Hello, all you lovely group members.

In an effort to encourage discussion in our forums, we've decided to make some changes to the way we run them. In an effort to keep that discussion at a high level of quality, we've agreed upon a few guidelines which will be enforced with appropriate moderation. Please take the time to look over these guidelines before posting or creating a new thread. Though it isn’t written below, I shouldn’t have to say that flaming, etc. will not be tolerated.

The overarching principle here to keep in mind is that we want to encourage substantive discussion of matters related to stories and storycraft. Consider that bolded statement the official topic of these forums. Thoughtful, intriguing, and challenging posts are what we love to see. With that in mind:

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1. Please try to accomplish at least a basic level of spelling and grammar in your posts, especially if you are creating a new thread. Especially bad grammar in the OP may be grounds for locking a thread.

2. No self-promotion. Period. Self-promoting threads and posts will be deleted without warning. Please do not make any threads to request writing or editing help for specific stories. This is essentially self-promotion. Threads requesting writing or editing help for specific stories are subject to deletion without warning. There are many resources and groups on FIMFiction and other sites which exist specifically to provide this type of writing assistance; please utilize them instead.

3. All new threads except official, recurring ones must contain at least 300 words in the OP. (Quoted material does not count toward this minimum.) This is to discourage drive-by story promotion and posts consisting of bare links and to encourage substantive discussion. (If you have a link you'd like to share, but don't care to write 300 words about it, consider posting it in our stickied "Collected Links" thread.) For comparison, this post is around 700 words long. Threads which do not meet the minimum word count will be locked, and the OP will be given a chance to edit his or her post to meet the requirements. As a general addendum, please try not to cut so close to the word minimum that we have to break out our word counters. If you find yourself padding your word count in order to meet the relatively modest minimum, you should probably reconsider whether the topic you are posting about is robust enough to sustain an intellectual discussion.

4. Please do not make a thread specifically in order to recommend a story for official review by Seattle's Angels; use the Fic Recommendation Thread for this purpose. That said, you are free to make a thread to discuss a specific story, as long as you meet the word count requirement in your OP, but your thread should focus on analyzing the fic or some aspect thereof.

5. Mark threads about Mature-rated stories, or other mature topics, with *Mature* at the beginning of the thread title. If you want to discuss a Mature-rated story, it had better not be mindless clop or gore—we will delete threads about those sorts of fics at our sole discretion.

6. After extensive haggling, we have agreed not to allow off-topic threads. An off-topic thread is one that is not related to stories, storycraft, or Seattle’s Angels. An example of the distinction: you make a thread about video games, discussing methods of conveying the narrative in an interactive medium—fine. Good thread. You make a thread about video games, discussing the latest Call of Duty trailer and the relative merits of PCs and consoles—not fine. Thread subject to locking or deletion. Please keep all off-topic discussions in the dedicated Off-Topic threads.

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We hope we’ve made it clear enough why we consider these rules necessary. We also hope the rules won’t discourage you from posting and participating in forum discussions here. By forbidding low-quality posts such as self-promotion, bare links, and requests for assistance, we intend to create an environment in which high-level storycraft discussion and analysis can take place fruitfully.

If you have any thoughts for us concerning these changes, please leave a comment below.

Wait... we could create threads before this? That's news to me. The rest is just kinda common sense.

1104189

Wait... we could create threads before this? That's news to me.

Believe it or not, a lot of us also thought we were the only ones who could create threads here.

What's the penalty for disobeying the rules

Sounds like a good idea. That is, openly encouraging the sort of discussion that we already could do before. If anything, it might just breathe new life into this group. The forum activity here pretty much died at some point in February, apparently from a combination of near simultaneous factors.
UPDATE (FOUR DAYS LATER): I was wrong. Forum activity in this group is still every bit as dead as it was before this thread was posted.

1104189 1104220 Yeah, we could. The New Thread button was always up there for everyone, at the top of the forum. In fact, someone actually made a thread here a couple months back asking for precisely what is forbidden under the 'no self-promotion rule.' That thread was locked in the Great Purge of 6/10, but it's still there.

I will break all the rules. Mwuahahaha.

1104327 By all means, oh Great Absentee Leader.

1104269

If you break the rules, we'll make you a moderator. See 1104327.

1104327
Like hell. As our glorious leader, I should expect you'd follow all of the RURUS to the letter. A group cannot function without RURUS, after all.

1104403 For your sake, I hope you know what you're doing, Pav. If I remember correctly, Seattle_Lite Room 101'd your ass the last time you pulled some crap on him.

1106369

101'd

Oh, I'm ready. I read SS&E's blogposts and everything.

No but seriously, most of these rules should be either common sense, and/or trivial to follow. As always, Wheaton's Rule applies.

1106985 I'm confused. How did we go from a 1984 reference to shortsskirtsandexplosions and "It's funnier in binary"? And it looks like Alex already had to come down on someone for jokingly breaking the rules. He blamed you for enabling him, which tells me that you and Kierkegaard are one and the same. Either that or you and Alex will be at each other's throats for all eternity.

Wait, Wheaton's Rule? As in "Don't be a dick"?! But I'm a dick to everyone, even my closest friends! What will I do now?!

1104269
I guess you missed the whole "punishable by death" thing.

7219857
Given that Garbo hasn't been on the site since 2013, hard to tell.

--Sweetie Belle

7219858
Are you in every group on this whole site or something? Because it sure seems like it, lol.

7219859
Just a lot of the important ones. That's why people spamming all the major groups drives me crazy.

I'm not in "Human In Equestria" or "Shipping" or "Crossovers", or any of the NSFW groups, though, and if you consider that there are more than 11928 groups, I'm really in a small fraction of them.

--Sweetie Belle

7219862
Yeah, that's true. Guess that means I'm in some of the important ones, too.

7219869
Yep!

Of course, that number isn't as big when you realise there are only 1730 public groups with 100 or more people in them. There are a lot of tiny groups. A lot of the important groups are on the first couple pages when you browse groups.

Though, come to think of it, those numbers are SFW groups only. Forgot I had mature off. (There are 36 groups per page on the Browse Groups page. Multiply by number of pages, than add the number on the last page manually...)

I'd tend to consider groups like The Writers Group, SSPB, Art for Fanfiction, the mane 6 and cmc fan groups important... And Seattle's Angels, of course.

(Though I think, based on those rules, we should probably move to the off topic thread if we continue this...)
--Sweetie Belle

7219876
If you want to keep chatting, I placed a comment on the general thread for you to reply to.