Unofficial Sites Rules That Can Get You Banned · 6:17pm Dec 19th, 2015
Unofficial Sites Rules That Can Get You Issued A Warning Or Banned:
Recently, a few people I've known on the site for a while have been issued warnings by site mods for various things that I thought I would pass along to other people so they don't make the same mistake.
Unofficial Site Rules (Not Listed In The Actual Ones):
1. Only promote your content in a max of five groups a day. If you go over this, you will get a warning from the site mods and a possible ban if you keep doing it. This doesn't have to do with stories, this has to do with stuff you advertise in the actual forums, as in making forum posts promoting your content. If you make more than five forum posts in five different groups promoting your content, you will get a warning and then an eventual ban. I personally dealt with this one fairly recently. It wasn't a fun experience, and this isn't listed anywhere in the rules, so I thought it was important to pass it along.
2. Don't post full episodes, songs, or any other media in blogs or groups that hasn't been posted by Hasbro. I knew two people who got a warning for this and a few others who were banned. The site mods take this serious, guys. I probably have to go back and delete things from my own blogs and groups as well.
3. Be careful of the amount of stories you put in the group story folders at the same time. Some mods count too many stories as spamming. The max amount of stories you are allowed to put in the group folders a day is around 50. I knew a few people who were issued a warning for this and a few others who are banned.
4. You are not allowed to create blogs or forum posts that speak negatively of another user, especially blogs or forum posts which single that user out for harassment. This one is pretty self-explanatory.
5. You aren't allowed to sign posts with anything more then just your username. Anything past that can get you a warning, though most likely not until you've done it several times.
6. The only place you can link Mature stories is in a NSFW marked group or in a tagged blog on that story (which is inherently a nsfw blog as such). This is just for the URL, not for displaying in a featured module in your user page. You can place NSFW stories in the appropriate folders of groups, however.
But again, this never means you can post NSFW art, off-site links, pictures, or videos anywhere ever on the site.
7. Excessive following can get you banned. There's no set number that constitutes "excessive" although the mods have mentioned that following one hundred people a day seems unnecessary. It's all up to the moderator's discretion.
8. Sharing accounts can also get you banned. This is subjective, although the mods have mentioned that having your account shared with fifty people seems a bit extreme. It's all up to the moderator's discretion.
9. Indiscriminate bulk-posting is generally not allowed. You're free to catalog and list things in your own group when a new share topic pops up, but showing up in basically every new group with a post plugging new content trends dangerously close to spam.
10. Stories including embedded images or videos in their description are not allowed. Embedded content in the story itself is allowed, but not in the description.
11. Participating or starting a series of chain blogs, encouraging others to post their own blogs in response is not permitted as it promotes site-wide spam. If you start a blog like this, ask that responses be in the comments, not new blogs. This limits the issue.
12. No spam. This includes chain letters, referral links, posting the same thing many times in different places, and anything that involves, or encourages other users to, re-post identical or similar content. This excludes posting information about your new story in groups that explicitly allow it.
If anyone else knows of an unofficial site rule that I missed somehow, feel free to post it in the comment section below and I will add it to the list.
Don't forget to check out all of the official site rules here: https://www.fimfiction.net/rules
And the frequently asked questions section here: https://www.fimfiction.net/faq
This isn't anything all that unusual. A lot of sites have hidden rules like this, with the rules page being the tip of the iceburg. But, as is always the case, enforcement of rules is up to the mod faced with dealing with that. Everyone being human (99 out of a hundred of us, anyway,) nobody's perfect, everyone is fallable. You're going to have mods who have their friends, their favorite users, those who they'll show preferential treatment to then they'll have those they don't like, don't want to deal with up to and including downright dispise.
This site's no exception to that and I've heard of users who broke one or two rules and were banned without warning while others (I'm sure you can think of a few) blatantly broke and violated every rule on the site on a daily basis and were basically left alone, not hassled and definitely not banned. (Yeah, I'm sure you can imagine Knighty IMing the mods saying something like "leave that one alone! They're a friend of mine!") So, you get the picture.
Rules
Thanks for posting this! It is extremely useful. I didn't know about most of these rules.
3629270 I think it probably depends on the amount of times a user blatantly breaks the rules too. Or whether or not they are compliant with what the mods tell them to do when they break a rule on the site.
Let's be honest here; a lot of the users on this site are younger, and having the energy they do, they sometimes rebel a bit (in one way or another). Some mods take this behavior better than others do. Should everyone be given a fair shot to follow the rules? Absolutely. But sometimes mods just aren't in the mood to deal with delinquent behavior so they don't look at the reasons behind why a member has acted the way they have (like their age, inexperience, or general ignorance) and just issue them a warning or ban.
3629296 I just thought it was important to share them for those who might not be aware that these rules exist on the site.
3629300 You are very welcome. I just thought it was an important thing to share with other site members so they don't face the consequences of breaking a rule they didn't know was on the site.
3629309
I'm a beautiful spirit, I can't be contained
3629314 You are indeed a very unique and beautiful spirit. Rock on my friend. Rock on. :)
3629312 No kidding! That would stink.
3629317 Yep. It would not be fun.
I find it funny how some of the blogs you've made recently could have been site posts.
Awesome list. Thanks for this.
3629330 Well I always do try to stay up to date with things around here. ;)
3629356 You are welcome. I am glad that it could help out. :)
3629270
This has happened to me several times.
I am a personal friend of knighty's.
3629380 That's cool. :) I am a ruler of my own dimension. Consequently, I live there when I am not on this site. :P
3629384
Be nice and never voice dissent to me, or I'll tell him to ban you!
3629389 There's not much I'd have to say. :P
3629401
Except that you totally deserve it for pushing knighty's personal friend Scootareader around!
3629404 When did I do that? :/ I just posted the site rules.
3629407
Because you questioned Scootareader's desire to get you banned! Questioning Scootareader is not allowed!
I don't actually know knighty. It's a joke.
3629415 I don't question much except for where my socks go after I put them in the dryer. Now that is a true mystery.
3629380
Thanks for admitting that. Now, since you're a personal friend of his, how about bringing this to his attention: site rules for mods. (If there aren't any, already, one of the biggest ones being No Favoritism!
Since I'm going to be a mod on another site I'll be discussing this with the site owner and other mods. I'm sure they'll be receptive to it since it would go a long way in elimenating a whole lot of problems that could pop up on the site.
3629420 They were just joking. :P
3629418
They turn into microscopic balls of lint. That lint then gets built up in the dryer. Your socks instantly disintegrate as soon as the bonds reach a certain weakness, and there's so much lint that you basically can never get rid of all of it.
It is a decree! Scootareader has SPOKEN!
3629420
As much as I agree with you, I don't really see "no favoritism" being really enforceable. If you can devise a way to do that, I'd actually love to hear it.
3629421
I think he knows.
3629430
It wouldn't be that difficult. Mods have privaledge levels. Some are high level, some lower. If a mod plays favorites then they get their privalege levels reduced. If they do it too many times they get asked to step down as mod. This was the way we did it on the old IRC system back in the 90s when I was a mod, there, on various channels and on various websites as well.
As a mod on an unfortunately long-defunct mystery writing site we had that rule as well. Anyone playing favorites would have their privaledges reduced and if they continued they were removed from mod status.
3629430 I think that dryers are secretly portals to other dimensions. That's why things you have lost in them years ago will mysteriously show up inside of them years later.
3629449 That sounds like a fair system of mod moderation.
3629492
It was! Very! Also, shortly before the site went down the drain, there was discussion of making mod selection a democratic process where members could be invited to mod for the site. Those who stepped up were to go through a nomination process. Those nominated would then be elected by the general community through a poll vote.
There were to be certain qualifications for nomination: Fair-mindedness, impartiality, level-headed-ness, good performance under stress, and an ability to be fair and equal with all with rule enforcement. Those filling those qualifications would be nominated for election. It would have been great if the owner of the site could continue to pay the bandwidth fees every month. Unfortunately that didn't happen and away it went.
3629449
If it works in practical implementation, I won't question any hypotheticals too closely.
3629659
To be fair, things were somewhat different back in the times I was a mod. There weren't anywhere near as many kids online as there are, now. Chat-boards, still being fairly new at the time, were populated mostly by adults. 4chan was, as yet, years away and trolling was something that was done from a fishing boat.
That being the case rules for mods were pretty much on an honor-system basis with everyone fully expected to abide by what had been asked of them. This worked out pretty well with surprisingly few problems among the mods and members had few complaints, save those who tended to be iconoclasts, anyway.
Sure, there were always those who considered themselves to be above the rules and that said rules didn't apply to them but that was an exception to the rule. These days that, more than anything else, seems to be the rule rather than the exception so I tend to think the implementation of any kind of loose honor-based system wouldn't work very well these days, especially on a site as big as FIMfiction.
Still, I think one thing that might work if implemented would be some kind of mod transparency system with long-standing, well trusted and respected site members serving as some kind of review board, given the task of looking over mod performance and making necessary recommendations where necessary.
3629704
How about we just draw judges from a hat of active site members, Athenian style?
3629721
Well, I wasn't thinking so much of judges as overseers, those trusted who would would work as a group to evaluate performance and, as for the other, straws would work, too. ;)
3629523 Sorry to hear that the site went down the drain. That's not cool.
3629909
Thanks but it wasn't the only one. Most sites that existed back then are now gone into dust. Well, all except one that I know of: Sunet. The Swedish University Computer Network, which was started back in the late 80s and continues to this day.
3629992 It is interesting how sites seems to come and go over the years. :P
3630013
Well, one that comes to mind which hasn't been around forever, now, is the site which pretty much started the concept of humorous trolling. (No, 4chan didn't start it, 4chan just took it to an obscene degree) and that's the site that used to host The Bob Cult. I'm sure there's some old archive or library somewhere that may have remnants of that weird old thing.
I did a quick, casual search and didn't find any Bob Cult archives but I did find an archive of It looks like the the old page that Yahoo used in 1993, I think, right about the time when the Internet was getting popularized. Interesting old stuff and, yes, I know none of this has anything to do with rules that can get you banned.
3630242 I think the link your posted got jumbled up somehow. :P
3630249
Yeah, links on this site aren't working right, today.
3630251 But that site sounds interesting. :)
Well, I just broke one of these rules in my most recent blog post. How do you like that, Eldorado?
3635424 The rule refers more to forum posts or comments you make on things like blogs, not the blogs themselves.
3635430
Oh.... Nevermind. LOOK WHO THE IDIOT IS. IM TEH IDIOTO.
Sorry.....
3635480 It's all good. It was kind of confusing the way it was worded. :P