First of all, this site is in read only mode right now. This means that you are not able to login, post comments or upload stories. Browsing and reading should work fine.

I'm still working on things and ironing out a few bugs so until then, access will be limited.

I've already gotten a lot accomplished in the way of making the site more stable and secure and moving us to a better server. However, there are other issues that have been causing a lot of problems around here. I want you guys to bear in mind that I'm only one person and it's simply not possible for me to monitor everything that users submit. I've gotten so frustrated recently that I almost shut down the site permanently. But I don't think responsible members should have to miss out either and so the site is going to stay online.

I'm going to be cracking down on things around here though. I'm sorry if I seem harsh, but after spending the last 18 hours beating my brains out and trying to fix so many unnecessary issues, I can't help being frustrated. Even more so because so many of these things are avoidable if people would just follow the rules.

I'm going to make things very clear in this post and if people continue to ignore our guidelines, I'm going to start banning them outright without warning. I'm sorry, but I simply don't have time to follow after people who repeatedly violate the rules. So if anything below applies to your account, I suggest you fix the issues as soon as account access is restored.

1. This is a fanfiction site, which means that you are permitted to post stories, essays and poetry only. You are not to use the system as a personal journal, for advertising purposes, homework help, to share chat scripts or anything else that does not qualify as fictional writing. A small authors note at the beginning of the story is fine but I don't like seeing multiple chapters devoted to what a person had for breakfast. That's not what this site is for.



2. Again, please do not use excessive amounts of multiple characters in your words. What I mean is using 20 exclamation points and things of that nature. Not only is unnecessary but it causes a lot of problems with the code it takes to run this site. In fact, a person who recently updated used slashes to turn her summary into one extremely long word and it caused the entire layout go out of whack. I spent several hours trying to figure out what was wrong with the code before I realized what was causing it. If you must emphasize something, like the word "no", please do not use anything more than three or four extra characters.



3. I understand that not everyone has perfect spelling and grammatical skills. But please, do not post stories that are just full of errors that you're not willing to fix and particularly, please don't use netspeak/chatspeak in your stories. To clarify, I mean things like u instead of you, ur instead of your and so forth. That's fine for instant messaging but it doesn't belong in stories. I know it takes a bit more effort, but if you do your best to correct the errors in your story and type things out so people can understand them, you'll generally get more positive reviews.



4. Finally, please take special care when adding warnings, labels and summaries to your stories. It's important to keep things properly categorized not only so people can find them but also so that people who are offended by more graphic situations can avoid stories that contain them.

I'm interested in taking on moderators to help check over stories and make sure that the rules are being followed. You can send an e-mail to webmaster@lotrfanfiction.com if you're interested, but I would like any potential moderators to meet the following requirements:

• I'm only looking for people who are 18 and older at this point, due to the adult nature of many of the stories that will require moderation.


• Please contact me only if you're serious about this responsibility. I understand if you have to take a break for any reason, but I would like people who will let me know if they're no longer able to moderate or have to take an extended break rather than just disappearing like folks have in the past.

Thanks a bunch and I will have the site fully restored as soon as possible!

--Adora on 09/03/07 - 10:06 pm 25 Comments