Hi, everyone!

I'm just popping in with some information about e-mailing the administrator or moderators with questions or concerns you have. Most people have noticed when you receive a notification from the site, such as for an updated fic, a favorite author, or that one of your works has been disabled or deleted, that the bottom of the e-mail says, "PS. Please do not reply to this message."

This is because those e-mails are automatically generated by the site in response to either upload activity or moderator activity. The "webmaster@mediaminer.org" account is not regularly monitored because it receives literally tens of thousands of spam messages each month. This means hundreds of messages per day, most of which are junk. Sometimes the administrator who cleans out that box will notice genuine messages from members right away, but often the messages can be mistaken for junk and missed entirely, or they may go for weeks before they are noticed.

If you have a question or concern about something on the site, there are a few ways to contact the staff. The first way is to pay attention to any e-mails you do receive, even if they are automatically generated. The moderators are required to enter a reason for any disables, deletions or bans that take place - these reasons show up in the automatically generated e-mail, and should answer many of your questions about why something took place.

If you want to respond to an author for a new upload or a reviewer for a new review, please go to that person's account and use the e-mail link provided in their profile. This will allow you to send an e-mail directly to the author; they will not receive any messages that are sent in reply to the automatically generated e-mail.

If you have been e-mailed personally by one of the moderators (in such cases, the moderator or moderators involved will sign their name on the bottom of the e-mail), please reply directly to that moderator. Such e-mails are usually sent directly from the moderator's own account, and thus have their e-mail address in the header. If not, you can look them up on the forum and use the e-mail link provided there. NOTE: E-mailing whichever moderator has last posted news to the front page is not always the most ideal option. Sometimes, for general questions, that moderator may be able to help. However, if it is in reference to a specific situation, that moderator may not have been the one involved in handling your case, and it could take them up to a few days to contact the others and find out who to pass the message on to.

If you are completely uncertain who to contact, you can always post in the Website Feedback forum to ask for help. All of the site and forum moderators are able to see that forum, and anyone who is available and able to help you with your questions will be able to help you there.

I hope this helped some of you out! Thanks for reading!

The Fan Fiction team here at MediaMiner has heard some feedback on our post regarding disclaimers and proper crediting of owners and creators of the works you are deriving your stories from. A lot of it concerns not knowing who said owners are or how to find the information, and some of it includes concerns about how much extra time it takes to put that disclaimer on a story.

To show that I understand how hard it is to manage this task, I went through the Fan Fiction series listings tonight, found all of the series that currently contain more than 100 stories in their category, and looked up the information for you. I even added links to sources on the web that have more information about that series, including extended credit and creator information. Please feel free to copy and paste from this list if you need the information for putting disclaimers on your stories.

Anime/Manga:
Ah My Goddess - Story & Art: Kosuke Fujishima
Beyblade - Story & Art: Takao Aoki
Bleach - Story & Art: Kubo Tite
Card Captor Sakura - Story & Art: CLAMP
Cowboy Bebop - Original Concept: Hajime Yatate; Series Director: Shinichiro Watanabe
Digimon - Original Concept: Akiyoshi Hongo; Director: Hiroyuki Kakudou
Dragon Ball - Story & Art: Akira Toriyama
Dragon Ball GT - Original Creator: Akira Toriyama; Series Director: Daisuke Nishio, Osamu Kasai
Dragon Ball Z - Original Creator: Akira Toriyama; Series Director: Daisuke Nishio
Fake - Story & Art: Sanami Matoh
Fruits Basket - Story & Art: Natsuki Takaya
Fullmetal Alchemist - Story & Art: Hiromu Arakawa
Fushigi Yuugi - Story & Art: Yuu Watase
Gensomaden Saiyuki - Story & Art: Kazuya Minekura
GetBackers - Story: Yuya Aoki; Art: Rando Ayamine
Gravitation - Story & Art: Maki Murakami
Gundam SEED - Original Creator(s): Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino
Gundam Wing - Original Creator(s): Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino
Hamtaro - Original Creator: Ritsuko Kawai; Director: Osamu Nabeshima
Hellsing - Story & Art: Kouta Hirano
InuYasha - Story & Art: Rumiko Takahashi
Love Hina - Story & Art: Ken Akamatsu
Magic Knight Rayearth - Story & Art: CLAMP
MegaMan NT Warrior (Rockman) - Director: Takao Kato
Naruto - Story & Art: Masashi Kishimoto
Neon Genesis Evangelion - Director: Hideaki Anno
One Piece - Story & Art: Eiichiro Oda
Outlaw Star - Story & Art: Takehiko Ito
Pet Shop of Horrors - Story & Art: Matsuri Akino
Pokemon - Original Creator: Satoshi Tajiri; Director: Masamitsu Hidaka
Prince of Tennis - Story & Art: Takeshi Konomi
Ranma 1/2 - Story & Art: Rumiko Takahashi
Ronin Warriors - Original Creator: Hajime Yatate; Director(s): Masashi Ikeda, Mamoru Hamatsu
Rurouni Kenshin - Story & Art: Nobuhiro Watsuki
Sailor Moon - Story & Art: Naoko Takeuchi
Saint Seiya - Story & Art: Masami Kurumada
SD Gundam - Original Creator(s): Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino; Director: Osamu Sekita
Shaman King - Story & Art: Hiroyuki Takei
Slam Dunk - Story & Art: Takehiko Inoue
Slayers - Original Story: Hajime Kanzaka, Rui Araizumi
Sorcerer Hunters - Story: Satoru Akahori; Art: Ray Omishi
Tenchi Muyo - Original Creator: Masaki Kajishima; Director: Hiroki Hayashi
Trigun - Story & Art: Yasuhiro Nightow
Utena, Revolutionary Girl - Story: Be-Papas; Art: Chiho Saito
Vision of Escaflowne - Original Creator(s): Hajime Yatate, Shoji Kawamori; Director: Kazuki Akane
Weiss Kreuz - Original Creator: Takehito Koyasu; Story & Art: Kyouko Tsuchiya
Witch Hunter Robin - Original Concept: Hajime Yatate, Shukou Murase; Director: Shukou Murase
Wolf's Rain - Original Creator: Keiko Nobumoto; Director: Tensai Okamura
X/1999 - Story & Art: CLAMP
Yami no Matsuei - Story & Art: Yoko Matsushita
Yu Yu Hakusho - Story & Art: Yoshihiro Togashi
Yu-Gi-Oh! - Story & Art: Kazuki Takahashi
Zoids - Original Creator: Michiro Ueyama; Director: Takao Kato

Non-Anime:
Code Lyoko - Creator(s): Tania Palumbo, Thomas Romain
Final Fantasy Games - Publisher(s): Square Co., Ltd., Nintendo of America
Harry Potter - Author: J.K. Rowling
Kingdom Hearts - Publisher(s): Square Co., Square EA, Disney Interactive, SCEE
Pokemon - Original Creator: Satoshi Tajiri
Sonic the Hedgehog - Developer: Sonic Team; Publisher: Sega
Teen Titans - Creator(s): Sam Register, Glen Murakami


I know that many of the members who post fan fiction on this site are not even out of high school yet, and many of those who are are rusty with their writing background. This leads to a lot of confusion as to why we require disclaimers in the first place. Word is all over the web that disclaimers don't "do anything" for a fan fiction writer. They don't protect against lawsuits or cease-and-desist orders; if you write fan fiction based around Anne McCaffrey books, she's still going to push the issue, regardless of whether you have a disclaimer or not. So what's the point, right?

The point is multi-faceted:

- Authors who have not made up their mind about where they stand yet on fan fiction appreciate the acknowledgement of their work when they find fan fiction and fan art on the web. If an author feels slighted often enough, what's the worst that can happen? They can prohibit fan fiction of their work, which results in MediaMiner having to pull the category from the site.

"I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes." - Anne Rice, http://www.annerice.com/fa_writing_archive.htm

- When and if you find yourself in a situation where you wish to assert that your work falls under "fair use", disclaimers are critical to backing up your claim that you are not intending on infringing on any benefits due the original creators.

- Disclaimers giving proper credit can be used to let the original creator(s) know how much you appreciate their work. How many of you have actually taken the time to write a letter to the person who created your favorite book or show, looked up the proper address to send it to, filled out the envelope and mailed the letter? Do you think, "Oh, they'll never see this anyway; they're too busy to go on the web," and thus don't bother with acknowledgements? You would be surprised how many published authors and/or their publishers spend time on the web specifically looking for fan fiction.

- Some series have a very fine line as to what is allowed and what is not for fan fiction. "Sonic the Hedgehog" is one of these series. Because there are so many sequels, spinoffs and derivative works of "Sonic the Hedgehog," there are many rights holders involved. Sega is not among the rights owners who currently prohibit fan fiction; Archie Comics (another Sonic rights holder) is. It's critical to make sure that your work reflects works that fan fiction is allowed for.

- Disclaimers make our job easier when it comes to investigating plagiarism reports and rights-infringement reports. If we know who the characters in your story belong to, we can better assess reports that are vague or offer little in the way of proof. We do in fact, get reports that say things like "half of this story is about Anne Rice's stuff", "this author plagiarized half of my original story from another site and put it in chapter three of their fic" or "this author is using my character without my permission and is taking credit for themselves". The members of our Fan Fiction team do not know the contents of every published series in the world - it can sometimes take us days to sort out messes like that if we don't even know what book to look up, where the original piece is at, etc. It gets even more fun when friends who were once co-writers break off their friendship and both want to continue a story themselves, make claims to original characters, or one demands the story be pulled while the other still wants it online.

Credit your work. Give credit where credit is due. Cite your sources. It benefits everyone in the end.

This is not a new rule, folks. Steal art --> Get Caught --> Get Banned. It's not a difficult progression of logic.

For a more detailed look at how this happens, let's take a look at our most recent Art Theft ban:

Kagoma_Song (e-mail link found by clicking her name in this blog) felt the need to steal from at least two separate artists and claim that the works were her own. This is not a case of mistaken identity, nor is it a case of her using them just as fic illos without permission - as you can see by clicking the attached screenshots taken directly in her gallery prior to her being banned, she claimed these pieces and was taking credit for them.



MediaMiner Administration takes art theft very seriously. To that end, we research each plagiarism report carefully. This is why it's especially helpful for members to give the username or URL for the true artist when they report works - it makes it easier for us to verify the theft and ban the thief quickly and efficiently.

When the reports came in on these two pieces, we were given the names of the real artists and the names of the sites those artists normally post on. It then only took a few minutes of searching to find the galleries for those artists and confirm the pieces as stolen. Just because the artists don't have those pieces here does not mean that we do not research the report carefully, including via galleries on other sites. This is true for all reports of plagiarism. Once confirmed, the plagiarist is banned (from both the art and fiction areas of the site - if you're banned from one part of the site, you're banned from the other) and any art or fiction that person has up is deleted by our staff.

I would also like to take a moment to extend kudos out to the true artists of the above pieces. They both have wonderful galleries and should have the credit and reviews for these images directed to them:

The original InuYasha character was created by Messa from deviantArt: Messa's deviantArt gallery

The picture of Sailor Moon was drawn by Nefis from deviantArt and SheezyArt. Visit her deviantArt and SheezyArt galleries, or find the image in her gallery here to give her comments on it.

Thank you to everyone who takes the time to report art theft to our staff via the "Alert Webmaster" link. As Fanilia posted in her previous blog post on this topic, art theft not only gives undeserved attention to the thief, it takes comments, criticism and recognition away from the true artist who spent their time and effort creating quality art. Even though we don't have the staff to continually patrol the web and compare art from other sites to that on ours, alert members can notify us as soon as the theft is noticed and we can take action right away.

Think you know the ins and outs of MediaMiner's rules? They seem to be hard for some members to understand, so I've developed a fun way to challenge members to test their knowledge. The rules of this game are simple. I quote a selection of Fiction Summaries, Artist's Commentaries or Fiction Chapters/Author's Notes, and you - the members of MediaMiner - reply with your guess as to which rule(s) the quote displays a violation of.

For example, if I quote a segment that says:

"OMG, u totally didn't hear what I sed" __________ yelled.

"I did so, ____________, u just didn't let me talk back," Ryouga said.

You reply with:

"That fiction is Interactive Fiction, which is against MediaMiner.org's Upload Guidelines."

Easy, right? Here we go - four segments to start us off: two from Fiction and two from Art:

Artist's Commentary #1:

well, this pic isnt mine, and to who every it belongs to I aplaud. Just thourght it was a great pic to Explain what my one charater looks like in The Other Half Of the Story, Danalion

Artist's Commentary #2:

my friends sister gave me this as my birthday present... I GOT GAARA!!!! WOOOO

Fiction Chapter:

Read the choices and vote either as 1,2,3,4, etc. Okay!!

1. Youko has been ruling Kei for 10 years now. One day and old woman comes to the palace and prophesizes that Youko will bare the child of a close friend that will become the next ruler of Kou. Youko has to fight off Shoryu and Rakashun and try to figure out Keiki's strange attitude out. (Multi. Ch)

2. Keiki sees King En (Shoryu) kissing Youko one day. Strange new feelings start to boil up inside the Kirin causing him to question his sanity. WIll Youko return the king's feelings or will she help Keiki? (Multi. Ch)

3. Keiki reads about something very interesting about Wa woman and asks Youko about it. Will the Queen of Kei be able to explain without telling the kirin her true feelings? (One-shot)

4. Youko and Keiki share a very special thing underneath a cherry tree. (One-shot)

IF YOU ARE UNDER AGE OR DO NOT LIKE LEMONY CONTENT THAN DO NOT VOTE OR READ!!

Fiction Summary:

Well folks this is my insane attempt at a Naruto/S-Cry-Ed xover. It ought to prove interesting. my OC is both alter user and ninja. the one and only alter user to be born away from the Lost Ground. Two pairings are set in stone which are Akari (my OC)/Tachibana and Ryuhou/Kazuma. vote for the Kanami and Mimori pairings. the options on the end of the first chappie are not set in stone, if you have a better choice whom is not listed then offer it up and if it happens to be a girl/girl pairing so be it. the pairings with the most votes at the end of the 4th chap will be the winners.

Have at it folks! Use the title of the quote to indicate which one(s) you're replying to.

Rules for uploading fan art are and always have been in the link titled "Gallery Guidelines" that appears when you attempt to upload an image to MediaMiner. Number 1 under those rules reads: Art uploaded into your personal MediaMiner.org gallery must be art created by you. This rules means what it says - MediaMiner is not a place for you to upload random images that you like - that's what services like PhotoBucket are for.

To offer a specific example, I will quote from a recently deleted piece's description:

I DID NOT DRAW THIS!!! i just found it and thought i should share it with all naruto fans... if anyone knows who the artist of this pic is, please tell me so i can give credit where credit is due, thank you, and enjoy!

...

The Fan Art Site Moderators are trying really, really hard not to be unfair in making and/or clarifying rules for this site. However, such blatant and obvious disregard for the first rule in the Fan Art area makes it exceptionally difficult to do our jobs efficiently. Now, this is far and away not the first time we've removed an image for that very same problem, but after a while it just gets really, really old.

PLEASE read the rules before uploading. If you have questions about the rules, please ask in the MediaMiner.org Forums.

And a big thank you to all of you who continue to report images that are in violation of the rules.

We at MediaMiner would like to issue a reminder that there are authors and/or publishers who do not allow fan fiction based on their titles. This is a right they have as an author or owner of the work. No copyright owner has to allow fan fiction or even tolerate it. While fan fiction remains a grey area, legally, it is in your best interest as a writer to simply save yourself the trouble and hassle - just don't write for that title, no matter how much you may like it. As a fiction archive, however, we must do what we can to protect our site from any legal ramifications. Disclaimers do not work when a copyright owner has explicitly forbid derivative works or any "fan" works. As such, we keep an eye out for problem titles while we work on site maintenance. Fictions found to be derived from the above mentioned titles will be deleted.

Here is a listing for authors/publishers who do not allow fan fiction; this list is updated as we are informed of additional authors or publishers who have made statements on their websites or have filed Cease and Desist notices against fan fiction writers:

Archie Comics
P.N. Elrod
Raymond Feist
Terry Goodkind
Laurell K. Hamilton
Robin Hobb
Megan Lindholm (Robin Hobb)
Dennis L. McKiernan
Robin McKinley
Irene Radford
Anne Rice
Anne Rampling (Anne Rice)
A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Nora Roberts
J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

PLEASE NOTE: Archie Comics owns publication writes to comic titles that have previous owners or are derived from other types of media including movies, video games and books. Some of these titles include:

Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic X
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch
Josie and the Pussycats
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures

(There are many others; these are just some titles that are known to affect MediaMiner members.)

If you write for these series (or other Archie Comics titles) please remove them. Otherwise, they will be removed by MediaMiner staff as they are found. If you write for a non-Archie Comics variant of these titles (for example, the Sonic the Hedgehog video games) it is EXCEPTIONALLY IMPORTANT that you STATE CLEARLY in your disclaimer who the copyright holder is. That is part of the reason we now require CLEAR DISCLAIMERS on all fiction.

We recently discovered that an anonymous user using a masked IP address is going through shonen ai/yaoi series systematically and reporting fics as having "no artistic merit" or for exceptionally minor infractions and making it sound like a huge deal. When we have 150 REPORTS in the queue that are largely from a certain someone reporting yaoi fics SOLELY for being yaoi or shonen-ai, it wastes our time and makes it harder for us to find and process serious problems like plagiarism.

If it helps discourage the person(s) doing this, one of the Fiction Moderators - ME - is a yaoi writer and reader, and tends to be more critical of the REPORT than the fic being reported. Yes, I still process each one to double-check for actual violations - but when a fiction is reported for having "no artistic value" and it happens to be one of my favorite fics on the site, guess what genius - I don't take the next "no artistic value" report as seriously. The same goes for a report that only has "It's yaoi" as the reason. If you don't have a valid reason for reporting a fiction, don't do it.

Using a masked IP address only works for so long, and it is NOT going to benefit anyone to keep doing so. The same goes for people who consistently and purposefully make sure they're signed out so that they show up as "Anonymous". Have the balls to sign in and give a valid username that we can contact, or quit with the bullshit.

NOTE: Yaoi and shonen-ai writers on the site, please make sure that your fictions follow every rule TO THE LETTER, including warnings for anything absolutely out of the straight-and-narrow as far as sex goes. The "X" rating and "hentai" label covers general adult content, but not fetish content or extremely graphic/disturbing content. Those still need to have a warning in the chapter summary. I hate to have to require this - being a writer of "disturbing" content myself and a reader of such fics, I tend to not see some things as disturbing while other people do. However, it's the only way we can definitively nail the person(s) who are doing this for harassment.

Besides, if you update your chapter summaries and/or fic summaries, or revise any chapters as necessary, your fic gets bumped back up to the top as "Updated" - that should make whomever is doing this THRILLED, having all those yaoi/shonen-ai fics on the top of the listings.

I'm in college carrying 16 credits and two part-time jobs. The other moderators are in similar boats. DO NOT continue to be aggravating just because you're a homophobe.

For those of you who are still making coherent, well-founded reports with clear information - especially those of you who are signed in so we can contact you if we have questions - THANK YOU. It is greatly appreciated. Please continue to do so - it makes it much easier to manage the site in a timely manner.

One of the updates to our Fiction site is the ability to search by keyword. This feature has been asked for in the past by MediaMiner members, and the staff agreed that it would be a helpful utility for helping members find exactly what they want in Fiction. What are some ways that members can use this new feature?

- You can search for a keyword that you might be interested in at the moment. For example, many of us are starting or returning to college this month. You can select "Search By: Fanfic Title/Description" and type in "College" to get a listing of all the fics related to college on the site.

- Not sure if your idea is unique or if many, many other people have already done it? Select "Search By: Fanfic Description" and type in the key point of your idea. You might be surprised how many parodies and retellings of Red Riding Hood there are on the site.

- You want to find a fic that you just adored, but you can only remember part of the title. Select "Search By: Fanfic Title" and enter the part that you remember. Even if you only remember one word, such as Howl, your results will list all of the fics with that in the title.

The catch on this is, of course, that it's going to be more important than ever for members to write good, solid summaries for their fics and to give them meaningful titles. If you don't want to be just another one of the many Untitled stories on the site, you're going to have to spend that little bit of extra time and creativity to make sure your listing is as clear and precise as possible. Likewise, it will be easier for readers to find your story by searching for keywords if your Summary is actually about the fic and not just author ramblings.

There is currently a Poll running in the "MediaMiner.org Forums" area of the Forums regarding a suggested forum update, and we would like all MediaMiner members to take a moment to vote in the poll and leave any thoughts or ideas on the topic that they have.

It is sometimes confusing for members of the forums to know exactly what the topic of the thread is or to follow any specific rules that the thread has if the thread is many pages long. Thus, the suggestion was made to change how the thread displays; a new display layout would include the first post always at the top of the page, no matter what page of the thread you were on. Members could then read through the rest of the thread like normal. An example of how this works has been uploaded to the post containing the poll mentioned above.

Please take a moment to let us know if you think this type of forum thread layout sounds appealing to you.

This Art Therapy major is pleased to post an update on the Maximum Challenge Fan Art Contest from her dorm room on the beautiful University of Wisconsin - Superior campus! The contest is in full swing, and we've received some very nice entries so far - and with students returning to school and college, we hope that access to art supplies, scanners and computers means that we'll get even more!

If you've been out of the loop for a little while and would like to find out more about the contest, you can visit the official post on our forums: MediaMiner's First Annual Maximum Challenge Fan Art Contest

Remember, the contest ends on October 31st, so you've only got about two months to go! Get your creativity into full swing as autumn picks up and let's see the best you have in art!

We'll also be wrapping up our decisions for judges for the contest soon. If you have applied to be a judge, please be patient a little longer - we will be making final reviews of the applications and sending out notices on our decisions soon. I will also post here when the judges have been decided.

Art contests are fun - get Kraken! (/end obligatory daily Davy Jones pun)