules like they should. :/

What you propose makes too much sense and requires effort, so I doubt they'll do it. :(

[ SECRET POST #1987 ]

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject