A No-Nonsense Guide to What We Flag

Here at ShanniiWrites, we love transparency.

Let’s be honest: the likelihood is that you didn’t read the General Guidelines before you started posting, even though we recommended it. So let me try again.

This time, I’m going to try being a little more down to earth with you. If you post with these things in mind, there is a 99% chance that we aren’t going to be flagging you, hiding your posts or suspending you.

Of course, there is always the 1% because I’m not perfect and I can’t think of every scenario, but this should keep you on the straight and narrow.

These rules count as part of the Community Guidelines, so please stick to them.

Do Not Abuse Community Members

Here on the forums, we are trying to avoid negative confrontation at all costs. Of course, we love to debate and we encourage it! However, if you are unable to be mature and civil, we will take your ability to debate away from you. Here are some things to avoid:

  • No name-calling.
  • No ad-hominem attacks.
  • No shaming people.
  • No incendiary/provocative language.
  • No sharing personal information.
  • No harassment.
  • No threats.

We have included pronouns in the bio for a reason. If a user has included their pronouns, please refer to them by those.

No Hate Speech

Here at ShanniiWrites, we aim for a diverse and inclusive atmosphere. That is why we are strongly against hate speech in all its forms. Do not, under any circumstances, attack people for the following reasons:

  • Race
  • Ethnicity
  • Gender
  • Sex
  • Disabilities
  • Sexuality
  • Skin colour
  • Social status
  • Religion
  • Nationality

Please do not take this as a full, definitive list of topics to avoid. There are many other things which would be defined as hate speech, but this is a good go-to list. If in doubt, do not attack people for something they cannot control.

We do not tolerate slurs or other insults aimed to shame, upset or otherwise harm people for those reasons and we take matters of hate speech very seriously.

It is at my (@ShanniiWrites) discretion to decide what counts as hate speech on these forums. If you have an issue with how a moderator has dealt with a case of hate speech, please contact me directly.

Respect Freedom of Speech

Free speech gets thrown around a lot nowadays. So let’s establish what we mean by it here on the forums.

  • Members are allowed to have opinions.
  • Members are allowed to disagree or refute your opinions.
  • Members are not allowed to stop you from saying your opinion, so long as you stick to the guidelines.

If another member refutes your argument and follows the guidelines, they are within their rights. You cannot, then, launch into a rant about how you’re allowed to have your opinion. Unless you’re speaking on a discussion about having opinions, that is off-topic and will be flagged.

Respect the Moderators

We mods are here for your benefit. We love to see new topics and ideas! Please respect us and we will respect you. Please consider these things when you’re replying:

  • Avoid disputing a mod’s decision in public. Send a PM to @ShanniiWrites if there are any problems and we will deal with it.

  • Avoid spamming the mods’ PMs. There are very few of us and we will try to get to you ASAP.

  • Tag the moderators (@) if you have any problems. We will come in and sort out disputes whenever we can!

  • Please be patient. We might not be here to moderate at all times, so bear with us.

That being said, we are people, too and we are invested in the discussion that goes on here. We will be participating and you are more than welcome to disagree with our opinions just as you would with any other community member.

No Spam

We all want to get our thoughts out there, but we do not tolerate spam on this forum. To be honest, we don’t have a lot of space, so spam topics could clog up the system and slow us down. Here’s how to stay on our good side:

  • Do not make multiple story promotion topics. If you want to share your story, make one topic and bump it once a day. You are welcome to reply to as many story request topics as you’d like!

  • Don’t make another thread for a topic that already exists. If it’s there, contribute to that one!

  • Make sure that your story relates to story request topics. If a user is looking for a horror story, do not comment on their topic with a romance, no matter how good it is.

  • No off-topic posts. I cannot stress this enough. Keep your views on topic. If you have something different to say, take it to PMs or make a new topic.

  • All story links should stay in the share and feedback sections. No links to your story in any other categories of the forums. We don’t want to be bombarded with advertisement wherever we go!

Do not promote competition

Of course, you’re in your right to make a competitor website, blog or forum. And you are more than welcome to come and go as you please!

However, we run on ad revenue and our users are important to us. Therefore we do not tolerate using our forums to promote your competition. This will result in a warning and then a suspension.

This includes:

  • Including the links to the competition in your bio.
  • Making threads to promote the competition.
  • Replying to threads or PMs with links to the competition.
  • Sending PMs to other people to ask them to leave these forums and join the competition.

Of course, it is 100% fine to send a link to a useful blog post or article that you think will help the discussion.

Do not promote or participate in illegal activity

We do not take kindly to illegal activity. Please do not promote or participate in crimes on the forums. These include:

  • Violence
  • Murder
  • Sexual violence/harassment
  • Theft and plagiarism
  • Other illegal activities (according to UK, EU and US law)

You are allowed to promote stories featuring crimes. However, please make this known in the description. We also to not endorse stories that promote or glorify criminal activity. That means that your story is allowed to have crime and criminals in it, but the message of the story should not be that those crimes are good.

Any adult content should be promoted in the 18+ section of the forums.

Keep the Main Forums PG 13

While we are keen to offer an 18+ section for all of the more mature stories, the main forums are PG 13 only. That means that sexual references, profanity and other mature topics should be kept off the main forums. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Excessive swearing
  • Graphic sexual content
  • Nudity

What We Won’t Flag

It’s awful when people abuse the flagging system for the smallest of reasons. Any forum member abusing the flagging system will be suspended. It is very easy to sometimes turn rules against innocent people, so I think it’s important to establish what we’re not going to flag.

This is at the mods’ discretion. We have the last say on whether an offense is flaggable or not.

What we won’t flag:

  • Users accused of “abuse” or “harassment” simply because someone decides that they no longer want to debate. These are public forums and people are more than welcome to comment if they choose. Users are not permitted to moderate who comments on their posts. If it is your topic and you don’t want to debate any longer, ask us to close it.

  • Users pointing out the forum rules. There are very few of us on the moderating team, so we are more than happy for you to give one other gentle reminders about the forum guidelines.

  • People with controversial points. You are allowed to be as controversial as you like, provided you’re prepared for people to disagree with you.

  • Generally, a short, off-topic exchange of between 1-5 short posts every once in a while will be overlooked. However, do not derail the topic by having a whole conversation about something else.

  • We have no problem with stories that discuss mature themes. However, please keep these to the 18+ section. The main forums should be PG13!


I hope these are pretty self-explanatory! We’re fairly new, so there are probably a lot missing. Feel free to suggest something in the forum requests section!

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Not trying to be rude or anything, but here there is a grammatical error…

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It’s actually a typo, not a grammatical error! More spelling than grammar, but I’ll change it now haha

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Large Bump

A refresher is well-needed.

Trye that.

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Moved to the guides category

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Added a help and a guide tag :smiley_cat::green_heart::eyes::sparkles:

Bump!

This seems really useful.

Bump!

This is very helpful in manyyyy ways.

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I’m gonna bump this thread up for the new users :wink:

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I do want to keep this bumped and I also just want to say that this guide exists for a reason and if you feel as though you have been flagged for something unfairly then you should go to the heads so we can discuss it with you. I don’t like talking about or giving attention to trolls on anonymous forms and I know that just by saying this the troll will continue so I honestly don’t know why I’m bothering :joy: but saying such rude things about mods when it isn’t actually us who flag stuff (we leave that to leaders and users we just review the flags) is just wrong. We are here to help, we don’t have bias. We don’t just see a user we don’t like and rub our hands together drooling at the idea of approving any flag they get :joy:

Fact of the matter is, if you do something against the rules and it gets flagged, not only do the mods discuss it, but it will be dealt with accordingly.

We aren’t abusing power, we are simply doing our jobs. If you don’t want to be flagged then don’t break the rules. It’s that simple.

4 Likes