Mod Note: Membership Changes

[dawn_felagund]

Hi, all,
I have made some minor changes to our membership requirements in this community. It should in no way affect anyone's ability to join SWG, post here, or comment here. However, in the event that you should have any difficulty joining the group, posting your stories, or commenting on others' stories, please do not hesitate to contact me right away. As always, I can be reached by email at DawnFelagund@comcast.net. Likewise, you may comment to one of my posts to this community or my personal journal, and I will see that the problem is fixed as soon as possible.

One of the changes involves anonymous comments. Anonymous comments are still allowed but will be screened, meaning that they must be approved before they will show in our community. This is an easy step to avoid, however: Simply log in to comment! :)

As always, thanks for your understanding and I wish everyone a pleasant week!
Dawn

Comments

Mature content filter

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

What do you think about flocking adult fiction?

I wrote to you once on that matter, but I made a stupid message subject - I wrote there "p00rn" there - and spam system of your e-mail provider put me on spammers list(rofl), I got my e-mail back with such notification. So I guess I can't write to you from one of my accounts anymore ;) I can resent this letter later, maybe, because it was quite long and there was a reason why I wrote it.

Making the story short - a teen (13) I know has red a smutty slash fic on LJ, though not here, and was disgusted. That's only one person I know of, might be more of them. So I thought we should select which stories are open for reading, which flocked and which filtered as mature content (custom filter, though it would involve more work for the admin, maybe that's too much). I would leave only kids friendly stories open to avoid such situations in the future. What rating is kids friendly, that I'm leaving to you, you'll know better.

Re: Mature content filter

[dawn_felagund]

I did the same thing with the "pr0n" email header...to myself! I sent a friend some naughty Elf pictures for a project she was working on and put the header as "Elf pr0n." She replied back to thank me for the pictures...and the spam filter ate it because "pr0n" was in the heading! :^D

So we're both silly. ;)

On the ratings issue, currently, this community requires all stories posted to do so with ratings and warnings, with all adult material behind an LJ-cut. I haven't seen anyone forget a rating in a while; in the past, all instances were "General" stories. I left a note for the author, and the post was edited to include the "General" rating.

We also have on our userinfo page the following message:

Material posted in this community may be objectionable to some or inappropriate for younger readers. In joining this community, you are assenting that you are a legal adult in your country or that you have the approval of a parent or guardian to read postings in and/or participate in the Silmarillion Writers' Guild. Parents: This is not an appropriate community for children under 13, and your supervision is encouraged for participation of older children. Please feel free to contact me at any time with questions or concerns.

Given all of this, I have always left the reader's responsibility for what stories s/he chooses to view. Also in our community TOS:

If you are offended by certain material, it is your responsibility to avoid it when possible or move on if you encounter it accidentally.

Nothing here should be posted outside of a cut or without ratings and warnings, and so if a reader opposed to slash or adult stories in general chooses to read one...well, that is the reader's fault and not the author's. :)

Also, f-locking on a community still makes the material visible to anyone who is a member of that community, so adult-rated material would still show up on the flists of underaged members. Custom filters cannot be created for communities. Given that, I think that requiring authors to rate and post proper warnings for their stories and put all material behind a cut, as well as requiring parent permission for underaged readers and reader discretion remains the best way to go.

Re: Mature content filter

[dawn_felagund]

Sorry for the crazy formating...hope it makes sense! I think I forgot a slash in a blockquote somewhere... ;)

Re: Mature content filter

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

No problem, formatting works.

But any disclaimer doesn't stop kids to enter the site. We might say that's their parent's fault or they can see worse things on telly, but we're not folks unaware of kid's psychology, are we? Some themes might have wrong input on kid's psyche, I myself feel responsible to what I say and do on the net when kids might be involved, no matter of disclaimers. Thus I feel bad because that kid came here with my help, though I didn't know her age when I gave her the link to archive.
If there was a flock at least anonymous kids outside of LJ would have no access to adult fiction and you would know about those registered in LJ (unless they gave not or gave false info of their age).
Don't get me wrong, you're very responsible and mature person and SWG info page is very professional, but there are curious kids who will not care of the warnings and in the best case have bad taste later.

Re: Mature content filter

[dawn_felagund]

Sorry, but I simply do not believe that it is our role to play parents to children on the Internet.

It is my belief that parents who let their children use the Internet need to be supervising what those children are doing. They need to know if their children are on LiveJournal and on this community. It is not hard to pull up an Internet history log or to insist that a child only uses the computer while in the room with the parent. There is a sad lack of parental responsibility for their children's behavior these days, and too many lazy parents want websites or screenwriters or whatever to play parents to their children.

The only person I am willing to play parent to is my Golden Retriever. :)

SWG is a group for adults or older children with their parents' permission and supervision. It has always been that way, and we are very careful so that people--especially children--are not exposed unwittingly to adult content. I do not believe that it is right to punish authors by restricting what they can share simply because lazy parents are not willing to monitor what their children view on the Internet.

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

Pssst,

"hullabaloo from next door"

What is hullabaloo? Sounds funny!

[dawn_felagund]

Hullabaloo is one of my favorite words in the English language! It means noise or commotion. Its close cousins--also fun words--are rigmarole and brouhaha. :^P

[sirielle.livejournal.com]

I would rather think it's native Hawaii language world or something, all of them are funny ;)