Mod Post: On the subject of all those "Can you please send me a copy of..." requests

[seanmegansean.livejournal.com]

I've received quite a few emails and PMs about this issue and have been thinking of how to come up with a solution. Obviously, there are different opinions on whether it is wrong for people to share stories if they themselves didn't write them, and I'm not going to discuss the question here. I want things to be simple and clear for and in this community.

So this is what I've come up with (and I'm going to spare you my thoughts leading to these):

1) For the sake of this community, i.e. quick answers to (mostly fic) searches, I'm not going to friends-lock the entries, have posts mod-approved before posting, or disable anonymous comments.

2) If you are an author and don't want stories you've flocked or taken down for whatever reasons shared as documents, please tell me and I'll try to make sure that nobody asks for your stories in entries in this comm.

If people post a request wanting your stories as documents, I'll delete the entry. If they do it again after being told not do, I'll ban them.

However, I would appreciate it if I or my co-mods were the only people in this comm chastising people for unwanted entries. It's what we're here for, let us do it. Feel more than free to send us a PM telling us about an entry if you think we're not quick enough, or for that matter, send the person posting that request about your stories a PM asking them to stop it, but the comments in this comm should remain neutral and friendly, and I'm not sure that jumping newbies for (at least in their eyes) legitimate requests is the way to go here.

3) If you are a reader and are continually disappointed by all the comments to posts, i.e. it's not 20 new stories in the comments, but just 20 requests to send a copy via email, I suggest clicking only on those posts that have been edited with something like "Tons of recs in the comments". That's the only way of not wasting time on entries that are of no interest to you and the main reason why we have the "Please edit your post with the result of your search" rule in the first place.

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As always, if this doesn't please you, or you have better ideas of how to deal with any of this, feel free to leave a comment or send me a PM or an email at seanmegansean at livejournal dot com.

Thank you for your attention, and have a good day :D

Comments

[eva213.livejournal.com]

"What we don't want is a fic request that has a hundred people commenting, "Oooh, me too, send it to me!" "

Why? People will have their PM boxes full of requests. Isn´t this community here exactly for this? If the authors didn´t flock their fics and it´s OK with them to share or left LJ long time ago for unknown reason? Why wouldn´t be people allowed to ask HERE for their fics?

[vlredreign.livejournal.com]

Because if someone is going to post that they're willing to email the fic to someone, they should be willing to offer an email address where others can request it, or state that you can PM them with your email address to send it to. Thereby taking the traffic off the comm. When we go through and tag and add entries to the memories, it can be a pain searching through a post looking to see if the fic has been found, if there's a link, or what have you. It's being considerate to others that come to the site, and also heading off potential wank.

[seanmegansean.livejournal.com]

If the authors didn´t flock their fics and it´s OK with them to share or left LJ long time ago for unknown reason? Why wouldn´t be people allowed to ask HERE for their fics? No reason whatsoever. I don't mind a hundred requests in the comments to a post as long as the original poster edits their entiryt to say that they found/got what they were looking for.

That issue is only a collateral really of the original problem of how to deal with stories which have been taken down on the authors explicit request.