Community Guidelines
The Community Guidelines contains some general rules and principles for your behaviour on the Site. It is a fundamental requirement of your membership that you should comply with these rules and principles. If you fail to comply with the Community Guidelines, it may result in us terminating your use of the Site and/or could lead us to declare that you have forfeited any entitlement that you may otherwise have had to remuneration under the various remuneration policies.
Treating Others With Respect
This Site is all about creating and maintaining a community where likeminded individuals are able freely to express their creativity, to help others improve their skills through constructive criticism and to enjoy the works that others have created. We expect our members to treat each other with respect and courtesy at all times. That does not mean you should not express your views about another member's works, or to rate Content depending on your own view of it, but we would ask that you always do this in a constructive and non-discriminatory or threatening way. The following are examples of behaviour that will not be tolerated on the Site:
- Harassing or threatening behaviour or other behaviour that causes or is likely to cause upset to any other members
- Racial, sexual, gender, national or any other prejudice
- Abuse or insults of any form
- Invasion of privacy, including making other community members' details available to third parties
- Spam or other similar unwanted communications
- Passing off other users' Content as your own
Any failure to comply with the above may result in your immediate suspension from the Site.
Starting New Content
When you submit a new chapter, you must ensure that the overall storyline is maintained in a logical way. Please therefore do not submit chapters that, for example, have nothing to do with the immediately preceding chapters or do not logically form part of the storyline. We recognise that a new storyline may at any time be created and it is not the intention of this requirement to stop you from taking a story in a completely different direction; to the contrary, we encourage new ideas and creativity... that is what the Site is all about! Please use your common sense and help us create the best stories in the world!
Building on Existing Content
You are allowed to build on any Content submitted by other members, however you are not allowed to submit as your own work, any Content that was submitted previously by another member where you have not made any substantial changes to that Content. By this we do not mean the number of changes you have made should be substantial; rather substantial changes would have the effect of changing the storyline substantially but still retaining some of the Content submitted by the other user. As an example, if you simply correct grammar or change the structure of existing Content, we would not consider it to be a substantial change (if you want to make suggestions about improvements to any Content, you should contact the member who submitted it). On the other hand, if you were to change the story or events in any Content, that could be a substantial change.
We know it is not possible to have hard and fast rules as to what will be a "substantial change" and that everyone has a different style of writing. At the end of the day, if there is a dispute about this, we will take a view and have the final say. If you submit Content that is ultimately found to be in breach of this rule, we reserve the right to credit the original author(s) of the Content in all respects (including as authors and for any remuneration due under the remuneration policies for that Content).
Rating Content
You have the ability to rate the quality of the Content submitted by others, based on your own views of the quality of the writing, story development, etc. Rating Content is a very important part of the Site because it gives readers an idea of what stories they might like to read. Your rating also helps the community to recognise talented writers, as a writer's overall rating is determined by the individual ratings of all chapters he/she has published.
While we appreciate that each user will have different and personal views on what is good and what is not, we do expect you to rate all Content fairly and without spite or malice. An example of an inappropriate rating would be to give a low rating to Content submitted by another member because you do not like that member or because they have rated your Content low, or to rate Content high simply because it was contributed by your friends, family, etc.
Classifying and Flagging Content
All Content can be classified by genre and based on the subject matter until the chapter is published. At the same time, you can also flag the Content of any chapter (e.g. if it contains material of an adult or violent nature).
When you publish chapters, we expect you to classify the Content of that chapter fairly and without spite or malice. Having said that, we appreciate that in some cases it won't always be clear what genre(s) to pick, and we ask you to do your best!
You are also expected to flag content with as many flags as may be appropriate. If you are unsure, it may be better to flag it, when you consider that unflagged content is available to anyone, including young children.
Reporting Content and Users
If you feel that chapters or members of our community are in breach of the Terms and Conditions or the Community Guidelines, you should report the chapter or user by clicking on the "report chapter" button in the chapter details menu or the "report user" button that is available on every users' public profile.
However before you take any action, please take a moment to consider whether what you are objecting to may not really be a breach of the rules of this Site. What is inappropriate to one person is not always going to be inappropriate to another. We would ask you to adopt a common-sense approach before contacting us. The fact that you may not like any particular Content does not mean it is inappropriate or in breach of the rules of the Site. You should also remember that we encourage our members to be creative and express their views and opinions. You may not always agree with these but that does not make something inappropriate. If Content does not violate our Terms and Conditions, then in all likelihood it is not inappropriate and instead of telling us about it, you might be better off ignoring it and reading other Content.