Hi all!
With the size of our ever-growing and changing fandom – not to mention the size of our ever-growing editions! – we here at the newsletter just wanted to remind everyone of a few of our posting policies:
Fic headers
This is the most important one. We can’t even stress to you all how very important fic headers are. We want to be very conscious of coding fics correctly, so that people can have access to what they want to see, and can avoid what they don’t.
For your fic to be included in the newsletter, it MUST be new, not a drabble, and list the following things:
Title:
Rating:
Pairing:
Spoilers, if applicable:
Therefore: if your header does NOT include title, rating, AND pairing, it will not be included in that edition’s newsletter. To be safe, and to give your fic the best chance of being linked in the newsletter, ALL your posts for that fic – whether they’re on your personal LJ, fic communities, writing journals, etc. – should include this information.
Please understand, we’re not doing this to be persnickety. Our coders page through hundreds of entries a night to compile a single edition of the newsletter. We don’t have enough time to search all the different places you might have correctly coded your fic, so if it doesn’t show up the first time we see it, it may not be included.
We also realize that this may not be the way you prefer to post your fic, and completely sympathize. But these are sort of the minimum requirements for the makings of a easy-to-use and well-organized newsletter, and we apply the rules to everyone, so if you want your fic included in the newsletter, this is what you need to do.
Ratings
We’re not going to be tightasses and require that everyone use the same, standard, American G-NC17 rating system. All we’re looking for is a single, easy-to-read, legitimate rating.
“Gen” works fine for a rating, as does “Adult,” or “Mature.” “Wincest” does NOT qualify as a correct rating term, because that could indicate a few different pairings and all sorts of content, so please, include the specific pairing AND rate your fic accordingly. Also, if you could refrain from rating things with ratings such as: AIEIEIEIE! Or: smoooooooooching! Or things to that effect, it would make our lives (and your potential readers’) a trillion times easier.
Pairings
More than any other element, you must include a pairing for your fic to be linked in the newsletter, because that is our primary method of organization. “Gen” is an acceptable pairing, as is “no pairing.” Two (or three) characters, separated by a slash, is an acceptable pairing if you mean to indicate a non-gen relationship. However, a list of characters separated by commas but not slashes is NOT a pairing, unless you also say “gen ” or “no pairing.” “Wincest” is NOT a pairing, unless you specify which Winchesters you’re talking about.
Comments, or: a little niceness goes a long way!
The most important thing to remember is that all of our coders are volunteers. The newsletter takes a minimum of two hours to code per night, sometimes longer depending on the activity for the day, with two separate editions being posted on Fridays. If something of yours was missed even though it included the necessary header info, it was nothing more than an oversight on our part and we apologize.
If you are going to leave a comment to a post, please:
1) Make sure your story/entry was posted BEFORE the most recent edition of the newsletter. There is absolutely no need to leave a comment in advance just to let us know it’s out there. We’ll get it. And if we don’t, THEN you’re more than welcome to nudge us in the right direction. 🙂
2) Check that the link you leave in your comment goes to an entry with the required header info.
3) Give a little thought to what you say. “I have a fic posted yesterday that I’d like to have included” is lovely. “Um, you missed my story” is not, so much.
Again, if there are any questions, comments, or ideas at all, please don’t hesitate to comment to THIS post. We at the newsletter thank you all for all your input and encouragement.
Thanks for listening!
-monkie and nan