Group rules and clarity · 10:08am Dec 24th, 2012
Groups often have rules. This is of course fine, especially the ones about what can be submitted to the group. It's the right of the group admins to make rules, clearly define them, and enforce them.
Less fine, though only slightly, is the rules on where within the group a fic may go. They are still fine, it's simply that those who already watch a group will see the new fic regardless of which folder it goes into.
I recently, however, ran into a wrongly applied rules policy. This policy has recently changed to a more sensible one, but as it was it was not clear or fair. (References to which group specifically have been removed)
The rules on the rules page, as when I encountered the group:
1) All fics must have (group subject) as a main or important character.
2) Add fics to all folders that apply.
3) Do not add stories to the front page.
4) Adding a story to the front page is grounds for removal. There will be one extra chance, and second mistake is permanent removal.
5) All clop fics go in the clop folder even if (group subject) is not directly involved.
6) Only admins may add fics to folders ($name1 and $name2)
These are fine... but there was an additional rule.
Stories could ONLY be added to those folders which matched the tags. This rule was not mentioned, and if a fic was removed on these grounds the author was simply pointed at the main rules page and told to follow them next time.
When it eventually came out that this rule existed to me (after both stories I submitted were rejected) I got a PM which started:
"I'm sorry that I assumed you were a relatively intelligent person that could use common sense to pair exact Folder names to their exact Tag representatives. I guess I should just start assuming that everybody I talk to is a moron from now on...."
Thankfully, there is a happy ending of sorts. The rules have been clarified, so number two is now " add it to all folders that match the story's tags" and number four mentions that failing to follow number two is also a removal and puts the fic on the last chance left.
I'm still annoyed, though.
Bottom line: More or less any set of rules is fine, just be clear about them and (especially) don't take a story down for violating an unwritten rule and then act as though the rule were obvious.
Well, that guy seemed to be kind of a dick.
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Yeah... I suspect part of the problem is that I like to explain things (that is, I like to explain the route I took to make the mistake) and I think he took that as trying to argue that I had not made one in the first place.