The Book Icon Community

A few things.

1. I've been busy and a bit depressed, so none of the most recent entries are in the memories yet. I'll get to that soon, I promise.
2. We've still got this mood theme contest running! Enter! I implore you!
3. As we all know, the new Harry Potter book is coming out soon. Please make sure you review the spoiler policy if you intend to post any icons about the book. For your edification, I'm going to post the logical extensions of the spoiler policy in an lj-cut. This isn't going to end up in the rules because it's all common sense. So, unless you think you need the help, you don't have to bother reading this:

( Read more... ) This is all basic, and I'm glad I don't actually have to tell you all this. I'm only posting it here so that if somebody really does mess up, and doesn't think it's a problem, I can point to this entry to explain why I'm all upset.

I just want to be clear. If you spoil me on this book and/or start a flame war, I'll be pissed. That's not good for my health. This really goes for all books, of course, but popular ones get greater scrutiny because, duh, popular.

Thank you for your time.

See the nifty poll?

Since there really is no way to tell what percentage of icons are visible, we have to take that on faith. So I propose this as the modification of the rule:

If you wish to post here with a link to a locked journal/community (promising that book icons are in that journal), you must show a minimum of five icons in this journal. Additionally, at least half of the book-related icons should be visible outside of the locked journal/community. Entries which do not follow this rule will receive comments requesting an edit. If you continue to violate this rule, your entries here will be deleted on sight. It is acceptable, however, to turn a previously unlocked post linked to from here into a locked one after a period of no less than two weeks. Those posts, due to their age, do not need to be as stringent.

Any link to a locked post must be marked as such. Entries which violate this rule will be deleted.

I don't want to chase people around trying to determine if their posts fit this rule, so I definitely would rely on people telling me or Jazzy about them. You can always contact me by posting in my journal. As for Jazzy (dandelion), you can do the same, posting in her journal.

The only problem I have with the rule now is that the wording I chose is a little less clear than I'd like. Please suggest improvements if you have them.

Edit: Okay, it looks like everybody's clear on this. I'll update the rules in a little bit.

Now, first things first, everybody in that discussion has been polite to one another, and I thank you. It's not every community that has people who are polite even when they disagree, and that's really special. If you have no idea how wonderful that is, just take my word for it - this is pretty cool. *hugs*

However, it did raise a few questions which I think should be addressed here, so I'm going to tackle them in increasing order of importance.

1. This isn't the place to discuss the ethics of crediting. It doesn't matter if you have good reasons for not wanting to credit, or good reasons for wanting credit, this isn't the place. Most of the time, in other communities, this leads to massive dramafests, and I don't want it here.

2. Just about every icon and fanfic and fanart on LiveJournal, especially those which deal with books or movies or artwork made within the last, what, 75 years? is violating somebody's copyright. Yes, it is copyright violation even if you're not profiting from your icons or fanfic or whatnot.

The vast majority of us, and of copyright holders, let icons and fanfic slide under the rules because prosecuting would do more harm than good. However, there are exceptions. Until recently, for example, Anne McCaffrey did not allow fanfic about her work. Now she won't allow any fanfic about her work that includes sex, because she's a grandmother (I'm not sure why that's supposed to make sense, but whatever, it's her work, it's her rules).

I don't have the time to check up on every icon and make sure that the copyright holder approves of this sort of use. It's up to the icon creators to make sure they're not about to get themselves sued.

3. Icon creators slip. You're human, after all. It's possible you know for a fact that what they're doing is Not Allowed by the person who owns the copyright on that material. If you're not the copyright holder yourself, but you can link to a website where the copyright holder has clearly stated that this isn't allowed, please do so in a reply to the offending post.

The appropriate reply to this sort of post isn't a discussion on copyright law, or on the ethics of enforcing your copyright. It's either "Oh, oops, I didn't know that, I'll take them down" or "Yeah, I don't care if I get sued". If you say the latter, and the commentor comes to me to complain, and I think the evidence is clear that you could get yourself - and me! - prosecuted, the appropriate response to a maintainer's comment is "Done".

4. If you are the copyright holder, you get full veto power - if you can prove your identity. Since this would be difficult to do, I suggest that you read this FAQ and decide for yourself if it is perhaps easier to do that officially. While I would appreciate a comment to the offending poster before bothering the abuse team, you (being the copyright holder) don't have to do that.

That said, Brian Froud is apparently an exception to the rule, much like Anne McCaffrey was. This is his choice. Whether or not it's a good choice, this isn't the place to discuss it. Email him and complain if you dislike his rules.

I just want to say again how glad I am that everyone in that discussion was able to talk about this maturely, respectfully, and nicely. It does my cynical heard good. No, really. I just assumed any discussion like that would automatically end up on LJDrama or something. And now I must run, or else I'll be late.

1. You *cannot* disable comments on your entries. Period. I don't like it, it seems trollish. I don't know if you've done this before or after the fact, and I don't care.

2. I don't mind icon rants, in general. I've got some of those myself. But they don't belong in this community. If you really want to put it in here, stick it behind a cut and include an icon or two, or an icon request. If this leads to drama, that's your own business. You need to deal with your own messes. By this I mean, grow up and learn to ignore people who are irritating you. I don't want to spend my life searching for comment threads to freeze and comments to delete, and I'm not *going* to. You need to tell somebody (me or Jazzy) if a comment is very offensive. (On a similar note, I don't want people deleting other people's comments. If a comment really is that bad, and it's on your entry, you can screen it and inform me or dandelion and we'll deal with it as we see fit.)

3. Normally, when I delete posts, I follow it up by an explanation in this comm, or in somebody's journal. I didn't do that this time, and I apologise.

Wait, I'm not a righty. Hold on...

All lefty then! (I feel so sinister saying that :P)

The new rules are going in effect in a day, to give me time to edit the rules-post. They are as follows:

1. You can't post only a teaser, and demand that we join your community or friend your journal to see the majority of the other icons. You *can* ask us to join your community or to friend you.
2. Asking "is this okay" when it's not okay will get your post automatically deleted - even if, usually, the offense only gets a warning. I really, really, really hate it when people say that. Can't stress this enough. If you're not otherwise breaking the rules, I'll just ask you to edit the offending line out.

And we have the third rule, which I just want input on before deciding to put it into effect:

When it comes to off-topic icons, we're going to use our common sense, and judge it on a case-by-case basis. There *does* have to be a warning, some note saying how many of the icons are off-topic, and if most of them are off-topic I'll ask you to edit your post. Otherwise, I'll take the rule of live and let live. That seem fair?

Man, all these rules, they're just making work for me. Work, work, work....

1. I clearly have not been paying enough attention to the comments here, and I apologise. I myself have nothing against "You have to add me to see more than the teasers", but if most people, or even many people here do, I'll be glad to make a rule against that. Comment. Complain! Argue. Tell me what you think?

2. A reminder about off-topicness. We have a nice, clearly written list of rules which is linked to on the user info. No doubt there are many things which aren't covered there. The rules about advertising are very clear. There is no excuse for not knowing them. If you're in doubt, you can ask me, and I'll either clarify the rule or make a post asking for advice. If you would like to advertise something here, and can't figure out a way to discreetly work it into an on-topic post, you can ask me for permission. If I think it's related to this community, or for a good cause, I might even post it myself, save you the trouble.

I don't want to see "I don't know if this is okay...." when it's clearly against the rules. Those will get deleted as soon as I see them, because it's rude. We have rules for a reason, and they're clearly written. They're not hidden in a dark corner somewhere.

It's okay to say that when it's a grey area - you've clearly read the rules, but you're not sure how this *one thing* fits in. However, ads? Not cool, not without permission.

3. Okay, since I've just chewed you all out for something the vast majority of you haven't ever done (sorry!), I figured I might as well move onto a lighter subject. Links aren't the same as fake cuts. A fake cut (looks like an lj-cut...). Links don't. You're perfectly free to call links fake cuts, but I thought that I might mention that they're not, since I have the floor.

I was expecting this day for a while.

So, I've got a question. Exactly how much leeway should we allow for movies? To my mind, most animated films have very little in common with their bookish predecessors - but I have no intention of sorting through and saying "this animated film is good, this isn't". I don't want to spend my time judging on a case-by-case basis. I'm lazy. And while the recent animated film icons ARE from a film that's very close to the books (peter pan), other animated films aren't (the recent edition of "the three musketeers").

SO! [Poll #356564]

Edit: If you don't want those icons, would a sister community (for book-movie icons, and no, not the contest comm that already exists) be okay? If I did that, though, I'd want to move ALL the movie icons there.

Edit again:

This is a very close poll. However, most people don't seem to have a problem with it, and the actual yesses are outvoting the nos by two votes. So unless there's a drastic change by morning, I'm cool with animated movie icons. Glad to see you all, thanks for playing, if I upset you, please accept my apologies. When I get money, I'll buy you some paid time or something.

Now, I'm not inherantly opposed to those, so long as they seem related to our community (for example, I believe there's an icon competition community for books that have been made into movies... must talk to the person who runs that, actually...) but since I didn't see the connection, I deleted it.

I'd like input as to what the rule should be regarding community ads. My gut feeling is that they should only be allowed either 1. on the main page, when I've been contacted first (you can and should contact me by posting in my journal, I never check my email) or 2. tacked onto the end of an acceptable post as in "here's 10 icons, and by the way, go to this community!", but other people may disagree. If most people think another plan is better, I'll listen. Thanks for the time. Your friendly community maintainer-person.