Arrow 18: Declassified... Reclassified. · 10:24pm Aug 2nd, 2016
Bad news to those who were just boarding the HYPE train.
Apparently setting up Arrow 18: DECLASSIFIED breaks the collaboration rules for Fimfic.
Your story, Arrow 18: DECLASSIFIED, has been revoked.
This seems to just be a collection for other authors to post their stories to under your name. While collab are similar to this, they require the author themselves to participate and have all chapters complete at the time of submission. Because this story is neither complete nor does it involve any chapters from you, it has been revoked and will remain as such until both issues are resolved.
If you want to repost it, anyone who is interested in participating must have their chapter completed and ready to be published. You must also write a chapter of fair length yourself. Once those are done, all chapters must be published simultaneously. This is the only way collabs are allowed.
Thanks.
Which means the omakes would not be a standing collection to be added to over time, but a collection that would be locked at submission. Sorry guys.
what if you started an Arrow 18 group. Then everyone could just add their story, with Arrow 18 in the title, and add it to the group
Also, this is a very foolish rule, is there anyway to change it?
Me:
The Admins:
4128435 I second this idea as a potential work-around.
There are at least 5 pretty popular fics out there that break this rule if it is a rule.
4128446 I'm not surprised. The administration of this site is absolutely terrible about just about anything. Frankly, I think the only reason this site gets any traffic at all is that there is no real competition so we have to put up with their arbitrary, abusive, and just plain stupid shit since we don't have any real alternatives.
4128435 A group might work, but there is absolutely no way we are getting that rule changed for the reasons listed above.
That's dammed peculiar. I've looked through the rules and never seen anything on that before.
Wat.
I have an entire bookshelf of collabs like this. Since when are they against the rules?
well...darn.
dammit, and i was so excited for this. That's a bullshit rule.
Just add a sentence yourself to each chapter and make them by you and the other author.
It's like the admins get off from killing fun.
Wait, when did this become a rule? And since when do stories get removed retroactively after already being published?
So long as you don't add a password to it, it'll be accessible - it just won't appear in the new fics, updated list, popular stories or the ... whatever that box is at the top I ignore. And you can keep adding to it even and, like, keep a blog if you really want too. Though I'm not sure how the site handles updates to Bookshelved stories that aren't published ...
It's fine, it'll all be fine.
No! No! Bad Twilight, bad! Get back in your box.
I was curious about this, since I've seen other collaborations, so I went to check the FAQ. I found this, which may be what the admin was talking about:
That's the only rule I see that seems to apply, and it makes sense considering how you were told that you would have to write some yourself.
I don't see anything in there about having to have all chapters complete, though. That seems a bit extreme for a rule. I don't see why collabs would be treated any differently than any other multi-chapter story that way.
A collaboration group would make sense, though. And it might work better, because then you wouldn't have to worry about posting other people's chapters for them. Although, if you're worried about quality/consistency, there would have to be a moderation process.
I'm not clear on what abuse this rule is attempting to prevent.
4128456
We're also here because the community features on ff.net and AO3 are godawful and pretty bad, by comparison.
4128529
Nope, sharing unpublished stories with non-proofreaders is doubleplus-ungood against the rules. From the FAQ:
Have a long example of an author getting in shit for this.
4128534 about the only thing I could think is disorganization.
Hmm mabee set up a group that only you have access to add anything too and add those short stories there? Although I do not really know how the groups work.
Bwah?!
I hate to blow up his spot, but my best friend here on fimfic has a widely popular collaboration anthology that blatantly violated the rule about posting everything at once. It's based on another author's work, features dozens of authors, and has no defined cohesive plot. Hell, it theoretically has a couple of sequels by other authors.
I, uh, I don't know what to say about this other than to get one of the main mods on the horn and discuss things.
You could just make a group?
lolol, what? Isn't there like a bunch of collabs on the site already that update as they get more stories to add?
4128568
I've sent a PM to one, and am holding off on panicking for now. This makes little sense, and I'm hoping a wire has been crossed somewhere.
4128534 My cyncial side says that at some point in the past there was some particular story or author that the admins had it in for, and they came up with this rule so that they could step on him while claiming they were just enforcing the rules. Now it's got a life of its own.
It's really annoying how we can have a situation where everyone involved in the story (writers, poster, readers, etc.) all agree that they're fine with a particular presentation, and the story satisfies all the content rules if you were to consider it in isolation from all that background stuff, and yet the admins refuse to bend. Good authors have quit the site over this before, diminishing the field of pony literature in the process.
4128539 Like I said, no alternatives. Hell, if memory serves FF.net doesn't even track read chapters for you which makes it just about useless except as an archive.
4128600 I can confirm this.
Well, this is bullshit.
I had to read your story once you posted, I enjoyed it .
Would like to know what happen once he got home, or what the rescue team thought after they landed and made contact as well.
Alright everyone first of all, you need to chill. Of course, if you feel like 4128456 does, you are welcome to bring clear examples of better jobs done by our sister sites such as fanfiction.net, AO3, etc. and tell me how often you get a reply from anyone.
Anyway. The reason we're deflecting new "collabs" such as this one is not an attack on the author. Yes, as 4128446 rightly brings up there are some stories that have passed moderation a while ago that fall into this concept. But, as you are all aware, we don't retroactively apply rules.
Despite what some conspiracy theorists might want to insinuate, and whether or not authors of questionable character have stormed out of the site because we didn't give them what they wanted, when they wanted it, is immaterial and unrelated to this.
There is a very simple reason for this decision.
In fact, 4128435 here got it in one. We've been slowly pushing back collabs such as this one because that's the point of the Groups function. This has several advantages, which a single story doesn't, and is also the reason we're doing this:
1) Visibility doesn't come exclusively from the popularity of one author.
2) Groups allow you to organize your stories into folders that contain relevant differences if needed. (ie sex/sad/dark/etc)
3) Each story, posted as a single entity has a higher chance of being read than a huge series of stories under one "mothership" story, and also a higher chance of promoting the group.
4) Each story as a single entity can have feedback, likes and dislikes relevant to that story explicitly. That way, you can also see if people really liked your story or not.
5) Promotes a sense of community for your team. You are all fans of Arrow 18. It's an awesome story. Before I even read it, no less than 10 people I respect threw it in my face telling me that it is indeed a human story I needed to read. You can build more, organize better and discuss appropriate themes in a group for it.
This is not a "made up" rule to mess with authors. It's about the functionality of the site.
4128600
AO3 doesn't seem to, either.
AO3 has some good features for story series, tagging, and multiple authors, though.
4128709
If I may ask, what's the recommended strategy for ongoing collections? Are they clear to continue as-is, or should they wind down and transition to a group folder?
Also, what should potential collections of <1000 word stories do? They can't be published on their own as per the rules, so do they need to either a) wait until the author has written several, and can publish a collection >1000 words, or b) all be collected by a single contributing author into a Completed story?
4128709 The problem with putting all the stories in a universe into a group as separate stories is they can't be organized in the way the universe's creator would want them to be read. Controls on folders can keep "canon" and "non-canon" side stories separate, but if you want to put the canon stories in chronological order? It's not convenient at all.
4128758
Stories that have already been approved are going to be left alone at this time. However, bear in mind that if you want to make a sequel on the same vein, that would not pass moderation. What I'd advise for future projects is to work on creating groups for such things.
As is the case with regular stories, the author should make sure there's over 1k words total at the time of submission. In a case such as this one, let's say someone here wrote a short story of about 500 words. For some reason. That person should write another story or edit that story so it falls into our approval size before submitting it as a story.
For those who worry that you will never see the chapter that was posted again, fear not. I still have the original document. And it will be posted as its own story soon, with Tigerclaw's permission.
4128709
Actually I was under impression that you DID add arbitrary rules at least once and was caught doing it (vs comparison of archived pages) with RealityCheck fimfic-gate ;)
But whatever - it would be fair to give the author some time to comply with the new rules. Hell he could post 2nd chapter from himself and tag the fic "complete" - would you spit fire then? :)
At least this one makes some sense:
The other one not so much...
Maybe something like "at least 1/3 of the chapters from the origial author"?
4128768 You can create folders that list the stories at specific points story wise. On a very basic level: "Pre story" "During story" "after story" kind of thing. It's no more inconvenient than having 50 stories one after the other that happen at different points in the story.
4128785
Being under that impression is definitely something you can do. That can of worms is like the current political situation: no one liked it. No one likes it. And everyone has a different story.
This is complete and utter bullshit.
Meh. I didn't think the first story was that great anyway IMO.
Pretty much every collab compilation story I know of on the site works the way yours did, it's kinda baffling whats going on. if they want to single story or group every author, it would really suck, since I know I hate trying to read them in proper order or sort things out that way.
4128709 This explanations reeks of microsoft-style "we think this is the better way to do it, so for no other reason than that we're gonna enforce it!". Why not let authors do what they want so long as it uses the site's functionality either way, and nobody complains because it harms noone in any way? This rule is supremely arbitrary and kinda stupid.
4128793 So this is basically 4chan with more neck-beardy admins?
4128880 Funny as hell tho.
4128893 If being condescending of moderation like that helps you feel better about yourself, sure. You can think of it that way.
4128880 Uh... they're the main reasons that affect this collaboration at this time for that decision. It has nothing to do with being arbitrary. Doing "collabs" however the author likes, while convenient for the author, will eventually interfere with the site's performance when genfic comes out. I'm not listing here for you every single reason, but I am giving you some that are legitimate.
4128709 What about the people that don't really want anything to do with groups?
Seems like the author making one overall story and only putting the chapters people submit that they decide qualify to their own liking/rules for it into it, works better than say 73 separate stories, most being 1-2k in length on the same overall topic in who knows how many folders.
If an author was worried about personal popularity, or likes, or whatnot then they would not be participating in a collab in the first place. Plus if they go to the chapter they wrote, it will give them all the comments on just that chapter.
4128911
LOL
4128920 That there are definite and different benefits to either option is not a question. I can totally see why you and others would prefer it this way. There's nothing wrong with wanting to do it one way or another...
Bottom line? Because site rules are not made to please individuals. The decisions we've made on rules and such for the site are based on functionality, back-end issues, and pre-empting future problems with the UI.
Most of those issues you listed can be dealt with in groups too. The group owner/admin can also control what stories pass muster and which ones don't, control where they fit, communicate with all members, and have a forum to give feedback, make suggestions and even expand on what is being done. In addition, if you don't care about your story being read... why write it at all Collab or not?
4128926 Oh sorry man. It's a long word, I know. It means: "conforming to the law or to rules."
4128758
Well, this worked pretty well for a de facto two-person collaborative universe including over a dozen stories, organized in not chronological order, but the order one of the authors suggested reading. Toss something like that on the front page of a group or as a stickied forum post, and it could do the trick.
4128928
That's why i was not bashing on you or the site, just giving an explanation of why I thought it was weird, as I am one who does not really do the groups thing on this site.
I fully admit I have no idea how a site is run. But what you just mentioned baffles me... a lot. Other than originally written by a different person, doesn't the author hosting the collab still have to be the one making the chapter and pasting the words into it? So the only difference in a collab vs a regular story is that the chapter title usually has the author of that chapter listed. Unless the ability to name chapters is going away, and and maybe links in Authors Notes to the profile of the person who wrote it are too, I don't really get that quoted part.
Oh well, not really something I need to know so you don't need to explain it. Just seems weird to me is all.
But not everyone on the site likes or uses the groups feature. Sorta seems like a way to say no collabs, and if you don't like groups too bad, use them or no collab like stories for you.
But like I said, I am not here to argue. If those are the rules, then those the rules... I can still complain, though.
That is not what I said.