Please, if you read nothing else on the forum, PLEASE read this!

For a very long time, now, we haven't really looked too closely at various stories with ratings lower than MA... we've been more or less on the honor system for people to choose an appropriate rating for their story and we haven't gone all-out trying to enforce certain things.

Lately, however, it has become apparent that our T rating has degenerated into little more than a modified M rating. This just isn't right, considering that 13 year old kids can read T rated stories. I mean, seriously, we're going to have T rated fics with blood, gore, guts and sexual innuendo? I don't think so. In view of this, I've redone the Author's Tutorial on ratings.

I've included more examples of what IS okay in various rating levels and what is NOT okay. The lower ratings are going to be policed much more rigorously in the future, and I would hope that our authors take this to heart. Please read the following tutorial and choose your rating CAREFULLY based on what you see:

http://www.dokuga.com/forum/34-authors-tools/51603-dokuga-authors-tutorial-ratings

If you have any reason to think that perhaps the content of your story might be too mature for the rating you've given it, based on the examples I've give in the tutorial, PLEASE DON'T WAIT FOR ME TO ISSUE A WARNING.

Writing gory, gruesome stuff about battles and such? You shouldn't have a T rating or, depending on the level of description, even an M. Really graphic, "tear things apart and/or eat them" with other gory descriptors needs to be in the same level as sexual content, MA. Putting a little sexual innuendo in there, albeit without the graphic description? That can't be a T. And if you're describing certain body parts and/or actions with those parts, it's not an M either.

Please read the tutorial and take it to heart!

~~Wiccan~~

These new updated rulings, they allow for a 'grandfather' clause on older fiction. Meaning, if it was already posted before this, then it is under those rules, but all new chapters must adhere to these rulings?

r0o... these rules AREN'T new. This is what has always been in the rules that were posted back in the beginning of the site. These are the ratings standards that have always been there. If you look closely at the rules versus the tutorial, you will see that they are in alignment, with the possible exception of death in the T rating.

Then again, death can be handled many different ways, and I don't feel it has to be graphic or overblown in a lower rated story.

Anyway, to answer your question... I'm not going through the archive actively seeking out stories to harass authors. If new chapters are posted, however, and a read-through of the story turns up a problem with the rating, we WILL be notifying the author of the need to change it.

We're not out to put the whole site into upheaval. It's just way past time to ensure that the ratings are really being interpreted as they should have been all along. We've let far too much slide with the lower rated fics and we need to correct that.

Short answer: We will not be picking through the archive to have people change ratings. We WILL notify when people update that it may need changing, though.

Hope that helps!
:?
~~me~~