Mod note, re: Tags, f-locking

[rihani.livejournal.com]

I just went through and cleared out a whole bunch of tags that were cluttering up the tags list. For various reasons, but almost all of them were for misspelled words/typos. So if I could please ask that you actually look through the tag list when you go to tag your fic, rather than entering in your own -- unless you've verified that the tag you want to use doesn't already exist -- I would really appreciate it. It's time-consuming on my part to go through and remove redundant tags.

I'd like to keep the tagging simple, so some guidelines:

• rating (g, pg, pg-13, r, nc-17 -- this is how they are established in the tags)
  
• your name (so if that's not listed, feel free to add it)
  
• the team(s) (full team names, starting with the city, rather than nick names; these should all be listed already, at least for the NHL)
  
• players (full names, and no person a/person b tags, please!!)
  

This will hopefully save the tags list from filling up too quickly again, and then I won't have to spend an hour clearing it out again. :-) Keep in mind, we only have 1000 tags to work with, and while that may seem like a lot, when you think about how many different people write how many different players, our tags list gets quite the workout! In case you're curious, here is a complete list of all our tags currently in use.

Thanks everyone... if there's any problems or questions about this, please let me know!

One more thing: I'm heavily leaning toward making this comm where all the posts are, by default, friends-only. This is mostly due to a lot of "outing" of fic going on outside our insular little communities, and some other smaller issues. I'm mostly curious about people's opinions at the moment, so let me know what you all think about that, please?

Comments

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Personally, I would have no problem with the community becoming friends only if it's unmoderated membership. If I were a non member who, for example, wanted to read a fic someone linked me to, but couldn't see it and had to wait to be approved, I'd probably just go, "Fuck it" and not bother. I'd hate to see people get scared off.

Also, I think if people want their posts to be FO they'll lock it. That happened with theboysofsummer, and I didn't have to bother making the community FO (though I never planned on it anyway).

In general though, I'm not concerned with "outing". It usually dies down.

[rihani.livejournal.com]

The only reason the comm would ever go to moderated membership is if there was a huge trolling outbreak or something (been there, done that, had to clean up the messes more than once).

We'll see... I'm all for personal responsibility, but I'm also for protecting the insular nature of fandom as it should be too. It's a fine line sometimes.

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

I'm not too worried. I'd prefer the guys we write about not finding us, or reading the fic, but if they do-- so what? I can't shake my finger over the internets and make them close their browser. As long as no one brings legal action against us, I'm happy, and from what I understand, legal action is extremely unlikely.

ETA

Also, I think we can be 'quiet' without going underground.

[rihani.livejournal.com]

I disagree entirely about the quiet v. underground -- nor do I think insular = quiet -- but I'm also looking at things from the same perspective that I think about RPs these days, so... *shrugs* It's hard to know what the right answer is. As I said, it's a fine line sometimes.

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

What do you mean by disagree? That we have to go 'underground' to be quiet? Or something else? I'm not sure I understand.

I think that the default should be unlocked and locked should be the exception rather than the other way around, because I think some new people will come along and see insular as elitist, or maybe as closed off and just pass on by. I know that the point of locking the community isn't to discourage the newbies, but I think there will be some people that will be discouraged by this latest development. I, personally, really wouldn't be, but I do know I'd think twice before joining the community. I know there are probably some people out there who'll say, "So what? Who needs them," but whatever. If there's the possibility this may discourage new writers, I'm not on board 100%.

I'm not even sure 65% of that made sense. :/

[rihani.livejournal.com]

My point was that being "insular" (which I really think fandom is, and should be, especially fandom based around writing about real people... not something to run around and advertise, imo) is not the same as going underground, and honestly, neither is just being quiet -- being quiet is making sure we aren't Googleable and stepping back to think about the fact that other should-be insular fandoms are getting outed to the public in bad ways. You had these same questions over the whole thing w/the baseball fic, I remember you posting the very same question of f-locking the comm. So you have to know where I'm coming from. Even if you decided not to go that route, you should understand the questions.

I appreciate that perspective, and I understand it, and I don't 100% disagree, but I don't agree either, not anymore. Things are getting too easily accessible these days. And I don't honestly believe that a community with open membership, that states that the posts are by default f-locked for a reason, but welcomes anyone to join is going to give newbies a second's pause. A vast number of LJ-based comms these days are f-locked by default, and newbies join every day.

*hugs* I'm not sure I'm making sense at this point either; getting more than three hours of sleep might have helped the clarity portion of my brain. But, I get to go home now! :-)

[littlestclouds.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I think we may have a different definition of 'insular', because I have a more negative connotation than I think you do.

There's some stuff about this that makes me vaguely uncomfortable so I'm just going to bow out of this.

[rihani.livejournal.com]

Apparently we do; I don't see it as a bad thing by definition.

O...kay. Fair enough.