Firefly Fanfic

Alright everyone, I know it's been a while, but it's time for a little administrative business!

First off, this is a Firefly-only comm. Please do not post things that do not pertain to the show. I just had to delete a spam post, which made me frown. Your posts need to be about Firefly: namely FANFICTION dealing with Firefly! You are allowed to post ads/pimping for other Firefly related things on a limited basis, but that's it. So, for instance, "WATCH MOVIES ONLINE FOR FREE" posts will not be allowed. They will be deleted and marked as spam.

Secondly, I've changed the community status back to unlocked. I have always preferred this comm to be open to anyone who wished to read the stories, and so I decided to restore that aspect. All posts that were locked may be retroactively unlocked if the author wishes. I will leave that up to the discretion of the individual authors. But going forward, all posts will default to unlocked. HOWEVER, I would take it as a kindness if any posts containing Tamcest would be locked by the authors. If I see a post with R or higher rated Simon/River that is unlocked, I will first post a comment requesting the author to lock it. And then, if after a day or so it is not locked, I will delete it. But this will ONLY be for Tamcest posts, nothing else. And if anyone else notices a Tamcest post that is unlocked that I may have missed, please feel free to let me know about it so that I might ask for it to be locked. I'd appreciate it a lot!

And lastly, the status of the community has been changed to "Adult Content" because I felt there was enough R and NC17 fic posted here to warrant it. So if you see that little "this community might have adult content" warning, that's why.

Thank you and goodnight from your friendly, neighborhood mod! :-)

Okay, so thanks to many concerned parties giving me information in the earlier thread about locking the comm, we've managed to clarify that some of the more worrisome aspects of LJ's TOS are specified for photos/art, and not for text/stories. However, due to the craziness at LJ lately, it's hard to 100% trust in anything they say. So I have decided that no matter what we need to lock the adult material down. It's safer for the comm's maintainers; it's safer for all the authors, and it's just safer for the comm in general. However, I don't necessarily think that EVERYTHING needs to be locked.

So here's the deal. We have a script that will allow us to automatically comment on all unlocked posts asking for locks. It's been tested on a dummy comm, and it passed with flying colors. This same script will help us search out unlocked posts for deletion should it come to that. Basically, by using this script, doing a full-comm lockdown will be fairly easy and stress free, and it won't require a bunch of extra help from you guys (other than the simple act of locking any stories you get comment notifications on).

But just locking the adult fic? That makes everything MUCH more complex. That requires people to go through and check each month, evaluating each fic on a case-by-case basis to see if it requires locking. Sure, we can modify the script to look for certain trigger words like R, NC17, adult, CSI, Tamcest, etc. However, that isn't 100% guaranteed, and should only be used as a way to get us started. Also, even after all the past stuff is sorted, what about the future stuff? We'll need to have people continually checking to make sure the guidelines are being followed.

Basically, to lock the whole comm, we won't need much (if any) help. But to only lock adult fic, we need help. Serious help.

So here's the poll. Please vote honestly. If you want only adult fic locked, but you can't help out at all, then say so. Do not promise help if you can't give it. And be honest about the amount of help you can give. Don't say you can help a lot, when you can really only help a little, if at all.

I know I asked some of this before in the old poll, but please indulge me by voting again. And don't sign up for more than you know you can do.

And just to be clear, if I don't get enough of a response, I'll be locking the whole comm. This isn't a threat or anything; it's just facts. If I don't have enough people to help, the task becomes too monumental for me to undertake alone.

Thanks for your input! And I promise that this will all be sorted out soon.

[Poll #1042468]

Oh, and remember that "a month's worth" just means one month of fic in the archive (i.e. you might be assigned the month of June 2005, for example). To comment on them shouldn't take more than a few hours on average if you sat down and just did the whole month at once. At the most, it might be a job for a couple of nights in a row, I should think. This has yet to be officially tested, but that's my ballpark guess. And all amounts are negotiable. I'm just trying to get a feel for who can help more and who can't.

I'm planning on making a backup of the whole archive that will remain offline for now, and it will be updated once a week or so. I already have the framework for this in place, and a backup from back in May when this whole thing with LJ went down the first time. (Say thanks to the awesome kernelm for making this happen!)

I don't want to actually make a full-on secondary archive online until I'm forced to, as this will be a huge amount of work, I'm sure. However, I would like to try and reserve our name at the service of our choice. That way, should the worst happen, you guys will already know exactly where the archive will turn back up.

So, to that end, a poll...

[Poll #1036653]

Relevant links

The four LJ-style journaling services I know of so far:
http://www.journalfen.net/
http://www.insanejournal.com/
http://www.greatestjournal.com/
http://www.deadjournal.com/

An LJ comm made to help people who are planning to move. It has an entire thread devoted to getting people JournalFen invites if they want them.
leavin_eljay

Oh, and it goes without saying that I hope we're NEVER forced to move, yes? This is just worst case scenario planning. I intend to try and keep us here on LJ for as long as humanly possible.

I went ahead and changed the comm's security settings so all posts default to friends only. So whenever anyone posts from now on, it should automatically use the friends only setting. It still might look like it's set to public when you're writing the post, but when it goes through, it should lock down all by itself.

This does not mean we are for sure locking everything down. It can always be undone. I just figured that since the majority consensus seems to be positive (most people either think it should be locked down, or they don't think it's totally needed but won't be upset if it happens, according to the ongoing poll), it would be better to get started now. This way, if/when we start going through and requesting locks on old posts, there will be a few less we have to worry about. :-)

If, for some reason, we ultimately decide against the f-locking in the long run, I can easily change the comm's minimum security level and let people go back and unlock their posts should they wish.

More information on the proposed lock down and back up archive to come, so be on the lookout!

And please go vote in the poll if you haven't already. While I am obviously leaning more towards locking the comm down, nothing is completely set in stone, and the more people to express an opinion, the better I will be able to make a decision that's best for everyone.

In other news, the comm's new layout is finished! Yay! :-)

I thought that more people might answer a poll, since it takes less time than writing out a comment. I'm leaning towards flocking everything at this point, since it really does seem safer, but I do want to get as much feedback as possible. Also, the second question is possibly even MORE important than the first, as it will help me figure out how I'm going to go about implementing things if I decide the flocking is definitely a go. It's all hypothetical at this point, of course, but it helps me plan more accurately, seeing as locking down the whole comm is going to be a HUGE undertaking.

Please, please, please vote! And vote honestly. That is crucial. Even if it's to tell me that you hate the idea of friends locking so much that you'd leave the comm over it, I still want to know. I want as much feedback as possible, good and bad. It's the only way to make an informed decision.

Thanks guys! :-)

[Poll #1036003]

Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, on question 2, option 2: when I say "a month" what I mean is a month's worth of fic. Like, you'd be assigned one month of past entries, and your job would be to check and see what fic hasn't been locked and comment on the posts in question requesting that the authors lock them. And then maybe check back in a few days and see if it was done.

It doesn't have to be exactly a month's worth, either. If you felt you could handle 2 or 3 months, that'd be awesome! And if you could only do, say, a week's worth, that would still be very much appreciated. Even a DAY'S worth would be helpful! *g*

ETA: We might not actually need people for question 2, option 2. kernelm is working on a script that might take a lot of the work out of it. But please still answer that question honestly, if you don't mind. For if the script doesn't work, we'll have to go back to plan B and assign months (or weeks or days) to people.