As you all know; the users of L-word.com had to get membership for Discussion Board and FanFiction sections (for Fan Fiction -only authors-) Now with the latest changes we made to our system ALL MEMBERS will use one and the same login system. Once the user Logs in he/she won't be asked again to log-in for any other section (unless we come up with a new tool which requires us to ask so from the users) This change was a NECESSITY due to the reasons;
a) Every now and then we are adding new tools on our system (and in time we are planning to add more and more). Some of these new tools REQUIRE (due to its coding structure) users to Log-in. In future "multiple log-in" issue could/would cause problems and chaos. for instance; a person who registrated in Discussion Board would have to register for Chat area or for another section in L-word.com. One person with multiple nicknames and passwords while that user is STILL in L-word.com pages would be meaningless... plus it will effect our development and we will have to do the same operations we did for prior ones.
b) L-word.com is a huge online community and it is growing and growing by each passing day. As you can imagine "growing" is such a word which has more positive meaning than negative but it also can cause and/or lead to some problems.
we have more than 145,000 unique visitors with millions of clicks and page views which are HUGE numbers for an internet based fan site (and if you consider we don't have too many ads published in any other site). BUT only 25,000 of these users are registered. While we believe every user who visits L-word.com has the right to reach the L word show related info, we also believe our REGISTERED users should have some privileges. such as; writing in discussion board, using chat room, reading adult content fan fiction, downloading files from L-word.com, uploading files to L-word.com and MORE!
***NOTE*** If you are having problems with Logging into L-word.com please give us some time. To merge and implement everything is not as easy as you think sometimes :)
Until now Fan Fiction pages of L-word.com required Log-in only for FanFiction authors (for them to have their own account and publish their stories) From now on not only authors but also users will be asked for logging in. It is actually quite simple but to prevent misunderstandings we decided to give you an explanation on the matter;
ALL USERS OF L-word.com (registered or unregistered) can visit L-word.com and read stories WITHOUT membership. and this will NEVER change.
However..
If an UNREGISTERED user clicks to a story which has adult content in it, then the user will be asked to log in. So this means even if you become a member of L-word.com, someday you can face an alert page which is asking you to log-in for you to be able to read the story you clicked on (if it has adult content of course) You are a member but still the page asks you to log in? THE ONLY REASON you will see this alert page is; because you forgot to log-in with your user name and password given to you by L-word when you got the membership. So please don't freak out and before reaching to "other conclusions" go back to main page and log-in (ALL LOGGING IN PROCESS HAS TO BE DONE FROM THE MAIN PAGE OF L-WORD.COM). ONCE YOU LOG-IN YOU WON'T BE ASKED FOR LOGGING IN AGAIN!
Simply; if the user who has the membership writes his/her username/password and clicks on log-in button then he/she is FREE to view every page in l-word.com.. but an UNREGISTERED user will need to get membership first. and L-word.com membership is a FREE REGISTRATION which requires only a valid e-mail address and NOTHING ELSE.
With the new system actually almost nothing changed for fan fiction authors. but now we ask authors to rate their stories (which they USED to do so already to be able to publish stories in L-word.com Fan Fiction pages). Doing so; we can list these stories according to their ratings and system will automatically send an alert to the UNREGISTERED L-word.com visitors to log-in or to get registered with L-word.com, so they can read this type of content (see L-word.com FanFiction USERS section)
Rating your stories will NOT effect to your posts in ANY WAY. You will still be able to post as many stories as you wish and edit them as you used to do before. By changing our system to one general Log-in, we will have one licence agreement for Discussion Board, chat, downloads, uploads and Fan Fiction. And according to this "GLOBAL" Licence agreement a user MUST accept she/he is above 13. As you all know adult content can be viewed by every visitor who visits L-word.com right now.. which WILL cause REAL problems in the future for us. And we don't want to FACE WITH LAW in addition to our existing problems.
IMPORTANT NOTE: In Fan Fiction section we DO NOT apply any other type of CENSORSHIP! and we believe the system we explained above IS NOT CENSORSHIP but it is protecting the young ones who are visiting L-word.com (as you can follow from our Discussion Board the number of "under 18" can not be regarded as too few).
So we believe and hope you will support us in our decision. if you have questions you can find answers to them at our discussion board
As L-word.com administrators we are conscious of the knowledge "USERS" were the ones who made us "L-word.com" and we are thankful to them for that. Now we are a big family and as you know every family has its internal problems caused by unexpected incidents. We are also aware of our Fan Fiction pages helped us lot at becoming a big family. And as you can imagine it is not quite possible to make happy every member of the family. An author (or a user) can feel the need that he/she should leave this site and go to another place to publish his/her ART. L-word.com has nothing against that!
A writer/user can say "i am writing in l-word.com but i am writing at "X" address too. so you can find my stories at both places". A writer/user can say "i am leaving l-word.com and i will never ever again write here!" if he/she wishes so. The reasons he/she is doing that are HIS/HER PERSONAL REASONS we believe and we will do nothing to stop but of course we will show RESPECT.
BUT a writer/user can't write in L-word.com pages: "i am leaving this site and going to another site; i also recommend other users to do so. WE WON'T ALLOW IT! (IMPORTANT NOTE: right now only one author "lilpinkchainsaw" banned from L-word.com servers!)
We had no intentions on writing an explanation but things got out of hand by some other author's/users' comments on this matter.
Here is a part of what lilpinkchainsaw posted on L-word.com Fan Fiction Pages:
"I just wanted to let my readers know that from now on, Parallels, Descending as well as my other fics will no longer be updated at this site. This archive is nice and all, but it's obvious that both Shane fans and their fanfic are only just barely tolerated around these parts. And, to paraphrase Jenny - to be tolerated and know you're being tolerated sucks, because it implies that there's something wrong with you. I don't think that there's anything wrong with Shane fans. I don't think we're weird, I don't think Shane is strange or that she doesn't have a personality. Shane fans know... there's always more going on under the surface than meets the eye....
....Come on by, check us out. See what you think. From now on, all of my work will be hosted there and that is the only place that you'll be able to read Parallels (actually I just posted chapter 22 last night) as well as any of my upcoming new work from here on in."
WE HAVE NO ISSUES WITH PEOPLE CROSS POSTING AND LINKING TO PERSONAL WEB SITE. ****THE ISSUE**** IS PEOPLE HAVING USED THIS SPACE AND THEN TO POST A NOTICE OR LINK THAT BASICALLY SAYS TO PEOPLE ****STOP COMING TO L--WORD.COM*** AND GO MY ADDRESS INSTEAD.
According to us what she did was directly "asking people to give up the l-word.com and go to another site instead" and as we mentioned before WE ARE NOT ALLOWING IT! In addition to all of this; CREATING POLEMICS such as "Shane fans and their fanfic are only just barely tolerated around these parts" and/or "to be tolerated and know you're being tolerated sucks, because it implies that there's something wrong with you. I don't think that there's anything wrong with Shane fans"
L-word.com has NOTHING against Shane fans (Tina fans, Bette fans, Alice fans, Dana fans, Kit fans, Carmen fans, Mark fans, Helena fans or any other fans of this show)!! the L word is a TV SHOW and www.l-word.com is simply; "a web based online unofficial fan site for the L word TV SHOW". we take it as a WHOLE and NO ONE (member or not) has the right to make statements which are indicating it as opposite. This is just plain SLANDERING to L-word.com! And as you can guess and understand WE WON'T ALLOW THAT TOO!
We would like to remind you; Over internet you can find many other the L word related Fan Fiction sites (or sites which has FF sections in it). IN GENERAL The authors who are writing/posting to these sites are the same authors who write/post to L-word.com already. If the users IN GENERAL prefer reading Bette and Tina stories it is not an issue L-word.com should deal with (nor we are effecting things to be that way). If users doesn't prefer reading your stories as much as other authors', please REMEMBER it is not DIRECTLY RELATED to L-word.com..
But we assure you; if a considerable amount of authors see it as a PROBLEM and REQUEST us to find solutions for that, then we will do our BEST to find a solution. BUT PLEASE KEEP IN MIND "requests of one or two person" will not be taken into consideration due to the numbers of visitors, heavy tasks we have to deal with everyday and site management/maintaining issues we are having. L-word.com is not a site which "serves to one or two person" we are serving to all members and visitors and while we are maintaining the site WE ALWAYS SEEK FOR OPTIMUM SOLUTIONS.
if you have questions you can find answers to them at our discussion board
L-word.com uses a "GLOBAL" Licence Agreement for any type of content. This Agreement (as we mentioned before) is a global one and can be found in all "LOGGING-IN REQUIRED" sites. You can read this Agreement at http://discussion.l-word.com/profile.php?mode=register it is NOT something new, nor it appeared out of nowhere suddenly. It was ALWAYS there but NOBODY WAS READING IT before we asked people to audit their accounts for this new system. Simply; wherever you go you will have to agree to this licence agreement(or to its variations) to become a member. THIS AGREEMENT IS A READY-MADE and IT IS NOT WRITTEN ESPECIALLY for L-word.com PLUS it is not written by L-word.com Team.
L-word.com ACCOUNT DELETING - BANNING FROM THE SITE
With this new system if a user's account gets deleted he/she won't be able to have those privileges from any section of L-word.com which is supplied by being/becoming a member. Either user has to get a new membership or ask/talk to the administrators of L-word.com to be able to get his/her account back (NOTE: moderators of L-word.com are not authorized to delete a user's account but they can ban the user or the user's post(s) if they feel the need). A user can be banned from discussion board but that doesn't mean his/her account gets deleted as well.
Administrators and moderators are not bound to give any kind of explanation to other users or tell "why the member got banned" BUT if the banned user asks to administrators he/she can get the answers he/she is seeking for.
