How to use this Writers' Forum, for writers

[Buster's Uncle]

Hi.  I'm BU, and I'm that wonder of the Civ family of fan forums, the only owner left standing who's actually active and engaged with the community.  -And wants stories and writers here.

You'll probably be interested to know that we have a flexible swear policy for dialogue in stories  - there's an easy circumvention of our swear filter I've explained in a sticky in our semi-private Adult Fiction subforum, and we haven't worked out just exactly what's allowed yet, but we're thinking of a merit-based scale for stories here in public; if the characters are cussing moderately severely and/or using ethinic slurs, it better be doggon good.

If you'll look at the left sidebar in your profile, there's a Group Membership line under Modify Profile that takes you to a page where you can join the Writer usergroup and chose whether it shows in your postbit (Make Primary Group button).  "Writer" appears under your handle in your postbit in place of a postrank group and SMACX icon there when you join, and there's a quill-and-ink icon.

Joining the Writer group allows you to see two hidden subforums, Adult Fiction and Writers' Workshop; the former where you can post writing most family-friendly forums wouldn't touch with someone else's server for a limited audience of peers who opted in as we grow the writers community -  Writers' Workshop  is for posting drafts and getting feedback and proofreading and such before going public - kicking around ideas, whatever needs a greater level of privacy and is definitely more convenient than PMs.

Enter Adult Fiction at your own risk - it's not anything goes, but most things will, and this being the internet, we're inevitably gonna get slash.  If you're a slash author, Welcome!; try to at least make either the story good or the say-no-more hot.  Language decent adults shouldn't use in public where their mothers might find out and be embarrassed is allowed, and now you've been fairly warned.

We hope to find a good balance between mature and family friendly in this public folder, so please work with us towards that goal.

There are absolutely no restrictions on genre here, so if you wrote it, post it; if someone else wrote it and posted and you read, be sure to comment - as the only payment anyone gets for entertaining us.  DO read, thanks.

We're trying to run a classy place in the on-topic gaming areas and the OT, Recreation Commons, so fairly clean language in public comments and on-topic areas, no trolling and fighting anywhere, and if you are acting in good faith, you won't get in trouble with us for anything if you have a good attitude should we ask you to tone it down with something.  I believe in respect flowing in all directions and talking out problems wherever we can.  Nobody's going to get in trouble for guessing wrong about, for instance, what words will be allowed unless we think they're just gaming the system.  The core of all the site rules is Act Like An Adult - arguing is great depending on who wants to argue, but fighting is not.  Conversation between people who disagree is best.  Meet us halfway, and we're golden - and want to facilitate your artistic expression.


I recommend locking your story threads - you can do that yourself, and no one but you (and staff) can post there.  (The original poster of a thread can also edit the thread title themselves if they decide to.)

As is the custom around these forum circles, a separate comments thread, cross-linked with the story thread, should be posted for feedback, conversation and comments about the work; whatever your heart desires as reader or author. 

(We do like to observe the OP's Call rule about thread discipline, but are otherwise pretty casual about topic discipline and letting conversations go where they want as long as nobody gets hurt.  I am at your service should thread surgery be needed, but you won't tend to check by and find me to have volunteered those services behind your back...)

The advice about locking and a comments thread is just that; advice.  The author may choose to leave the story thread open to chatter and keep it simple.

We have no particular requirements about genre and style beyond that 'if they say damn and hell and/or things in the swear filter a lot, it better be good' guideline.

Read and comment on my SMACX fanfic/GotM setup stories, please.  Most of them are towards the back.  Non-SMACX novel 2106 A.D. is particularly recommended, not least for being a demonstration of editing a sloppy forum roundtable fic into a real story we got serious about and are sinfully proud of.  It could happen here, too.

...One last important thing; this place is for you.  We're working out the fine details of how this community is to work now that we're serious about building it as we go, and your feedback and suggestions are essential to making that work well and keeping you happy here...

---

Enjoy the place.  Good to have you here.  Read and Comment and Write!

[Buster's Uncle]

Just a note that I used "slash" as a blanket term for porn/sexy fanfic, Many use it in the more strict original sense to mean same sex sexy fanfic. 

It's, like a lot in geeky fandom, from 70s Star Trek fandom, dominated by women, and fanfic stories that paired off Kirk and Spock became so common they were referred to as "K/S" and that got shortened further to "slash".


One thing I'd like to do here someday is compile a at least a cursory fanspeak dictionary.  One imagines we'll be getting much of teh fanfic.  Another project I'd like to see up would be a primer on Intellectual Property law -I had a lot of media law as part of my communications degree- and the related fan ethics.  I commend to your attention my "Bonehead mistakes, common to fanfic" thread, which is primarily flow-of-consciousness common English vocabulary and grammar blunders,  but also gets into fanspeak terms and IP issues.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay, and a point of clarification about the relaxed language standards in stories - the idea was to minimize the aggravation writers have to deal with on forums with a swear filter.  A member once had me take a word out of the swear filter because it's one of those terms with so many innocent applications (and not Mrs. Slocum-type humor that rests on the double-meaning; that's funny maybe once, and a brit sitcom used it up the 70s, so just don't) like pussy-footing up to the pussywillows, and so on. 

Don't do the obvious feminine use unless the story really needs that; otherwise we're not okay with it, and such use almost certainly relegates the work to Adult, not here in public.  We're also not real relaxed about the term's use as an insult-word for the same reason that it's inherently misogynistic.

A common man's name is also not in the filter for roughly the same reason, though it's the most popular vulgarity for a bit of anatomy; we just moderate if someone uses it the vulgar way.  Keep that in Adult Fiction, 'K?

SO - the relaxed standards and allowing filter circumvention is actually for those sorts of situations, far more than wanting characters saying "Damn" -which is not even on the filter, but jeez, don't wear it out too hard- and such.  Grownups are going to write grownup stories sometimes, and we're going to be flexible, but it's really about not making people censor innocent uses and mild cursing in their stories, not that we mean to solicit not-ready-for-TV material, but to remove some hoops and allow mature writers more freedom, just to be clear.

And on a final note:  I've been running a forum for a while now, and loosening standards anywhere is going to encourage some people to argue that there's no harm in cussin' and everybody below the age of 55 does it constantly and --- don't.  That earth has been scorched at this forum several years ago by over-enthusiastic members, and pursuing those arguments aggressively when I've tried to say no already is a very bad idea.  Gets right up my nose, it does...

Edit: One more last thing:  Our swear filter sucks for functionality, and I set it to insert bracketed comedy translations instead of rows of asterisks; no harm/trouble if you trigger the filter anywhere on the forum in public, in comments, conversation and even in your creative work if you so choose - but the Management gets sullen when the filter fails for whatever reason and members do not clean up after themselves.  Clean your own cuss-mess and do not leave it to me, please, because I don't like having to use my mod buttons on people, even for that.  There is an option in your profile to turn off the filter for your own browsing, but we do not recommend availing yourself if you intend to swear much in posts anywhere onsite but Adult, because you can't see when the filter has failed you.

[Buster's Uncle]

Questions and Comments?

I'm a strong believer in encouraging the community to form rules and customs for itself, retaining my veto and right to issue proclamations always, but YOU can make the rules within that limitation.

[Buster's Uncle]

-And do note that one ought to copyright published fanfic with a copyright notice on the published-here story, not for the legal ownership of hopelessly derivative work, but because filing off the serial numbers and substituting bondage for vampirism made E. L. James very rich from an altered Twilight fanfic - Stephanie Myers (and associated lawyers) are in no way offended; Meyers has said so...

[Syn]

May I make a recommendation? Fair warning that it might involve some techy nonsense. 

[Buster's Uncle]

Does not compute - but of course you may.  You may also disagree out loud with anything except I'd rather not ever again put up with another Site swear policy argument.

"techy nonsense"?  Your proposed recommendation?

[Syn]

Does not compute - but of course you may.  You may also disagree out loud with anything except I'd rather not ever again put up with another Site swear policy argument.

"techy nonsense"?  Your proposed recommendation?

I think it'd be really beneficial for the writing section if there were a custom BBCode added that did the following: Indented the text, and set it to Justify alignment.

Right now, I think most (all?) of AC2's themes are responsive and thus stretch across the entire screen. Not a big deal for small resolutions but that does mean text is fairly stretched out on larger resolutions (especially 1920x1080).

Most of my forum experience is actually on writing websites (roleplaying, or discussion of writing), and what always improved readability and ease of access for readers was employing something that set a narrower indentation and then also enforced justified alignment so that a reader's left-right reading became reflexive and less lengthy/stagger-stepped. This would make posts longer (physically) but it'd make them easier to actually read.

Basically, it's the difference between this and this. Which one do you think is easier/better to read? I used a random word generator so it's not actually comprehensible, but you get my drift.

[Buster's Uncle]

Total agreement - and of course way over my tech paygrade to implement.

Do have another squint over the compose box on the Reply page, though.  We have right, center, left and justify buttons, just no indent function I'm aware of.

[Syn]

Total agreement - and of course way over my tech paygrade to implement.

Do have another squint over the compose box on the Reply page, though.  We have right, center, left and justify buttons, just no indent function I'm aware of.

Do you mean the preformatted text button?

It does this.

(click to show/hide)

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Morbi et convallis libero. Nulla molestie viverra aliquam. Donec risus justo, accumsan pretium risus sed, sagittis tristique nibh. Vivamus sodales, nisi quis pharetra mollis, tellus orci auctor lorem, et iaculis metus ex in tortor. Morbi pharetra nec turpis ac molestie. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris semper leo et tellus luctus, a aliquam ex faucibus. Phasellus diam erat, ultricies vel tempus ut, luctus at elit. Fusce id lorem iaculis, dictum nisi sed, scelerisque massa. Maecenas sollicitudin, magna et ultricies egestas, ex nibh luctus eros, accumsan viverra leo libero consequat massa. Vivamus libero odio, laoreet quis elementum vel, sollicitudin eget ex. Vestibulum neque odio, eleifend vel tellus nec, mollis lacinia odio.

Nullam quis efficitur diam. Maecenas sed aliquet erat. Nunc elementum eu ex nec ultrices. Ut cursus rhoncus cursus. Pellentesque vestibulum eu nibh ut lobortis. Aenean placerat cursus orci quis porttitor. Ut eu mattis erat, sed cursus diam. Aenean tristique ante neque, eu imperdiet sapien dictum et. Integer enim odio, faucibus ut pulvinar eu, suscipit a sem. Donec orci nunc, euismod id scelerisque in, cursus nec neque. Curabitur nec turpis quis quam hendrerit finibus at ut diam. Donec sit amet sapien ornare, auctor augue eu, vestibulum lacus. Quisque aliquet bibendum risus, id accumsan lacus vehicula molestie.

Sed malesuada scelerisque scelerisque. Etiam urna neque, suscipit a neque ac, tempus tincidunt orci. Etiam quis commodo nisl. Etiam lacus risus, venenatis eget purus vitae, dapibus hendrerit ligula. Aenean scelerisque, urna faucibus mollis consequat, augue quam suscipit neque, vitae venenatis felis purus a mauris. Duis vel dui vel metus rutrum euismod sit amet quis eros. Aliquam quis odio feugiat, consectetur felis a, aliquet ante. Integer ullamcorper velit in est porttitor, vel pellentesque arcu faucibus. Nam quis vulputate erat, id ultricies leo.

[Buster's Uncle]

That's some known width bug caused by the box, I think.  The code function does that, too, and we hates it forever.

I'll go back and edit the OP to throw a justify around it for example...  Edit: ah, my mistake - no justify after all.  I guess I've never wanted to do that.

PM DrazHarLn and beg.  I'm sure he could hack the function you want in if he found time, and he's the only one who does anything but emergency tech stuff anymore.  I said please, and say so.