PLEASE READ - Mod Post - Important Information
Hello again everyone. Please pardon my intrusion again on the prompting and writing fun.
It's been a wild couple of weeks. I hope everyone's been having a good time.
I need to take a moment and go over a few things about this community, prompting, writing and participating. Some of this is new, changes based on your feed back and the information I'm getting from our code monkeys. Please pay attention so that more drastic measures won't have to be taken in the future. Also, Please visit the updated FAQ and User Info.
1) When prompting on any given day, please remember that everyone wants a chance to play. If you post a string of ten posts at a time, other people can feel a little put off by it. If you post more than five prompts in a row, a mod may drop you an email to remind you to let others play too. As a general rule, try to keep to no more than five to six prompts on any give page of comments. And spread those out a little too.
2) When prompting in smaller fandoms (which we adore, don't get us wrong), please remember that they are smaller fandoms. Check the lonely prompts index and see if there are a lot of lonely prompts for that fandom. It may mean that we don't have many writers for that fandom. Two things you can do: 1) pimp us to your friends who write in that fandom; 2) don't flood the comm with prompts. One or two is usually good, at least until someone writes one of them, then feel free to add more.
3) If you post a handful of prompts before daylight, and most of them are written the next time you check, feel free to leave more prompts. But please follow the same restraint.
4) If you write a prompt that outgrows the comment box, by all means post it in your own journal, but PLEASE leave a snippet of it in the comment, along with a link to the greater fic. Not everyone who reads the comm has the time to click through all the links, but a taste of the fic might be enough to draw them. It also helps our code monkeys see that the prompt is completed.
5. Our code monkeys (and llama) work to update our indexes of completed fic and lonely prompts. It isn't hard work, but it is time consuming and as the lonely prompt situation grows, so does the work load. If this is not curbed through voluntary restraint we will be forced to enforce hard limits on the number of prompts per person per day, remove older prompts from the index and possibly even stop coding lonely prompts at all.
5a) As an indication of what our code monkeys do, each day one of them clicks on each and every lonely prompt in the indexes of lonely prompts to see if it has been filled. The longer those lists are, the longer it takes them to do the job, while another person goes through that day's prompt list and codes both the completed prompts to their respective index and the new lonely prompts to theirs.
This is actually the delay in announcing the contest results as well. All of the prompts from last week have been counted, however, we're still sorting the lonely prompts that were answered.
6) Any prompt is available for anyone to write. Yes there are a bunch of "mini-verses" that people leave prompts for, but anyone can answer those if they feel inspired. Please do not let that stop you from writing. Ever.
7) PLEASE, please make an effort to thank the person who wrote your prompt (as a minimum). It is discouraging as a writer to answer a prompt and get no response to the fic at all. In the contest counting I found several fics with no thank yous of any kind.
We all want this to be a fun community where people like to come and play and try new things and read nifty snippets of fic. But we all have to work together and respect each other for that to happen. Play nice, folks.
It's been a wild couple of weeks. I hope everyone's been having a good time.
I need to take a moment and go over a few things about this community, prompting, writing and participating. Some of this is new, changes based on your feed back and the information I'm getting from our code monkeys. Please pay attention so that more drastic measures won't have to be taken in the future. Also, Please visit the updated FAQ and User Info.
1) When prompting on any given day, please remember that everyone wants a chance to play. If you post a string of ten posts at a time, other people can feel a little put off by it. If you post more than five prompts in a row, a mod may drop you an email to remind you to let others play too. As a general rule, try to keep to no more than five to six prompts on any give page of comments. And spread those out a little too.
2) When prompting in smaller fandoms (which we adore, don't get us wrong), please remember that they are smaller fandoms. Check the lonely prompts index and see if there are a lot of lonely prompts for that fandom. It may mean that we don't have many writers for that fandom. Two things you can do: 1) pimp us to your friends who write in that fandom; 2) don't flood the comm with prompts. One or two is usually good, at least until someone writes one of them, then feel free to add more.
3) If you post a handful of prompts before daylight, and most of them are written the next time you check, feel free to leave more prompts. But please follow the same restraint.
4) If you write a prompt that outgrows the comment box, by all means post it in your own journal, but PLEASE leave a snippet of it in the comment, along with a link to the greater fic. Not everyone who reads the comm has the time to click through all the links, but a taste of the fic might be enough to draw them. It also helps our code monkeys see that the prompt is completed.
5. Our code monkeys (and llama) work to update our indexes of completed fic and lonely prompts. It isn't hard work, but it is time consuming and as the lonely prompt situation grows, so does the work load. If this is not curbed through voluntary restraint we will be forced to enforce hard limits on the number of prompts per person per day, remove older prompts from the index and possibly even stop coding lonely prompts at all.
5a) As an indication of what our code monkeys do, each day one of them clicks on each and every lonely prompt in the indexes of lonely prompts to see if it has been filled. The longer those lists are, the longer it takes them to do the job, while another person goes through that day's prompt list and codes both the completed prompts to their respective index and the new lonely prompts to theirs.
This is actually the delay in announcing the contest results as well. All of the prompts from last week have been counted, however, we're still sorting the lonely prompts that were answered.
6) Any prompt is available for anyone to write. Yes there are a bunch of "mini-verses" that people leave prompts for, but anyone can answer those if they feel inspired. Please do not let that stop you from writing. Ever.
7) PLEASE, please make an effort to thank the person who wrote your prompt (as a minimum). It is discouraging as a writer to answer a prompt and get no response to the fic at all. In the contest counting I found several fics with no thank yous of any kind.
We all want this to be a fun community where people like to come and play and try new things and read nifty snippets of fic. But we all have to work together and respect each other for that to happen. Play nice, folks.