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Archive-name: rec-arts-anime-creative-intro.txt
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Last-modified: 2005/02/28 14:04:14
Version: 1.16
URL: http://www.robomod.net/rec.arts.anime.creative/


Welcome to rec.arts.anime.creative

Copyright 1996-2005, Brian Edmonds
$Revision: 1.16 $ $Date: 2005/02/28 14:04:14 $

The latest version of this document can be found at
* http://www.robomod.net/rec.arts.anime.creative/
* post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
the subject (without the quotes): "send file: guidelines.txt"

Any inquiries, comments or suggestions should be sent to the group
moderators at raac-mo...@robomod.net.
_________________________________________________________________

Contents

* Introduction
* Charter
+ Interpretation: fanfic
+ Interpretation: artwork
+ Interpretation: other
* How to submit a post
* What to expect after posting
* Archive site
* How you can help
_________________________________________________________________

Introduction

The newsgroup rec.arts.anime.creative (RAAC) was created in May 1993
as rec.arts.anime.stories. In March 1996 it was renamed to its current
name to better reflect the content of the group (ie. not just
stories).

No introduction would be complete without a big tip of the hat to
Megazone who put in much work from the early 1990s on in developing
both the fanfic archive and newsgroup. Zoner retired in the summer of
1996, and while he's not gone from anime or the net, we'll miss his
energy on RAAC. (Actually we're hoping he'll have more time to work on
Hopelessly Lost and other Eyrie stuff now...)
_________________________________________________________________

Charter

From the newgroup creation message as stored at ftp.isc.org:

This moderated newsgroup serves as a place for the posting of fan
created works. For any anime or manga related fan work including
stories, parodies, original scripts written by fans, poems, song
lyrics, and original artwork. Only the actual fan works will be posted
here -- any discussion regarding these works should be posted to
rec.arts.anime.fandom.

Interpretation: fanfic

Fan fiction falls into one of these categories:
1. An original story within one or more established commercial
series, sometimes with original characters.
2. An original story within an original world, but with an anime
style or feel. Considerable latitude will be given in determining
just what "anime style or feel" is.
3. Poetry (including song lyrics), either directly about, or inspired
by an anime series or character.
4. Parody of either a commercial series or other fanfic. In the
latter case, some sensitivity is advised in not being too
caustic...

Scripts or song lyrics from commercial works are not covered in the
above, though limited (and acknowledged) borrowing from such is
acceptable under "fair use". Plagiarism of commercial or other fan
works is unacceptable in any form.

Interpretation: artwork

Fan artwork is either an original rendering of characters and/or
situations from a commercial series, or a completely original work in
manga style. Again, considerable latitude will be given in determining
just what constitutes "manga style".

Some use of commercially available images may be acceptable for parody
purposes if the parody element makes a significant contribution to the
work. This decision will be made on a case by case basis by the
moderation team or its appointed representative. In any case, straight
scans of commercial images will never be considered acceptable.

Interpretation: other

Announcements related to fan projects are also welcome. This can
include pointers to fan works ftp/web sites and mailing lists. Most
followups to posted works should be sent to rec.arts.anime.fandom, but
carefully prepared reviews and guides to collections of works will
likely be accepted on RAAC.
_________________________________________________________________

How to submit a post

In general you should be able to post to RAAC just as you would to any
other group, and software should take care of the details of mailing
it to the proper submission address. If your news system is broken and
can't handle this properly, submissions can be mailed to
rec-arts-an...@robomod.net.

Please try posting first and only mail your submissions if that does
not work. You should also bring any problems to the attention of your
local news administrator, and direct him or her to contact the RAAC
moderation coordinator if help is needed fixing things:
raac-t...@robomod.net.

Textual works must be submitted in plain ASCII format, with lines
wrapped somewhere between column 60 and 79; 72 is recommended. In
multi-part works be sure to indicate clearly what part each piece is
in the subject and both at the start and end, and be consistent in how
you label parts. It is annoying to try and piece together a work
consisting of Part 1, Chapter II, Ep. Three, Story iv, and so on. It
has been suggested that in multi-part works starting with a "What has
gone before" blurb is a good idea, but RAAC has no official policy on
this. If it has been more than a month since the last installment, you
may wish to consider it.

The common language understood by the vast majority of readers of RAAC
is English, and works in any other language are unlikely to be
accepted. Some use of Japanese within stories is an obvious exception,
and in general fragments of other languages (with English translation)
in a larger work are fine. For short works, poetry in particular,
other languages may be accepted as long as an English translation
accompanies the submission.

Artwork must be in JPEG or GIF format, and may be uuencoded or
attached as a base64 MIME attachment. You should also sign the work.
Including a short "explanatory note" as a preamble to any artwork
posting is highly recommended, particularly as such information is
useful to people later browsing the archives.

All posts to RAAC must be tagged to indicate the series on which they
are based (eg. BGC, Ranma, SM, etc.), and the type of work (eg. Art,
Fanfic, etc). It is also traditional to add a Lemon tag if the work
contains material of a sexual nature. Please tag your posts
appropriately before submitting them. For examples of such tagging,
see the newsgroup itself.

Please try to finish stories before posting them. Feedback while
writing may be nice, but it's a lot easier to go back and make changes
in earlier parts if you haven't already sent them out to the whole
world. Also, far too many authors simply vanish from the net halfway
through writing, leaving people looking for the rest of their story
even years later. Finally, give your work a title, as otherwise it's
hard to figure out where to put it in the archive.
_________________________________________________________________

What to expect after posting

If you submit your posting with a valid return address, you should
always receive mail in response from the moderation server. If you do
not use a valid address, please be sure to read the last paragraph in
this section. If you do not hear anything back from the moderation
server within a few hours, then you should contact the group
coordinator at the address given at the beginning of this document.

If the moderation software does not detect any problems with your
submission, then it will send an acknowledgement that your posting has
been received. If it finds any problems then it will return the entire
post with an explanation of the problem(s) it observed. If you have
trouble understanding or correcting the problem, please contact the
group coordinator.

Once your submission has been accepted it will be placed in the
submission pool, from which moderators request work. Depending on how
busy the moderators are it may be handled in anywhere from a few
minutes to a few days. If more than a week passes and you do not
either hear from a moderator or see your story posted to RAAC, feel
free to contact the group coordinator to inquire.

Your submission should also show up in the archives within a couple
days of being posted, although some moderators collect archive updates
and process them in a bunch every week or more. If you feel an
excessively long time has gone by after your submission appeared on
RAAC and it is not yet in the archives, feel free to contact the group
coordinator to inquire.

If you post from an invalid address, you can still receive mesages
from the moderation server if you register a valid address with the
server (a munged registration). You can read more about address
registration at
* http://www.robomod.net/register.html
* post to the group with the text "send file: register.txt" as the
subject
_________________________________________________________________

Archive site

All fan works posted to the newsgroup will be archived; if you don't
want your work archived, do not post it to RAAC. The primary archive
for the group is located at
* ftp://ftp.gweep.ca/pub/anime/anime-fan-works/

Works can be found in directories under there, by series, with the
larger endeavors in directories of their own under the series
directory. In the case of huge crossover works, such as Undocumented
Features, they will be in a directory of their own at the top level of
the archive. Smaller crossovers will probably be stored in one of the
represented series' directory. Works based on a show which does not
yet have its own directory can be found in the Miscellaneous
directory.

Images are in their raw binary format. Most text files are stored in
gzip (.gz) format. You can either have the server decompress them for
you while downloading (request the file without the .gz extension), or
you can get a copy of gzip to do so yourself. On Windows platforms
winzip is rumoured to have this capability.

Generally, a new directory will be created for a series (or a large
work within a series) when more than three distinct pieces of work are
available. Individual stories will generally be archived as a single
file unless they are very large (>200kB compressed) or are episodic in
nature, rather than chapters in a single continuity.

Work is planned as time permits to create a network of archive mirrors
as well as a web interface to the archive. Details will be added here
when known.
_________________________________________________________________

How you can help

If you're an author, take care when posting to the group to follow all
the guidelines above. A properly formatted and tagged post takes very
little moderator effort to deal with, while one with problems can hold
all the rest up. In particular, know your news reader, and be careful
of such things as MIME encoding, 8-bit characters, and automatic line
wrapping, any of which can wreak havoc with what you thought was a
properly formatted submission.

The group is pretty well provisioned with moderators, but interested
parties are always welcome to get in touch with the group coordinator.
The moderation software has gone through a number of revisions over
the years, and is now pretty user friendly, though some familiarity
with the format and contents of news headers is beneficial.
_________________________________________________________________

Brian Edmonds
$Date: 2005/02/28 14:04:14 $