Okay, this is something that's been a loose guideline ever since this group was created, but I think it's time we start enforcing it. It was phrased "We'd prefer you not submit your own stories (This isn't a hard rule, currently, but writers are likely to be biased toward their own work.)" before, but now it's "Don't submit your own stories. These should be stories readers enjoyed enough to recommend, and authors can be biased toward their own work."

I didn't really want to do that, because sometimes the author of a very good story might be the only one who knows about this group, and I was hoping everyone would be very judicious about it to only submit what they felt was their very best work. It seems like half the submissions here are authors adding their own stories, though, and that just ends up making it too much of a self-promotion group.

So if you have a story you really believe deserves to be in the group, find someone who agrees with you, and you'll be helping to spread the word about this group at the same time. We might make exceptions for stories that have pretty much zero comments at all, or such, but no more than one per person, and even then it'd probably be better to avoid. Maybe we can try to figure out a way to let people nominate their own stories, or something, if people feel it's needed.

In fact, while I'm at it, I changed the minimum age requirement to a less vague "one week" instead of "a few days." There's still too many stories that get added when they're no more than a day old.

1550688 I haven't submitted my own story, for that reason. I am worried that perhaps I am biased, but glad you guys are increasing the security. If you want some advice, I'd make a folder where people put their own work, which then gets recommended by others.

1550696

Yeah, I noticed that was the case for that one, and it's an exception, but there are authors who have added like 5 or 6 of their own stories here. They might be great authors, but that's just getting carried away.

1550705

I'm probably going to do that, but I'll wait for a few more reactions first.

1550743 I didn't know how bad it was.

1550771

When I go to the group's edit area, there's 35-40 stories listed with the author as the one who submitted the fic here. Plus there's probably about that many more amongst the ones that I simply can't tell anymore, because Taofan's or my name got attached instead when we had to add stories to the group all over again to move them between folders, so I don't know who added it originally. So yeah, about half the stories in the group.

1550986
Wow.

1550688

Well, I've personally always abided by this, so no change on my part. Of course, of my stories, there are only three I'd add. Two are already in the group, and the third is ineligible at this point. (Too many views)

1550986
That's one thing you can avoid now, at least. These days you can move stories between folders without deleting and readding them...

1551059

It's kinda nice that Cubic Zirconia well surpassed the 500 mark without needing to be added here, huh?

And yeah, that's definitely one of my favorite changes that Knighty has made. Every time I needed to bump a bunch of stories up a folder or two, it made me cringe to send out the wave of notifications, so I'd often put off doing it at all. Now I only send out the notifications when stories move to the Graduates level, and even then I do it in a roundabout way that keeps the original submitter's name attached (immediately deleting the one I just added, then silently moving the original).

1551426

Yeah, it is. Though I do end up feeling like there's pretty high expectations of that story. Of course, I'm behind on both my fics right now, unfortunately.

Being able to move fics between folders is great. I just wish the ability to copy them was in there, too. I often have to move a story from one folder to three or four others.

1550705 1550743
What about a thread? "Requests for views/opinions", or somesuch.

Or, no. We team up with the Authors Helping Authors group. We point folks there to promote their own stories, and encourage them to point folks here to promote other people's stories they like.

1551596
Depending on your layout, there might be a trick for that. I've got one group where I put fics in a folder that's inside another folder, and they show up in the top folder too. Of course, that only works if they're nested folders -- if they're next to each other, you're on your own.

1626130

I don't know, I don't really like how this is working out so far, already four stories added by their own authors since I started this thread and made the wording of the rule more definitive. I hate being in the position of deleting so many fics from the group just because the wrong person added them, even when they might be great stories. That's why I was talking about the "one self-submission per author" exception before, because most of them are new members adding one story right when they join the group. But eh, it is probably better to keep the rule firmer. The more rules and exceptions, the more they get ignored entirely.

I've been thinking about adding a folder for it, but I hesitate to just keep adding more folders for every little issue, so I've been kinda milling around indecisively. I really don't know how well it would work, but you can try making a thread for the purpose. The thing is, I think half the people who do it just kinda submit their stories to any groups that look appropriate at first glace, and don't really even read our rules, at least not thoroughly. I said before that if people think their story deserves to be in the group, they should find someone who agrees with them, but that just doesn't seem to happen. So I'm not sure how you mean to go about it, but directing authors to another group for their own stories might be the best compromise.

1626349

I hate being in the position of deleting so many fics from the group just because the wrong person added them

Okay, so I'll do it then. No, really. If something makes you that twitchy, then stop. Just be sure to let me know if you want to do that, because... I haven't been, and if you don't tell me I probably won't.

How about this: I'll add a big header-thing to the group front-page saying "if you're here for your fics, use Authors Helping Authors instead" -- with a link, of course. That group's explicitly for shameless self-promotion, so they're perfect for that. Then I'll sort out some promotional stuff, and maybe add a thread titled "the self-promotion thread". I intend to not mention such a thread on the front page, but maybe sticky it -- that way anyone who sees it has to at least have bothered to check out the forum. It can say something like "We're not completely against self-promotion. If you think your fic belongs in this group, you can add it to this thread, and if someone else agrees with you, they can add it."

If things get really bad we can always resort to vetting members, but that'd be a shame.

1630134

Well, there's also the complication of when to let them stay. I read a couple of them and was thinking of leaving one in the group just because it was different enough to be interesting, but then I started wondering if that would annoy the people whose stories were removed, or look like I was being inconsistent with rule-enforcement. It also just feels odd to remove stories that would qualify for the group had anyone else added them.

Mostly it's just finding ways to be indecisive about everything, trying to decide things like whether I should make a folder for self-submissions, or to just keep removing them, and if I should keep sending PMs to the authors when I do.

Anyway, I don't think it's anywhere near "bad" yet, just once every two or three days so far. Go ahead and try out a thread, and we'll see if it works at all.

1631664

I...was thinking of leaving one in the group just because it was different enough to be interesting...[but worried it would] look like I was being inconsistent with rule-enforcement.

I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, but this case is literally trivial. You enforce the rule and remove the fic, and then you add it again. If you genuinely like it and think it belongs here, then it does, and if you add it, then it follows the rules.

Now obviously, you can't afford to go willy-nilly and add back every fic that was originally added by the wrong person, but if you do like it then go ahead. If this bugs you, we can play good cop--bad cop about it; I can be the hardnosed guy who removes the fics that the wrong person added, and you can be the nice fellow who puts the good ones back in.

1636627

Well, that's the thing. It falls into this sort of gray zone where I liked it enough that I kinda want to leave it, but not so much that I would have added it on my own, so if I remove it, I wouldn't add it back myself. Eh, I'm sorta just overthinking it, I suppose. If people really want it in the group, they ought to follow the rules enough to see that that's not the way to do it. I'll probably keep sending out PMs, though, at least for first-time "offenders".

1637059
Well, okay: what fic then? I'll take a look.

1550688 Um, I have a question, regarding a story of mine which is both a novel at this point and a re-write of one of my earlier works: How, with the 'don't submit your own works' rule, am I to add it to this group? It basically fills all the requirements, and I really did put effort into this re-write. Do I poke a mod of the group to add it, or must I wait?

3546989

Well, we were originally okay with people adding one or two of their own stories, if they thought they really deserved it, but the people who did tended to just throw everything they wrote into the group, so we made it more strict to counteract that. It hasn't been quite as much of a problem lately, though, so you can pick one of your own stories to submit here, if it meets the other criteria for the group.

Honestly, I'm often a bit lenient about some of the rules here, and end up enforcing them based on my discretion as often as the precise definitions.

3548507

I can be a little too conscious of those guidelines, personally. I haven't added Dark and Deep, when 225 views since January is pretty low, because:
a) It's my own story.
b) The fourth downvote dipped it down to 88.5% approval.

I knew it'd get mixed reviews, though, due to the subject matter. It was my attempt at a fairy tale, and not the Disneyified ones, but the older dark ones where bad things happen and the protagonist doesn't necessarily survive...

--arcum42

I didn't do such things. I submitted stories that I had edited and help write, because they really 'deserve more attention'.

3548507 Ah, okay. I shall add just that one story to the group, then. I was just a little confused.

So, what is the status of the rule now? It's been a while since most of the discussion here, and I've noticed a lot more stories being self-submitted -- yet the front page still says, quite clearly, "Don't submit your own stories."

From my point of view, the main reason I subscribed to this group in the first place was that it did have the "no self-submission" rule. There are dozens of groups where you can do that, but very, very few where you can only nominate others' work. I think that is the key thing that made "Buried Treasures" so valuable -- and so, if self-submissions are allowed on anything other than a very exceptional basis, I'm not sure what the point is of this group over all the others is any more.

3758602 Oops, only just now saw your comment. Group threads don't send out notifications unless you specifically tag someone for a reply.

Anyway, the rule is still the same, just that there's not much we can do to prevent people from ignoring it, as long as it's possible for anyone to add stories. Many people seem to just join a bunch of groups and submit their stories to all of them, not caring about any specific criteria that each individual group might have. The best that can be done is to remove those stories after the fact, and I'm admittedly often not as quick about doing that as I should be. I tend to just do an occasional cleanup to all the folders at once, instead of checking each individual fic as it comes in, but I do remove those stories sooner or later.

3859457 Thanks for the very fair reply! I'd forgotten I made that comment, to be honest, so I really appreciate your going to the trouble of digging it out.

I don't actually write, I only read so I'm in the clear!