Regarding Creative Writing on WI

I just got this PM from MissGnomie on WI. Please read it through

Hello Arianna

First of all, I think it is very sweet that you are thinking of your friends and speaking up for them. They are lucky to have someone who is so concerned about their happiness.

I know that many have been concerned about the rules and deletion of stories when we cleaned up the section, but I want you to know that the majority of these rules (with a few exception) were put in place before hand; and this includes the rule of deletion which Smitchell (a former admin on here) put in place on January 19th, 2009. (I have given you the date to show it has been in place for quite awhile now).

The rule for deletion and following the rules stated (no romance, no violence, kidnapping, etc. to give a few examples) has been around for awhile, unfortunately the rule that was being observed by members is that if one thread had it and was not deleted, it was OK. Which is not true.

Those that were breaking the rules or had minor mishaps within the story were not flagged early on and the problem had grown much too large. The moderators of the section than took on the act of cleaning up the threads and making all of the rules more accessibility by compiling it onto one sticky instead of the multiples we had running.

That is the back ground on the issue, which you may have been aware of.

However, if your friends contact one of us. We will be willing to discuss the issue with them, including the issue of losing their story. I know it is hard for some to hear, but we can not copy every story over to them & it is good writing practices to have it saved else where. -- Again, we will discuss it with them and see what can be done.

It did disappoint us to have to delete so many of them, and some being so long and unique. But, the rules are in place to protect users and they need to be followed. This is no different than any other creative section or section on WI -- all threads must follow the rules of the site and section.

If you have any further questions or need something else clarified.. Please send me a PM

Thank you,

MissGnomie

This is the whole PM, regarding mine. As she said, you can contact them and they might give you your story back - if you can discuss it in a polite manner with them, I'm sure you have a chance.

If you'd like, I have a kind of 'guide' for sending them a kind PM. I can't guarantee that it'll work, but I can say that it will help.

• Be polite - Say hello, perhaps ask how they are doing. Do they have a thread that you like? Mention it. They're people too.
  
• Get to the point - Mods have tons of PMs. It's good to keep it >200 words.
  
• Could it be that I could, not I want this to happen - Don't command them to do anything. Address them as a plural. If it was in German, I'd be using sie, which means you polite. Look up to them.
  
• Understand that they might say no - That's something we can't do anything about. But accept it politely. Perhaps if you ask again in the future, you'll get a better answer.
  
• Show your feelings -I feel sad, my story means a lot to me, I would like to show it to my family = good. I need my story back, pleeeease???, why not? = bad.
  
• Say sorry - I don't agree with the rules either. But we're not here to argue them, we're here to get your story back.
  

That's all that I have for now. Be nice to them, they're people too, just like the Twig mods. Except way stricter. xD
Arianna

I found this very helpful, Ari, and I'm sure others will too! Great idea, posting this.

Thank you, Shadow

Hey, cool.

I love how the WI mods are really different from the regular users, they are elite. That's so awesome.

Yep, sure is They're actually quite nice, if you approach them politely.

ILOVEYOU(:

I'm gonna send them a polite e-mail, asking why I was banned, cuz I have an idea, but not sure. (:

And this shifted my view of WI a bit (: Thank you Ari.

Thanks so much for doing this Arianna, that was really nice

Thank you, Banana Muffin and Jade