I'm not exactly an active member on either of the two Foalcon groups (or Foalcon Punch), but I've been made aware that the other Foalcon group has recently changed from SFW to NSFW.

Flutterpony originally set up this Foalcon group and Foalcon Punch to differentiate between friendship/romantic stories/discussion and sexual stories/discussion. If the people in these two groups feel that the distinction is useful, then we should probably keep them. Either way, we need to have a discussion about where we should go with these two groups. I'm posting notes on the other Foalcon and Foalcon Punch so we can have the discussion in one location.

Now that the larger Foalcon group has gone NSFW, this one is less redundant than it used to be. And Foalcon Punch is a little more redundant, but Foalcon Punch is still different from the NSFW Foalcon group in that it focuses specifically on sex.

First, the utility of these three groups needs discussion. Specifically, what do the group members want out of them? I have no opinion, but y'all probably do.

Second, I'm not certain about the moderation of this group and Foalcon Punch. Flutterpony (whose personal ship of Fluttershy with Sweetie Belle adorns both Foalcon groups' banners) was permanently banned from Fimfiction for publicly admitting an attraction to youth, so I don't know who is managing this site or Foalcon Punch right now.

Third, for less confusion this Foalcon group should probably be renamed to something like "Foalcon SFW" or "Foalcon Lite" or hopefully something more creative than those which conveys the same message.

Fourth, if you have any thoughts about the three groups, here's a good place to put them.

What are your thoughts?

Wow. I just noticed I'm apparently an administrator for this group.

But I'm not one on Foalcon Punch, so I dunno who runs the show there.

5718839 I don't see the value in having three different groups. if they were more active in their differences(SFW/NSFW) then I'd understand, but doesn't every group have clop stories in it? why not just have one group, and have folders for the respective stories. if you wand to talk about a NSFW subject, put it in the thread header (Just remember that anthro or humanized foalcon is not allowed!) If I'm wrong about something, please correct me!

5718975
This is currently the only SFW group about foalcon, which (I think) means it's the only group that somepony with the M filter on is able to see in the groups list, the related stories links, the related groups links, and the groups a story belongs to. There are situations where ponies can't remove the filter for one reason or another, so this group provides those ponies with the ability to talk about SFW subjects related to foalcon. It also showcases that an E or T related work is foalcon to ponies who use the filter, which is useful because they wouldn't otherwise know that the story had foalcon in it.

5719394
This is a fine discussion, but it's OT, so we should make another thread if we want to discuss it further.

This thread is for discussing the three Foalcon groups and what we should do with them in the near future. I'd very much like to know your opinion on that.

5720195
Co-founder and Janitor-Admin here. This is not 'Nam. This is Foalcon. There are rules.

Feel free to discuss whatever you like, but keep it civil or the thread will be locked or deleted.

I'd consider inciting FiMfic-drama "non-civil". Let's not have the thread devolve into a shit-show of "you're not the boss of me" and "you're not my real Admin".

I'll second the motion for taking the support-group discussion to its own thread. Please stop cluttering up this one with meta-discussion.

EDIT: Flutterpony drama comments deleted

5719119
Yes, this is why the group was first started. SFW foalcon fics were being removed from the other main group because the authors didn't want "Foalcon" showing up in the "Featured In" sidebar. Since we want to be able to find SFW fics as well as the dirty stuff, we created the second group. Anyone who likes romantic fics involving foals but doesn't like the dirty stuff is perfectly welcome here, and we want them to be able to use the group even if they have Mature filtered out.

5720322
It might help if this group were named something like "Foalmance" instead, which doesn't suggest pornography the same way the Japanese "cone" suffix does. I think Flutterpony was trying to reframe the word "foalcon" to make it more socially acceptable for political purposes, but that isn't a realistic goal when nearly everypony on Fimfiction thinks -con means sex. It's deceptive about the group's intent.

That's the main reason authors were complaining about having their works posted in this group, and it continued to be an issue after the division of the groups was made. Long after Foalcon Punch! was created, I spoke with two or three authors who were very upset their stories ended up in this group due to the group name.

If we do want this to be a clean separation of the groups, shouldn't this one contain only the SFW stories, and the other one contain only the M stories?

5723688
...That's actually a good idea. It looks like I could rename the group, and then we could just purge M-rated fics out of the archives and watch for new M-rated fics being added. It would certainly fix the redundancy issue: general foalcon group, fetish-sorted NSFW foalcon group, and relationship-sorted SFW (or at least semi-SFW) foalmance group.

Reactions, anyone? Votes in support/against?

5720322

EDIT: Flutterpony drama comments deleted

Thank you. I was tempted to do that myself, but in my attempts to reason with one of our members I became unwittingly embedded in the chaos, and couldn't do it for fear of appearing biased. Derp.

5723763
The easiest approach to ensure that addition of M stories will rarely happen: put everything under a master folder, like this one.

[ All Stories (no Mature allowed) ]

Then make that folder unsubmittable. I can't figure out how to do that, but I know it's possible.

Also change the front page to be more concise. I'd remove everything before the rules list and put this instead:

Foalmance is for general audience stories and discussion on the subject of romance and relationships involving young MLP characters. M-rated stories and discussions are not permitted here. We intend for this to be a place everypony can discuss and read about foal relationships and relationship issues.

This is the only foalmance group which is SFW and excludes M-rated content. If you're interested in M-rated content, try one of the following NSFW groups:

Foalcon Punch! (contains only mature content)

Foalcon (includes both general and mature content)

First Sexual Experience (coming of age stories and discussions)

( then the rules go here, possibly simplified a little )

Let me know what you think.

5723942

The easiest approach to ensure that addition of M stories will rarely happen: put everything under a master folder, like this one.
[ All Stories (no Mature allowed) ]
Then make that folder unsubmittable. I can't figure out how to do that, but I know it's possible.

We could, but I'd prefer to let every member add stories to the group (I really don't want to have to check all the pairing details myself). I'd rather check every so often and remove one or two Mature stories than micro-manage all of them. Repeat violators can always be dealt with.

The updated frontpage looks good. That, plus a tweak to the rules to replace "how to link NSFW" with "don't link to NSFW" would about cover it.

I'd suggest we give it a day or so for other people to comment (or not) before making any changes. I'll poke the other members that have the admin hat, see what they think (and if they even remember they're admins).

5724060
I think you misunderstand. All I'm saying is we could add a top-level folder with the warning on it. That's the only purpose of the folder: it contains all other folders, and it bears a warning. Members can submit works, they just can't submit them at the top-level. They have to submit them to one of the subfolders.

5724150
Ah, OK. Makes sense, people actually have to sort stuff underneath the warning label.

5724247
Enough with the drama-stirring. If you want to talk about Flutterpony, start a Flutterpony thread. If you want to complain about another group's admins, go do it in their group, not here. All further drama-posts in this thread will be summarily deleted.

5724443

Are you acting up completely now?! You asked for votes by other members and for your information, I am a member of this group.
And I explained why I'm against that Flutterpony's group makes advertisements for StormHoof's group by having his Foalcon group being a part of the description here.

You say I shouldn't create drama, but then you go and delete every comment by me once I'm saying I'm not standing for a specific change and just for including Flutterpony's name at all.....
How do you expect me to react to this? Right now, you come across like you're banning every input that does not line up with your own or Trick Question's, so congratulations, by playing dictator here, it is YOU who is stirring more drama right now.

All I'm saying is that I'm against StormHoof's group getting advertised here, for the good reasons I named, after you asked for input by members, and if you delete this post again, then it really shows that you just want to go through with your own thing here and that you don't give a shit about what other members say here.
Once more, there should not be any advertisement for someone who treated Flutterpony badly here, because he is still the creator of the group, and we should not support one of his enemies. What is so hard to understand about this?!

5724512

Mentioning Flutterpony in a relevant sense is OK. Going off on a tirade about Flutterpony isn't. Explaining in a civil manner why you don't want StormHoof's group linked is OK. Ranting about how StormHoof is horrible and his group can rot is not.

5723942

Inserting unpopular opinion here:

No advertisement of StormHoof's group here by linking or even just mentioning it, not in the description and not anywhere else in this group.
He hurt Flutterpony, he treated him badly, did him wrong, kicked him from his group after being a good admin for so long, talked tons of crap about him, insulted him and was in the end partially involved in the conspiracy that led to Flutterpony's ban.
And this group was created by Flutterpony for these very reasons of StormHoof mistreating him, so advertising it here would be an insult to Flutterpony, spit into his face and do him even more injustice than what was already done.

INB4 post gets deleted again because unpopular opinion is unpopular.

5723688
I think renaming the group is an option, and might be worth considering. Not sure I'd call it "Foalmance" but if the goal is to further capitalize on the 'SFW' branding in light of the elder Foalcon group going NSFW, then a name change could contribute to that end significantly.

I'm not against it. I'm not against business as usual, either.

5718975 The other groups came about due to Flutterpony being unfairly banned from my Foalcon group while I was away.

5724620 just thought id mention I never banned Flutterpony. Distorted Flare did and is no longer an admin of my group. I unbanned Flutterpony after everything was cleared up and told him he was welcome to be admin. He declined saying he was going to create another group for foalcon. I have the pm's if you would like to see them.

5724802
Another timeline note: Flutterpony created this group before being banned from the other group. He didn't start this group because he was banned.

5724802
5724945
Perhaps Flutterpony was referring to the creation of Foalcon Punch, then. Or was he removed as an admin prior to Foalcon No. 2?

I could ask him on Discord tomorrow afternoon, but that's the soonest I'll be there.

5724620
I do appreciate you voicing your opinion. Very few ponies so far have bothered to.

That said, I don't think I can get behind taking action based on a vendetta, even if your heart may be in the right place. It doesn't make any sense to exclude a link to Foalcon when it has more members than the other two groups combined. The primary purpose of a group is to serve its membership, and providing them with information related to their interests is an important part of that service.

5725007
Rough timeline:
-First Foalcon group created, is SFW
-Flutterpony is admin in Foalcon
-Foalcon Punch created by Flutterpony, is NSFW
-Drama happens in Foalcon over removal of SFW fics by author request
-I create a Foalcon Censorship group, put the stories there
-Flutterpony creates a Foalcon clone, invites me to help, makes me an admin, I delete my censorship group
-Foalcon clone's existence causes drama, Flutterpony is removed as admin in original Foalcon group
-months pass
-Flutterpony site ban drama happens
-months pass
-Original Foalcon goes NSFW
-You are here

5725007

That said, I don't think I can get behind taking action based on a vendetta, even if your heart may be in the right place.

You don't need to take any action..... Quite the opposite even. Just don't include the other group.

The primary purpose of a group is to serve its membership, and providing them with information related to their interests is an important part of that service.

We are not a service. We are a group meant to have fun in it, to collect stories of a specific kind and to talk about common interests. We are our own thing and we have everything StormHoof has, so Foalcon-interested bronies can find everything they need in our groups.
We don't need assistance or support by his group.
Furthermore, StormHoof's group does the same as Flutterpony's group here, which makes it a rival group to ours and if we nurture a rival group like that, it will leech off of us.
In the best case, we lose potential members to the other group, by them being more active over there than here or in Foalcon Punch.
In the worst case, the other group gets more successful than this here in activity and renders our groups here redundant and we don't want to close down.
We should not advertise something that has the potential to weaken our group.

5725201

We should not advertise something that has the potential to weaken our group.

This isn't Game of Thrones, and we are not competing with the other Foalcon group. If we were, there would be no point to this group (as several commenters have already pointed out) because the other Foalcon has more than three times as many members.

Not linking to the largest Foalcon group on Fimfiction is a disservice to members of this group (also FP) who don't know about the existence of that group, because it probably has content they will be interested in. For example, the other Foalcon is currently hosting a foalcon-related writing competition. Of course members of this group and Foalcon Punch are going to be interested in that. They have a much more active community, as well.

Issues with the past administration of Foalcon have no bearing on its relevance to this group's membership.

5725300

If we were, there would be no point to this group (as several commenters have already pointed out) because the other Foalcon has more than three times as many members.

The point of competing is getting better than someone else. The reason that it has so many more members is just potential for us to grow and why we need to grow to not get outnumbered by that other group.

Not linking to the largest Foalcon group on Fimfiction is a disservice to members of this group (also FP) who don't know about the existence of that group, because it probably has content they will be interested in.

Content that we have as well. We can just add every fic from over there in our two groups here. And we can have similar or the same discussions and once we got these two groups on track again, members will ensure that those discussions will be here too. At least I have definitely planned to make the groups more active by trying to ignite discussions.

For example, the other Foalcon is currently hosting a foalcon-related writing competition. Of course members of this group and Foalcon Punch are going to be interested in that.

And we don't, currently, so users going over there because the contest lured them is doing the success of our group a disservice, because the contest in StormHoof's group is luring them away from us.
Besides, we can hold contests as well. CheeseyBurger's last contest saw a strong participation, even stronger than what StormHoof is trying right now if I remember correctly, and that he failed to bring the contest to a proper end is not keeping us from making a contest again and doing it better again from now on.

They have a much more active community, as well.

Not really..... It's, for the most part, as quiet as it was here during the last year. But since they have more members, they might as well have more activity than we have here in the future and if that is the case, this will stay if we don't kick our groups here into gear again and get them to be active.
More activity over there will also prevent our group from becoming more active again, if we provide our members a convenient way to move over there, because StormHoof's group looks more attractive to new Foalcon community members when it has more activity than we have.
Again, we should not advertise another group with the same topic. It will only hinder our group from growing by luring members away from us and, in the worst case, render our groups redundant.
Unless that is the plan here, to return the monopoly of Foalcon to StormHoof (which I'm starting to suspect it is seeing how determined you are about advertising his group and how much you seem to believe we can't become as big as his group), we should not promote his group here, in order to allow our groups to grow and become stronger and more active than his Foalcon group.

5725413
5725300

Just thought I should weigh in here. I'm not trying to steal members at all. As a matter of fact, I would love for both of our groups to get along and provide quality foalcon content to the community at large. That being said, if you would Like I can put up a forum in my group asking for members who aren't already part of this one to come and join and contribute. If you want the group to be more active you have to get in and try to rally everyone up. I did my foalcon contest to try to get my members active again. I did not in fact do it to steal members and detract from your group as that is the last thing that I would ever want. If there is anything you would like to know about me or our groups, please let me know, I'd love to help in any way I can. And I figured I'd let you know that Foalcon punch is already advertised in the main group. I plan on advertising this one as well. So please help me help you guys out.

What is with all the "Us vs. Them" rhetoric? What are you trying to prove? Whatever happened to working together? Personally, I don't even see the point of having two separate groups with identical functions.

Honestly I haven't even been checking up on the Foalcon groups regularly so that's why
I haven't been around to give my opinion.

Anyway... I think it's a good idea to make this group only about SFW content.
I'm a bigger fan of foal romance than foal clop myself and having a group dedicated
to just that kind of content appeals to me, and I'm sure quite a few others will agree.

I will some day make my own SFW foal/adult romance fic a reality (I hope) and I think it
would be nice to add it to a group of stories with a similar focus.

And I also agree a name change to make the group more distinguishable at the very least
sounds like a good idea. And yes, preferably something that would better remove the
connotations of -con.

I'm not good at coming up with names myself so I can't think of anything better than the few
that have already been proposed at the moment.

5725413

I've honestly got to ask... Why are you singling out individual people to justify a cutting of ties between two groups?

This is about the groups, not just yourself and some people you don't seem to like.

5725413
I don't believe your justifications. You previously stated in great detail that the reason you didn't want to link back to Foalcon is because of "how the admin treated Flutterpony".

We're not in a competition here: the administrators of this group, as well as StormHoof from the other Foalcon group, are in agreement. As far as I can tell, you're the only member here who wants this to be a competition between groups rather than a service.

5727088

Two groups with the same topic will always be in competition, if they want to or not. That's a matter of natural circumstance, only one group can be the best and most active one and no matter what you think about my motivations to make our two groups here more successful than StormHoof's group, if it is not and if all or even just most of the activity is in StormHoof's group, then Foalcon Punch will be redundant in its existence.

And the bottom line of what I'm saying here is, that we should not advertise the other group out of respect for Flutterpony, who founded this group, who brought the Foalcon community here so far and who helped so many people here, after the awful way he was treated in the other Foalcon group.
That's just a matter of simple respect for him and his legacy he leaves here and that is ultimately more important than leading users over to a group that offers the same things as we anyway.

5727586

Sorry, but 'out of respect for Flutterpony' really shouldn't be the core reason for anything like this. No one joined this group because they loved Flutterpony. They joined this group because of foalcon.

It doesn't matter what happened before between two users.

5728933

Do you even know what happened? You're not qualified to make any of such statements, because you have no idea about the events and weren't here when they happened.
A lot of users here adore Flutterpony and look up to him for all he did for the Foalcon community, and some even for helping them on a personal level and they followed him over here after the crap in StormHoof's group went down.
You're really projecting yourself on others here.

5728933
5729131
Please assume good faith in others, and try not to argue over what "other users" think or feel.

I have some information about the groups which was relayed to me by Flutterpony. In keeping with the TOS of the site on bans, none of what follows should be taken as intention to influence administrative decisions vicariously on behalf of a banned member. I am only including the following information because it may be useful in determining what the members of this group originally signed up for, from a historical perspective.

I'll be paraphrasing the information in my own words, and I will leave out any information that seems (to me) to be a value judgment. What follows is not necessarily my perspective, mainly because I'm just a messenger, but also because I wasn't particularly active in the community until this recent issue arose (unless you count the SFW Foalcon competition which did not materialize, and the story I wrote for that has since been moved offsite).

Historical context from the founder's perspective:

One benefit of the name Foalcon is that this group currently turns up as the second search result in Google for "foalcon", which helps advertise the group to ponies who are not on Fimfiction. (The other Foalcon group comes up first.)

The main purpose of this group was to make it easier to add and track stories related to foal romance, and most members who joined the group seemed to do so because they wanted access to a more up-to-date library with an active administration.

The "silent majority" of users might disagree with any changes to the group.

It may be more difficult to maintain a comprehensive library if we are splitting the stories between two groups (this group and Foalcon Punch!).

I'll respond to these concerns myself and share my opinions in a separate message.

5729454
Here are my personal responses to the points I just relayed.

I'm relatively certain that it would still be possible to maintain such external advertisement of the group if there are links to this group from the larger Foalcon and Foalcon Punch!. It is already difficult to tell how much the external advertisement actually affects this group's membership numbers, and I suspect the effect is very small or else this group would be growing faster than it is. One way to confirm my suspicions would be to look at the Fimfiction join dates of all of the members to see if any of the members who joined after the first few weeks of the group being founded created accounts on Fimfiction for the sole purpose of joining this group. It might also be possible to ask a Fimfic admin about how many hits last year to this group's mane page came from Google as opposed to from within Fimfiction.

I agree that the ability to more easily add and maintain stories is a benefit. But as I've mentioned before, I think changing the name to Foalmance and moving any T-sex and M stories to Foalcon Punch! would alleviate most author concerns.

I don't buy the idea that there is a majority of members who for some reason aren't speaking up. This thread is about as prominent and relevant as it could possibly be to the membership of the group, and it's been advertised prominently on the other two groups (even twice on the largest one). With the exception of Fluttercheer, every member so far who has spoken up has stated that they joined this group and Foalcon Punch! solely because they didn't want to miss out on any foalcon stories or discussion which did not appear on the larger Foalcon. Most of them have stated they joined it reluctantly, and would prefer all the foalcon content were in one location. Based on the feedback already received, I think it should be safe to make moderate changes to the group that don't obliterate the idea of foal romance entirely. If those changes receive substantial opposition afterwards, then we can reconsider them.

I agree it's harder to maintain a library between two groups, but my preference would be for this group to have a function distinct from the larger Foalcon in order to give Fimfiction members a better reason for joining and tracking the stories and threads, as well as a justification for including stories by authors who have in the past opposed their inclusion under the name "Foalcon". It's true that this group already serves an important purpose by hosting those stories, but it would help us to appeal to a larger segment of the Fimfiction community.

Maintenance would be a much larger problem if there are no admins shared between this group and Foalcon Punch!.