GYWO's General Guidelines

This page will provide some basic information necessary for being a member of GYWO. If you have questions or comments on any of these topics, please feel free to email us.

Membership Changes

Renaming Journal
If you are using a rename token on your LiveJournal account, please complete a Username Change Form via the website to let us know. This will allow us to continue to track your progress without confusion, and if you choose the option that doesn't bring over your friends/memberships, it will allow us to quickly add you back to the community with your new name.

Deleting Journal
If you find you need to delete your journal temporarily, we do ask that you let us know that as well. It can be confusing to wonder if a member is really gone forever or planning to return after a few weeks. Incidentally, do you know about deleting_my_lj? It's a good place to drop a line if you're deleting so people don't wonder.

Members may choose to leave the comm at any time, though we would appreciate if you would fill out the Withdrawal Form and include a note stating your reasons—especially if it is a concern with how the comm is maintained so we can make adjustments if needed.

Ways To Get Kicked Out

There aren't many ways you can find yourself kissing the pavement outside our walls, but there are some. In what we truly hope is a needless effort, we shall enumerate them for you here.

1. 3 Check-In Strikes: If you miss 3 check-ins in a row, you will be kicked out of the comm. From our experience, a member who is motivated and committed to making their goal will remember to check in. Members who fail to check-in or communicate with the moderators to talk about why they will miss a check-in tend to have lost interest and are no longer working towards their goal with the community.
2. 0 Word Count by March 31: If you have not submitted some number of words by March 31, you will be kicked out of the comm. The goal of this community is to write year round, not in one burst at the end of the year.
3. Plagiarism: This is a big one, of course, and hopefully the most obvious. If we find that someone in our group has plagiarized a work, be it fanfic or original, that person is out and banned.
4. Re-posting Without Permission: Even with credit, re-posting someone's work without permission is a no-no. This goes mostly for original works, but also for fanfic, including archiving without explicit permission.
5. Sharing Website Password: Don't do it pls. :D We really don't want to have to make individual logins and passwords for everyone! :P
6. Severe Behavior Issues: This includes extreme belligerence, flaming, harassment, and the like. We expect there to be occasional disagreements and a few personality clashes, but we also expect everyone to behave like adults.

Things That Won't Get You Kicked Out

Conversely, there are many things that won't get you kicked out. Below are a few that may be of most interest to you.

1. Being Behind in Your Word Count: Excepting the 0-Count requirement for March listed above, we will not kick you out if you're behind pace.
2. Missing a Monthly Check-In: We won't kick you out for missing a monthly check-in. We will PM to remind you (up to 4 times for the year), but if you miss one or two (in non-consecutive months), there won't be any action.
3. Having Posts Rejected from the Queue: We operate the community on moderated posting and may reject off-topic posts. There are some guidelines for what posts are on-topic and for formatting written works, for ease of reading as well as ease of moderating. If your post is rejected, we will include a note explaining why—and how to fix it if it's something that can be resubmitted. We won't kick you out for submitting posts that are rejected.