Ah, my vacation is over. I won’t bore you with all the details of my cross-country trip (I promise!) but I will share with you some of my email secrets. You see, I’m not computer savvy (hush, Jay!) and I failed to turn on auto responder. Actually, didn’t know it existed but now I do. Let’s just say that my cup runneth over when I returned so I shall attempt to answer about 78 of them in one fell swoop here.

There were the plagiarism issues, the story formatting issues, the “I was rejected!” emails and, oddly enough, several people complaining about the recent changes to the ToS. My mind went all aflutter. The ToS changed??? Geez, I thought, when I take a vacation big big things happen.

After my near meltdown at worrying my own stories were now in violation of some new rule, I learned an interesting little tidbit…the ToS had not been changed. Yes, rules are updated almost weekly to help better explain to users how the site works, what constitutes violations, etc. But the ToS? Hasn’t been updated since January 2006. It took awhile to sort out the emails and find out what was going on and as it turns out, all the rejections were re-submits. Bear with me so I can explain.

Once upon a time in a land far far away, there existed an HPFF with very few rules (not to mention very few fics!). As HPFF has grown and expanded and become THE place to be for HP fanfiction, rules have been expanded or added to or explained in more detail. Believe it or not, it takes a pretty big event to cause us to change the ToS. We don’t see a diary fic in the archive one day and suddenly say, “oh, let’s get rid of those.” ToS changes (no matter how small) go through a lengthy debate process with all the staff and then Jay will step in and make the final decision as to what’s going to happen.

Although you may not believe me but we do not like to change the ToS. It means hours of learning and explaining and answering questions not to mention updating all the FaQ’s and site rules and rejection reasons. We really don’t like to do it. But, as it is, to keep HPFF happy and safe, it’s sometimes necessary.

Now, the big question (and an answer!), why do we reject things that were previously ToS compliant? Good question and here’s the answer: fairness and equality. HPFF strives to be fair and treat all members equally. That means no special status because you’ve been here for eons. It’s not fair to tell a new member “You can’t have a diary fic” and they return with “well, so-and-so has one posted so I should be able to do it too.” Leaving fics on the archive that are no longer ToS compliant isn’t fair to the rest of the members of the site. I know its upsetting to pull your own fic or to have it rejected when you try to edit it. But, everyone has to remember that this site exists for everyone’s enjoyment. You don’t want to be singled out for review spamming and get in trouble if someone else is doing it just like someone else doesn’t want to have their fic rejected when another just like it was accepted to the archive at some point ages ago. It may not seem fair at first but once you think about it….it’s the only way for us to possibly be fair to all members of the site.

So that’s my spiel of my email box. And next time, I swear, I’ll put on that auto responder thingie dealy whopper!

# posted by timeturner @ 2:13 AM