Animation Source Forums

Now, before I begin, I'd like to remind everyone right away that this is mostly just to have an outlet of expression. It is not meant to snipe at any one person or group of people, and it certainly isn't intended to attack or hurt. I'm just concerned that this has continued and I think it would benefit the whole of the community if it was changed. A lovely side effect of it would be if this did help in some way to make things better, and I'd like that a lot.


I've noticed that now, as well as in the past when I was still a moderator, that sometimes very little information is given regarding why fan works have been deactivated and what should be changed to fix it. I'm sure it can't just be myself who's noticed this and has been troubled by it. For instance, I will share something recent in regards to one of my own fan characters. As per usual, I got the deactivation pm. A majority of the writing in those pms are automatically generated, and the specific reason your character was deactivated can be typed in by the moderator. (Keep in mind, this is a pretty large box, and I personally never found the limit of characters it can fit.) Here's the portion that the moderator entered as the reason my character was deleted:

Needs a personality

Now, that reason itself is pretty self-explanatory. However, at the time, I was unaware that the rule had been changed and a description of the character's personality was now required in the profile. You can see why I would be a little confused. Another character was deactivated and this was the reason the moderator gave in the box:

Needs a longer history

Now, that should be pretty self-explanatory, but it's not. The reason: there's no official length requirement for the history that is widely known or has been publicized as far as I've been able to find. This is an issue because:

1. The rule is subjective. One person can interpret it one way and another can think something completely different.
2. The moderation is not uniform because the rule is subjective.
3. It will confuse the members as it did me. With no official requirement, we can't really be certain we're constructing our profiles correctly and that they won't be deactivated as soon as they're sent in.

Unfortunately, I have no recent examples from other fan activities, but I can recall some of the replies to deactivation pms I saw in the moderator pm box. In short, I remember seeing some of those pms asking for help because they didn't understand what was wrong and the moderator pm (quoted below in italics like they always are when sent from the site, or quoted by the user him/herself) offered only a few words like those above as reasons for deactivation.

The point I'm trying to make with all of this is that perhaps just those few words of what's wrong aren't enough. Generally when a member gets one of these pms, they genuinely want to fix things and make it so that it does follow the rules, because they do want to participate in the community. But it's a little hard to fix things when it feels like you don't have any help, especially when your reply to that pm asking for help is left unanswered, as I've seen.

So here's what I'm suggesting to try and help things.

1. I believe there should be a rule page displayed before character submission, much like the one displayed before anything else can be submitted, with concrete and descriptive rules that are agreed on by all moderators and cannot be left solely up to interpretation. This way, members know what the concrete rules are and aren't left in doubt, or given an excuse not to know what is and is not acceptable. This is long overdue, in my opinion.

2. For all fan activity section mods: I think it would be very helpful if, when posting the reason for deactivation, you could also include some suggestions or friendly, helpful advice to correct the problem, or especially if the deactivation is regarding a rule that has been changed, information about the rule change and what is and is no longer acceptable. As I stated before, I never found the character limit for that box, and though it doesn't look as nicely when added to the format of that automatically generated pm, I think this would help greatly to decrease misunderstandings. If you need examples, I believe I posted something similar geared toward site contest moderation in the tutorial section on the external forums back when I was still a moderator. Assuming it's still there, it had template reasons for deactivation to be posted in the pm and edited on a case-by-case basis, and each was geared toward some of the most commonly broken rules with explanations about what the rule meant and what could be done to fix it. When I implemented this myself, it seemed to help a great deal in the contest section and I got fewer confused replies about what was wrong and how to fix it.

3. Again for all fan-activity mods: When you get a pm asking for help especially on something you deactivated, please don't ignore it. Again, I saw this a while back too, so this isn't something just developing recently and I certainly don't want to point fingers - I've been guilty of it too and I'm ashamed to admit it. But when you're being asked for help, or even if you're just being asked for clarification or to help someone understand. It's rude to ignore someone and it's part of a moderators job to help out and answer questions, or clarify when the time is right for it. If you don't think you can handle the situation personally, ask another mod in that section for help or to handle it for you, or better, go to your lead mod for help. Don't just leave it unsettled though - it can get very frustrating for a user when they aren't getting feedback of any sort after pming you. Also remember that sometimes pms meant for you can wind up in the moderator pm box.

4. For members: Be informed! Ask what's wrong with your stuff, why, and how to fix it if it's not clarified well. Don't be afraid to ask for help if you don't understand. EDIT: But always remember to be polite and courteous! After all, why would someone want to help you if you're not being nice to them when you ask for it? Don't assume the offensive straight away.


For the final time, I'd like to state that this isn't meant to attack anyone, hurt feelings, or offend, nor is it aimed at any one person in particular. I hope that it will be able to do some good, because that's really all I intended.

I agree. A lot of mods seem to go by their own rules and the ones we have up are quite vague. I've been told that history is supposed to be 5 lines, but sometimes characters are deactivated with a PM saying it needs to be 7.

Added in something I forgot the first time around as far as suggestions for members. I didn't remove anything, however.

Pretty much in agreement with Aniu here.

Whenever I deactivate anything I try to point out what's wrong in a way which will help the person re-submit it so it'll be accepted. Whether that's by explaining something or sending them a link to a topic etc. which will help them.

I think it should probably be a mod rule to add proper information when deactivating something.
So that messages like "History too short" are a thing of the past.
A good way of sorting that, I found, was to add questions someone viewing the character may have, so the mod message would be;
"The history is too short. Where was the character born? How did they meet X? Where do they live now? How did they lose their parents?"
As an example.

Agreed. I once asked what's so bad about photo backgrounds in recolors, if the main point - recolor of BALTO characters is matched.
Guess what?
I didn't get a reply.

I completely agree. For those mods that (and it has happened to me several times before) just say 'history too short', it ges me angry. I literally wrote two paragraphs for one of my characters and they say it's too short? Nonsense.