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Frequently Asked Questions & Help section
Please choose from a link below or scroll through the page to find what you require.
If you have any problem please consult the help topics either by scrolling down the page or choosing a link from below.
This archive is for fanfiction about the Stargate characters Dr. Rodney McKay and Dr. Elizabeth Weir, mainly focusing on them as a romantic pairing. We are, however, open to a variety of types of fanfiction, not just the usual relationship stories but also to simple friendship/team pieces all the way across to OT3 and multiship stories - taking a vast array of genres too including poetry, songfic, AU and darkfic - our main requirement is stories contain both characters (as well as meeting the rest of our submission rules). The archive uses the opensource php system efiction, which allows for automation of submissions, and has a great many useful features. Unregistered readers can submit anonymous reviews, though authors reserve the right to delete these reviews incase spamming occurs. Registered users get the benefit being able to submit challenges, review and comment on stories/news etc, set their site skin preference, vote in polls, declare if they are above the age of consent (allowing them to bypass age warnings whilst logged in) and of course upload their own stories if they are an author. General features available to all are browsing of stories by a number of criteria, top tens page, news, challenges listings, members/authors list and an advanced search facility. If you have not already done so, please register for an account. Once you've logged in, click on Account Information and choose Add Story. The form presented there will allow you to submit your story. How do I use the categories/sub-categories when adding a story etc? The category selection system is set up to allow multiple choices for sub-categories a story can have. This means two main things. One, you cannot submit a story to a main top-level category as it is locked - only for issued challenges can you select main categories for people to submit to. Two, you must select at least one sub-category of one of the main categories to submit your story to. If your story has no subcategory then it will only show up on your profile page and most recent stories (whilst it is classified as recent). If your story has no subcategory we may contact you about it, if we notice, but we urge all authors to doublecheck their story listings before submitting them.How to classify which sub-categories to select is your choice, if a story could be interpreted as friendship or more for example then it can be put in both friendship and UST subcategories. Also remember that if your story is a crossover, songfic, poetry, OT3 or adult then you need to classify it by that as well as any kind of general and/or shippy subcategories. If you have any questions about the sub-categories or how the system for selecting them works then please do contact us.
To post your stories or simply benefit from the extra features the system offers, you must first register at the site. Please note registration is for the archive only, you must re-register on M/W Central if you want to use the forums there. This involves choosing a penname and giving your email address. Please note that email addresses are used for admin purposes only, they can not be seen by users of the site and are not given to anyone else - any personal messages sent by users of the site are sent through the system and do not give away your email to anyone. To register, click the log in link on the main title bar and then the register link on the new page that opens. Once you have entered your details and chosen a password, the system will send you a confirmation email with the details included for reference. (Please note registration is totally automated) Also if posting a website link in your profile please remember to you must add 'http://' at the beginning of the url or it will not point to your site, but back to 'this site!'
What are the ratings used on the site? We use the ratings system from www.fictionratings.com and accept stories for all of them if they are appropriately rated. A quick summary of the ratings is shown below.
What types of stories are allowed? We accept almost any type of story - AU, darkfic, songfic, poetry, drabble, novella - if it has appropriate warnings and ratings. However, there are a few exception, see our Submission Rules for details. What are the story classifications? Stories are classified by sub-categories and genres - though they are searchable by characters, completion status and other details. Further information on genres meanings and common fanfic terms is coming soon. In the meantime feel free to ask an admin if you are unsure about the classifications for you story. What are all these account options? Once you have logged in using your password and penname, you will be taken to your account page. From here, you can do the following:- Add New Story: Choose your category and then fill in the fields displayed. You can upload your story from a file or write directly to the box provided. I would recommend that you use notepad or some other text editor to write and save your story and then cutting and pasteing to the story box. You may use the following html codes with your story - < b > < i > < u > < center > < img > < a > < hr >. For example, < b >text here will produce bold text. Once your story is pasted or uploaded, press the preview button to check it before finally pressing the submit story button. The story will then be checked for suitability for the site by one of our validaters and posted, usually within 24 hours (Often much quicker). If we do not accept your story, you will be mailed with a reason for this. We will not enter into any further correspondence if a story is refused. After a number of sucessful submissions, or if you are a known author, an admin may validate you to eliminate the necessity of story validation for you making story submission instantaneous Manage Stories: This area is for editing of previously uploaded stories. From here you can see how many reviews you have for each story, if the story has been validated, what the rating (if any) it has and what the current marking for its status is, e.g. complete. To add a new chapter simply choose the story you wish to add a chapter to and press the add chapter link. This takes you to a page similar to the Add story page. Fill in the required fields as before. To edit a story click on the edit button in the story's details row and you will be taken to a page very similar to the add new story one, the exception being if you wish to change story text you also have to select the chapter in question, to be taken to a page to edit that. Add New Series : This takes you to a page similar to the Add story page. Fill in the required fields as before and then click submit. You will then be taken to a page allowing you to tick which uploaded stories to add to you series. Manage Series : Very similar to manage stories, you have the options to edit, delete and add new story to the series. Edit Personal Information: Use this link to change your personal information, including your biography, website link etc. You may also change your password, and enable the review contact feature which will email you when you get a review or the favourites update email alert, as well as volunteer yourself as a betareader in your profile details. Also available here is the ability to change how the site looks, by choosing which skin you would like to use. Another option is the declaration you are above the age of consent for your country, which if selected will bypass age consent warnings for stories when you are logged in. View Reviews : This link will show all the review statistics for your stories. To view reviews you must click on the appropriate title, which will take you to a page showing all reviews for that story - here you can write a response to any review if you wish. Manage Favorites : If you view a story/series/author when you are logged in, you will see a link in the header which allows you to add the story/series or author to the "Favourites" section in your member profile, shown when a user presses "Authors" or "Members" from the main links and chooses you. This link allows you to manage that section. View Statistics: Here you can view all sorts of statistics for your account. It shows details from your profile as well as the number of stories, series, reviews and challenges you have posted. The main feature here is the story listings that tell you how many members have added them to their favourites, as well as story rating and reviews. How many people have added you as favourite author is also shown right under the number of stories etc you have. Logout : Hopefully this one is self-explanatory but just incase.. - it logs you out of your account. What's the difference between a series and a story? The Series feature is for linking related stories under one listing to make it easier for users to find them - for example a number of stories that all take place in one Alternate Universe. You upload the stories as usual, but then add them to your created series. A story in a series will appear on the most recent and other listings alone but also have a link back to the series so users can easily check up and read stories from a series in order. The challenges system has challenges submitted by registered users, that authors can respond to. Only registered (and logged in!) users can issue a challenge, all you need to do is click on the link to and then fill out the minimum of title and challenge details (what you want people to write about, the length limits etc) - you can also specify what categories and/or sub-categories it should be for, as well as what characters to include, but these last two are optional. To respond to a challenge you must have already uploaded the story. After you have uploaded it you need to go to the challenge listing you want to respond to and click the 'Respond to the challenge!' link. You will then be given the choice of what stories to add as a response, just tick the relavent boxes and then click the submit button. Responding to a challenge adds a story to the challenge listing under responses. To look at responses for a given challenge simply click on the title for it and you will be taken to a full listings page, which will show the response stories if it has any. How do I contact the site administrators? You can e-mail us via our contact form. If wish to contact us about a problem please describe it in as much detail as possible. I'm having registration problems, help! You should be able to log in as soon as you've finished registering and received the confirmation email. If you have a problem registering and/or have not received your confirmation email, please check the following. Make sure you have cookies set to low. AOL users, to make sure you receive your password, please go into your mail controls and manually set them to allow mail from this site. If you still have any question or problems please contact us. I forgot my password! What do I do now
To recover a lost password, click here and enter the e-mail address with which you registered. Your password will be sent to you shortly. I can't select any sub-categories. What's happening?
There is a known issue with Firefox and the categories/sub-categories selection process that may cause the drop down list to only show the top level (locked) categories. If you have this problem you need to check your javascript settings and see if anything important may be turned off by default. I'm having a different problem. What do I do?
From time to time errors happen. The first thing to try is refreshing the page incase of a one-off error. If it's a recurring error it may be something to do with your browser settings or you may have discovered a bug in the system. If the rest of the site is working fine and clearing your cache/cookies etc doesn't make then please contact us with as much detail on the issue as possible. Though rare, interruptions in service also happen and tend to result in sitewide service errors (applicable to both the archive and the general site) - which usually result in the systems being unable to connect to the database or the URL bringing up a 404 cannot be found. In this case we advise that you check back later, five or ten minutes and see if the problem has been fixed. Occasionally a problem may last longer, in which case we'd advise checking back after an hour. Any problems affecting the site persisting longer than that we would appreciate could contact us by alternate means to make us aware of the problem. I can be contacted by MSN hansaplatz2600 or YahooIM missyvortexdv. If you still have any questions or problems please contact us.
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