Here it is

In the interest of fairness, this can be up to Quroum vote.

Basic goal of writing this is to give Dinky her cutie mark by the end, with a special talent of friendship. In the meantime, every foal involved is basically going to be going on an adventure through Ponyville, with each of the various locations being imagined as islands or ports or something.

So, for example, Sugarcube Corner is gonna be Port Royal. Sparkler's jewelry store will be the treasure trove of a (retired) pirate queen. And so on.

I'd vote for full canon.

I'm always up for stories where the foals aren't a swarm of demons out to ruin Cheerilee's life!!! and so I have no problem with this romp being full canon.

I thought your stuff would just be canon by default, since you're the final authority and all that.

3210653
Agreed

3210653 3210691 3210471
Again, in the interest of fairness. I shall be judged by the same standards as my people!

Also, the argument could be made that this story doesn't really contribute much to the overall story of the Lunaverse. Dinky gets her cutie mark, sure, but that's really it.

3211677 : Is it a requirement that the episodes contribute to an overall story arc?

I'd think that a story featuring at least one of the main characters (L6, Dinky, maybe Bonbon and Snails) in the Lunaverse would merit it (provided there aren't any other problems), but do they additionally need to add to an arc?

E.g., is a story about Lyra having an awesome adventure okay if it's sort of a one-shot adventure story that might not come up again?

3212141
Well, like I said, the argument could be made. I didn't say I agreed with the argument.

3210456
3210653
3210691 : Sorry for not bringing this up earlier, but something just occurred to me.

In another story, Dinky and Pip are both abducted by pirates. I'd think this might make them a little more reluctant to play pirates, seeing as how they suffered at their hooves.

I still really want this story to be canon, so maybe just a brief paragraph with Dinky and Pip mentioning this could help deal with this issue?

Alternately, since that story hasn't been updated in a while, maybe check with Pontiac to see what would happen next? If Dinky and Pip don't really have a bad time of it, then they might not mind.

3214301
Right, I completely forgot about that story...

3214301 3213082
Grass might raising a point worth considering... but at the same time taking that kind of aside, even if only briefly, might cast the wrong tone on the whole rest of the fic. This isn't supposed to be a story with any kind of melancholy or post traumatic stress, just children playing innocent games.

Also while I see the mentioned fic in in the S2 folder, I can't find it on the S2 time line. So do they really need to exist in an order that would make that a problem in the first place.

Alternately, since that story hasn't been updated in a while, maybe check with Pontiac to see what would happen next?

For that matter, not only has the author not updated in 7th months (not that I have any room to criticize), but as best I can tell, he hasn't even participated in the forums for 5 months. So I'd be concerned about if we should even worry about keeping it canon at all if it interferes with a potential more viable story.

3214460 :

For that matter, not only has the author not updated in 7th months (not that I have any room to criticize), but as best I can tell, he hasn't even participated in the forums for 5 months. So I'd be concerned about if we should even worry about keeping it canon at all if it interferes with a potential more viable story.

Do you mean something like a rule stating that if an incomplete story hasn't updated in X amount of time, it no longer 'blocks' canon and another story can contradict it, in which case it gets moved to semicanon or fanfiction?

3214516
Might not be a bad idea. Though someone should really get on A Chance Encounter...

3214690 : Yeah, I think that might be a good idea. Dunno what the best time interval would be though. 1 month between updates, maybe?

I can go through the incomplete stories later and make a list of which stories would be affected by which possible time intervals.

3214516
Well, we do already have some presidence from when Changing Gossip decanonized. Though admittedly there were aditional reasons behind reavaluating that fic. As such, I might be leery of formalizing any kind of strict guidline. After all, I don' Think we want to inadvertently creat a ticking cloak to loom over our author's head, potentially causing them to rush out low quality or filler chapters just to maintain thier 'block'.

Still, I do think we need to reserve the right to on a case-by-case basis revaluate older fics so as to avoid newer ideas that come up as we further pursue and develop the setting from being 'locked-out' by events that are still unresolved.

3214708 : I think a formal guideline might help to preserve the appearance of objectivity. What I think would be a problem is if one of the other members of the forum let a story languish for months and one of us wrote something that contradicts it (as RDD here did with Pontius' story, actually), because if we don't have a guideline as to what is 'too long' to wait, people might think we're shoving out other members' stories in favors of our own. Whereas if we can say, "No, after 2 months your story can be superceded," we have a better leg to stand on.

I also don't think of it as a ticking clock. After the threshold, stories would not be automatically decanonized. Rather, someone could then right a story that contradicts it; that itself would still take time. Plus, we could ask that anyone planning on doing such would post on the forum first to prompt the original storyteller, so they'd know what was going on (and it wasn't a total blindside).

I just went through the Lunaverse folders. Here's what I found in terms of incomplete stories:

SEASON 1 EPISODES:
6 out of 26 are incomplete. Sorted by last update, they are:

A Chance Encounter by InsertAuthorHere--28 February 2013
Eye of the Hurricane by InsertAuthorHere--14 April 2013
Adventures in Ponysitting by Whiteeyes--5 June 2013
Dinner With the Folks by RK_Striker_JK_5--21 January 2014
Secrets of Adalantis by Fizzy Orange--26 January 2014
Jackelope Valley Festival by Froborr--15 March 2014

SEASON 1 WEBISODES:
Only LNEPD is 'incomplete', and that doesn't really count since it's not a continuous narrative

SEASON 1 TIE-INS:
2 out of 11 are incomplete:

Elements of Insanity by Emeral Bookwise--4 September 2013
Shadowbolts: The Hunt for Twilight Sparkle by The Aquatic Scarecrow--15 September 2013
(Note that TAS has left the Lunaverse, so this story is very unlikely to be continued)

SEASON 2 EPISODES:
9 out of 16 are incomplete. I'm excluding Return of Tambelon and Treasure Hunt from this list, since those were updated within the past 2 weeks. That leaves 7:

Sergeant-At-Hooves by Emeral Bookwise--13 August 2013
Ponies on the High Seas by Pontiac56--1 September 2013
Games Ponies Shouldn't Play by DagaYamar--29 November 2013
Ice Hearts by GrassAndClouds2--4 December 2013
Half-Arrogant, Half-Crazy, All Trixie Lulamoon by Zeroxion565--15 January 2014
Contest of Champions--23 March 2014
Title Match by Zap Apple Smash--29 March 2014

Combining all the lists, we have:

A Chance Encounter by InsertAuthorHere--28 February 2013
Eye of the Hurricane by InsertAuthorHere--14 April 2013
Adventures in Ponysitting by Whiteeyes--5 June 2013
Sergeant-At-Hooves by Emeral Bookwise--13 August 2013
Ponies on the High Seas by Pontiac56--1 September 2013
Elements of Insanity by Emeral Bookwise--4 September 2013
Shadowbolts: The Hunt for Twilight Sparkle by The Aquatic Scarecrow--15 September 2013
Games Ponies Shouldn't Play by DagaYamar--29 November 2013
Ice Hearts by GrassAndClouds2--4 December 2013
Half-Arrogant, Half-Crazy, All Trixie Lulamoon by Zeroxion565--15 January 2014
Dinner With the Folks by RK_Striker_JK_5--21 January 2014
Secrets of Adalantis by Fizzy Orange--26 January 2014
Jackelope Valley Festival by Froborr--15 March 2014
Contest of Champions by ThatGuyVex--23 March 2014
Title Match by Zap Apple Smash--29 March 2014

Looking over this list, 3 or 4 months since last update seems reasonable to me.

3214725
Objectivity is a noble goal, but that's not really what the quorum (or the Lunaverse in general) has ever been about. The initial evaluation of a new fic is very much a subjective thing, and as such the reevaluation of an older fic likely needs to be as well. Especially since multiple factors should contribute; not only when a fic last updated, but also how active the author is on our forums as well as their standing/reputation within our community, whether or not any other fics references the portions that have already been published, and just in general how much the fic desirably adds to the setting and is thus worth keeping around even in an incomplete state.

...and of course all of the above has to be weighed against similar factors in any newer fic that potentially contradicts.

3214916 : If nothing else, then, I think we should have a set threshold after which a forums-goer can petition the Quorum to look at something they've done that might contradict one of the stories whose last update is older than that threshold, to see if it merits de-canonization. And under that threshold they can't really petition such a thing.

E.g., I think we would flatly refuse anyone who showed up tomorrow and posted a story in which Grogar shows up for the "first" time and challenges the L6 to a tap-dance duel, thus contradicting RDD's story (which makes no mention of such a thing) because RDD's story is live, it came first, and it's still being updated. But if someone shows up and says they have a story involving jackelopes or Neighsure Crane (or windigos, for that matter), we should be able to say, "Yes, it's been long enough, tell us more/write your first chapter and we'll see." So maybe not an automatic "after three months, your story will be kicked in favor of anything new that contradicts it" but rather "after three months, your story will become eligible to be kicked if a new story contradicts it that we feel adds more to the setting" or something like that.

3214916
3215006

I think at best we should set a threshold for when we inquire about progress on a story, so that we're kept updated if someone decided to give up.

3215534 : But I'm not sure it's fair for someone to be able to block canon indefinitely like that. Suppose we PM Pontiac and he says that he plans to continue his story. Does that mean we can't have RDD's story, since it seems to conflict a bit and it was written after Pontiac's?

3215544 Personally I don't see the conflict. We don't know how that pirate story will end anyway.

Besides we haven't had any trouble so far with folks indefinetly holding up stories, it's always just been people giving up. I think it should be a case by case basis depending on how earnest the author is about the incomplete story.

3215588 3215544
Like Fizzy says, this just hasn't ever really been all that frequent an issue.

Also, as I said previously, there are just so many factors to be considered in each instance where it might come up that I'm not sure any fixed policy could ever be viable. For example, here it's not only the lack of updates, but lack of participation on the group forums as well which in combination suggest a lack of commitment. Even if we were to institute some formalized update schedule requirement, I think there is still a big difference between an incomplete fic with only a single (and especially if by a first time contributer) -vs- one that has multiple chapters.

Plus, as Fizzy points out, the incompleteness leaves the events of the older fic being discussed here open to a much wider interpretation. Furthermore, as I pointed out even earlier, the fic hasn't yet been placed on the S2 timeline, so I'm not sure it needs to be relevant to the events of this newer fic since we could just say RDD's precedes it chronologically.