Greetings authors,
During the summer the Mods made a point of doing a review of the rules. We posted the rules refresher here on the forums, and on the main page of the site.
The reason we did that was because over the last 12 months or so we’ve seen a lot of stories that are constantly breaking the rules that were set out back in 2003. Everyone is asked to read them when they sign up but that obviously isn’t happening.
No longer will we be accepting the excuse of “I haven’t read the rules” as a justification for why your stories don’t conform to them.
We’re not trying to hold back your creativity or keep you from writing but there are some serious issues going on; the most serious of all being spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Too often we have clicked on the Most Recent page and seen writers who don’t care about their fics enough to ensure their summaries are written in legible English. I understand that for many English is their second language, but that is why Microsoft invented spell check.
We’ve given warnings to authors about their spelling and they have been ignored. We’ve left reviews alerting people to the problems with their stories and they’ve been deleted. We run this site, it’s not a free for all, and if you don’t want to abide by the rules we won’t miss you when you’re gone.
That being said, enough is enough. If you don’t have a spell check – get one, or ask someone for help.
Starting 30 days from today any fics posted with excessive mistakes will be deleted. No more warnings, we’re done being ignored.
We’re tired of being embarrassed to have people come on the site because it looks like we don’t support good writing, and we’re tired of authors leaving because of the decline in quality. We’re not saying you’re not all good authors, you may very well be creative and bright but no one will see that if they can’t read your story.
If you don’t like it, too bad for you. If you need help, that’s what the forum is for. We have given an endless amount of chances and offered resources that very few people have taken advantage of.
The rules, in summary:
1. Don’t plagiarize.
2. Proofread your stories!3. Offensive material will be removed.
4. Use the right category.
5. Include appropriate content warnings.
6. Don’t abuse the script.
7. Child porn will be removed.
8. Don’t spam the site with updates.
9. Banners will be no larger than 600 pixels total.
You can find the full detailed list of rules here:
http://absolutechaos.net/fictalk/index.php/topic,2168.0.html