Direct any questions to Cromegas_Flare, Rinnaul, or any of the other admins. We will do our best to respond promptly.

Basic site behavior rules still apply.
If you don’t know what those are, refer to the Site FAQ.

Respect the admins. They're admins for a reason, and that reason is because they know what they're doing.

Stay calm and civil. Voicing your opinion is fine, but that opinion does not come at the expense of others' feelings. No bashing, flaming, or things of that nature.

Submission periods happen when the Submissions folder is cleared of stories. The admins will decide when the Submissions folder opens. There will be a 3-day warning before a folder opening, to give prospective submitters time to decide what stories to submit and to make any adjustments they may want to make.

Each time the folder opens, a threshold will be placed on it. This threshold will be decided by the admins before each folder opening, and when the folder crosses the threshold, the folder will be closed and submissions will no longer be available. When the folder is closed, the staff will go through the folder and claim stories for review. They will post their review in the forums. When the staff has reviewed all stories in the Submissions folder, the admins will decide when the next folder opening will be.

You can submit any fic you want when submissions are open, as long as it passes these criteria:
- The story is published and visible on Fimfiction.
- You wrote the story. In the case of collaborations, the account where the story is hosted should be the submitting account.
If a story does not meet both of these criteria, it will be removed from the submissions folder.

You can submit only one story per folder opening. If you submit multiple stories, all of your submissions will be removed.

Story submission rules subject to change with each opening. Check each time before you submit!

A three-strike system is in use. You will get a warning on your first two strikes, and then a one-week temporary ban from the group on your third.

You will get a strike if you:
- attack someone
- make hateful or derogatory remarks
- start or participate in a flame war
- submit a story that is not yours
- other disruptive behavior at admin’s discretion

You will be notified upon receiving a strike. Severe offences (e.g. ones that causes serious disruption) will be handed by staff on a case-by-case basis, and may carry harsher punishments.

All staff members must say in the Story Claiming thread that they are claiming the story. They need only post a short message saying something along the lines of: "claiming <storyname> for review". They will have one week to complete the review if it is 50k words or under, and two weeks to complete the review if it is over 50k words. If the review is not completed in this time frame, the story will become un-claimed and be open for claiming by another reviewer.

If any member of the staff shows no signs of group activity for three weeks, they will be placed on a list of inactive staff members and will be demoted to a normal member. If they wish to become an active staff member again, they must PM an admin, and they will be told to claim a story immediately. They will have the normal amount of time to complete this review (see Staff Rules #1). If they complete it in this time frame, they will be promoted back to their rank. If they do not, they will not be promoted and the story will be un-claimed.

Staff members are expected to follow all rules, and will be punished like all other members.

Freedom
You are free to post threads in the forums even if you aren't a commentator (reviewer) or an admin. Please feel free to post threads including anything from either sharing/asking for advice, questions about the group and its future, or other topics that feel appropriate.

Offer suggestions.
If you have suggestions, feel free to post those as well. You think we could use some work on something we are doing? Let us know.

Have fun.
Have fun with it. Our group could use some more activity not just from the Commentators and Admins, but also its members. We'd like to hear from you too.

No self-promotion.
There are groups specifically for self-promotion. If you're awaiting a story to be reviewed (or even if you're not) then you don't have a reason to be promoting it. Once we do the review, we'll be talking about it anyway. This rule goes for promoting others as well.

No rude behavior.
This is the pleasant Commentator and Review Group. There should never be threads insulting another writer's work, or insulting them as a person. Attempts to cyber-bully will be met with repercussions. This also goes for those commenting on the blog. Debate is allowed, but if it becomes hostile, it will be shut down.

Don’t post ponies pointlessly.
Don't post every single funny .gif, comic strip, Rarity expression, or ponies as deer picture on the Internet. If you want to share something, feel free, but have a reason for it. You can just as easily post that .gif as a personal blog. You have to remember that we also post our reviews in the forum. If you're posting a lot of random meaningless things then you could be burying a recent review that was posted.

No requests.
With our newest method in place for reviewing stories, we know that sometimes you can get a little excited for when the folder will open up again. However, please don't post forums requesting someone to "quickly" review your story. We have a certain method that we follow, so you’re being warned now.

What we mean by “pleasant”.
“Pleasant” does not mean we will only tell you the good.
It does not mean we have to sugar-coat our criticism.
It does not mean we’ll go easy on you.

“Pleasant” means we will not attack you for your writing. It means we approach each review with the mindset that any author can improve, and any story can be improved. On the occasion we discover a story that we feel cannot be improved because it’s already as well-crafted as possible, those are the stories we declare Masterpieces, but I’ll discuss those later.

The key point is, we do our best to be constructive. We aren’t perfect. But we try to encourage every writer to keep writing and keep improving.

What if the reviewer doesn’t finish the story?
We only require our reviewers read the first 10,000 words of a story. If the reviewer stops there, don’t get upset with them for not finishing. It doesn’t matter if “everything comes together at the end” of a 30,000-word story, or if “you really hit your stride” 20,000 words in. We approach the story the same way an average reader would. If you can’t hook the reviewer before the big, important part, what makes you think you’ll keep other readers around long enough for it?

What if I disagree with the score?
We trust our reviewers to give a fair score and, if they feel they can’t judge a review fairly, to pass it on to an admin or another commentator. The majority of the time, a review score will stand. However, if you feel the review was the product of heavy and unfair bias, you can bring the issue up with an admin, and they can look over the review and story to determine if it needs redone.

And remember, remain calm and civil if you do this. If we get the impression you’re just angry that your story wasn’t as good as you personally thought it was and are just angling for an undeserved higher score, we probably won’t be particularly amenable to your request.

There is another case in which a score may be changed after the fact, and I’ll discuss that below.

Commenting on reviews.
We highly encourage all members of the group, not just commentators and admins, to share their thoughts on a story, or the review of that story, in the review thread. We reviewers like getting feedback just as much as authors do, and it does just as much to encourage us to do more as it does authors. Further, this is one of the ways a review score might be changed. We pay attention to the comments on reviews, and if the admins see that popular opinion is in favor of a different score, we will discuss it among ourselves and issue a change if we see fit.

But, again, we trust our reviewers, and score changes are, on the whole, unlikely. However, this process, and appealing to the admins, are both in place to assure that a deserving story isn’t locked out of a possible Masterpiece score based one one person’s preferences.

How do I get a Masterpiece?
Speaking of that, the highest score a single reviewer can issue is a “Must-Read”. The highest score the group will issue, however, is a “Masterpiece”. If a reviewer feels that a story is deserving of our highest score, they give the story a “Must-Read” and request that the admins consider it for Masterpiece status. The admins then look over the story and decide with a vote if Masterpiece will be awarded.

Similarly to the previous sections ensuring that one person can’t keep a deserving story from earning Masterpiece, this ensures that one person can’t hand out our highest honors to undeserving stories.

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4056654

Respect the admins. They're admins for a reason, and that reason is because they know what they're doing.

This was beautiful

4056692
I started laughing so hard when I saw this!
(Partly because I just got home from the "Out of Water" movie.)

Midnight, you really should start updating that "Things PCaRG Admins Say" blog. Project cancelled.

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All staff members must say in the Story Claiming thread that they are claiming the story. They need only post a short message saying something along the lines of: "claiming <storyname> for review". They will have one week to complete the review if it is 50k words or under, and two weeks to complete the review if it is over 50k words. If the review is not completed in this time frame, the story will become un-claimed and be open for claiming by another reviewer.
If any member of the staff shows no signs of group activity for three weeks, they will be placed on a list of inactive staff members and will be demoted to a normal member. If they wish to become an active staff member again, they must PM an admin, and they will be told to claim a story immediately. They will have the normal amount of time to complete this review (see Staff Rules #1). If they complete it in this time frame, they will be promoted back to their rank. If they do not, they will not be promoted and the story will be un-claimed.

So, uh, I think my story has been claimed since the first day of the last time you opened, but it feels like so long ago that I can't even remember when that was, or who claimed it. What's going on?

4056654
There is one thing I've been wondering. Is the author told their story is up for review before hand or do they learn about the review after the fact?

4411360
Well, they know they're getting a review eventually because they need to submit their own stories. As for knowing that their story is coming up soon, we add stories to the Claimed folder so it shows up in the feed, and post a link to the review in their story comments once it's done, but that's it.

Curious if this group is still operating the same way. I noticed the submissions folder had 69 stories in it yesterday and today it has 70. I thought it was meant to go down, not up.

4056654 This was not specifically addressed in the rules so I thought I'd ask / fish for an opinion; should an author wait until a story is 'finished' before subbing it for review or is it acceptable to sub a piece once you pass the 10k mark to get feedback?

It seems logical that a story should be complete to be eligible to receive a comprehensive review and score, but at the same time honest criticism and feedback is easiest to act on before events are set in stone, so to speak; it's much easier to address issues and make changes at the 10k mark than the 100k.

New here, just wanted to clarify.

5323445
You can submit a story of any length or any degree of completion. The 10k words mark is just the minimum we will read for the review of a long fic. Now, complete stories will tend to rate higher in review scores, but as you said, incomplete ones are better able to make use of feedback.

5323445
As to what Rinnaul said, I would like to include that the choice really is yours depending on what you are looking for. Completed stories gain more publicity, but unfinished work gets more direct tips and criticism. Not saying that it's exclusive to either port, but rather the balance is sure to shift in those ways.

5324362 5332611
Thanks for the insight, I'll definitely take you guys up on this once that inbox clears out

5332698
That may be sooner than later. Relative to weeks to months.

Will the submission folder open again?

It's been closed for a year.

5650073 It will very soon! We're getting down to the last few stories in the queue, and once those are out of the way, we will set a date for the next opening. It shouldn't be long now!

5650280 Awesome! I'm excited!

Submissions folder is empty. can it be opened now?

5662933
The current claimed stories need to get done first — a majority of them, at least. Until then, the previous cycle isn't actually done yet.

5662995

Ah, I understand now.

5324362
Thanks for answering the question about unfinished stories. I was wondering that too. I am writing mine precisely to learn and practice writing fiction and I'm looking for feedback and criticism. Also, I haven't seen beyond a few episodes of season 4, so sometimes things or details are pointed out to me and that helps me adjust it for continuity without having to watch the rest of the series. I would like to watch them, but then I couldn't devote what little free time I have to writing.

Anyway, I'll be submitting it soon.

How does one add a story to the group? It says I need permission.

6131231
The administrators periodically accept a number of fics for a short period of time or until they get a certain amount of stories. They announce the unlocking of the folders with plenty of advance, so just keep an eye out on your group feed for any announcement from this group.

6131286
K, Thanks.