LEGAL, etc.

Ahoy.

For those who don’t know, the purpose of this blog is to allow people a safe place to solve story problems, review story ideas, discuss ideas to strengthen characters, and all of the other things that go into creating a great story, whatever the medium. That creates a few problems, as you might imagine, and so I’ve devised a few impromptu solutions, given the fact that this site is currently hosted through WordPress.

1. First and foremost, we need to ensure that anyone who posts a story here is the sole owner of that story, whatever state it may be in at that time. To be honest, story-theft is a lot more rare than you’d guess, as most people who are passionate about telling a story for money (and there’s not much money in it to begin with) are also pretty passionate about the stories they want to tell. Still, it can happen, so whenever anyone makes a front page post (FPP) of a story they’re working on, it will be credited to them as they would like to be credited, with the time stamp on the post proving the moment the story was posted. ALL STORIES ARE THE SOLE PROPERTY OF THEIR CREATORS.

2. The comments and suggestions made by visitors, which ideally will be the lifeblood of this site, cannot be so easily dealt with. If one commenter mentions a skeleton of an idea, but one which works, and six other commentors run with it to flesh it out, well, you see the problem. I want this to be a community, but if no one can trust one another to appreciate their contributions, it will fail. Thus, IT IS THE DUTY OF THE OWNER OF THE STORY TO PROPERLY ACKNOWLEDGE ANY SUGGESTIONS WHICH MAKE THEIR WAY INTO THE FINAL STORY. What is proper, of course, will be different depending on circumstances and medium. If you are unsure, you can always check with whoever made the suggestion. As a corollary, if you comment anonymously, you cannot expect to be acknowledged.

3. The nature of this site requires constructive criticism. Nothing more, and nothing less. If you can’t be critical, at least aim to be specific in your praise. If you can’t be constructive, then your comments will be deleted. THE MANAGERS OF THE SITE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO DELETE ANY COMMENT NOT MADE IN THE EFFORT OF COMMUNITY AND GOOD CONVERSATION. To put it more clearly: DON’T BE A DICK.

4. Spam once, and your comment will be deleted post-haste. Spam twice or more, and all of your links will be re-routed to your chief competitor. DON’T SPAM.

5. In the interest of not having to delete any FPP’s at all, for the time being, ALL PROPOSED FPP’S SHALL BE E-MAILED TO STORYHIVE@GMAIL.COM to provide quality control for the time being. This quality control is not to weed out what is particularly worthwhile and not, but to route out the spam and the hate. Hopefully, this policy can change very shortly. BE SURE TO EXAMINE THE TEMPLATE FIRST!

6. Ideal FPP’s will not just present a story, but also a problem that the author is having with the story. If you simply present a story with “What do you think?” at the end of it, it won’t lead to the most helpful answers. THE MORE SPECIFIC THE QUESTIONS, THE MORE VALUABLE THE ANSWERS.

7. We aim to be egalitarian here, and as such, Non-Fiction is equal to Fiction is equal to Screenplay is equal to Graphic Novel is equal to Fan-Fic is equal to Slash-Fic. Anything can be art if you care enough about it to see it through to the best possible end that you can. As such, IF YOU ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT IT, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO POST IT. But to help people along, ALWAYS TAG YOUR GENRE. For the moment, this means that when you email a post, include the name you want to be credited, as well as any genre tags.

8. Likewise, commentors, DO NOT BE SNOBS ABOUT GENRE OR MEDIUM. If it’s not your thing, move on. If you have expertise in one particular area, however, feel free to run wild (See Rule 3, though).

9. Finally, this site is hosted on WordPress until it becomes enough of a thing for me to move it to its own site. If and when this happens, expect a change in user policy which will allow me to not have to act as a gatekeeper anymore. The site is on WordPress because livejournal is irritatingly hard to read, and because for some reason I thought Blogger was owned by Newscorp a la MySpace. While this is not the case, and I like Google a lot, I also just think WordPress looks better.