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September 14, 2011
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Lately we've been getting A LOT of submissions from people who fail to read our guidelines prior to submitting and we've had to decline A LOT of work as a result.

This is a reminder to current members and new members alike, please do us all a favor and read the rules! I spent a huge chunk of my time going through them and trying to make things as clear as possible (even clarifying the folders and content summaries) and yet we get tons of submissions a day that completely ignore it. It's frustrating for all of the mods and myself to have to remind people over and over again to read the rules when we have to decline work and it's something that should go without being said.

If you join a group, be courteous and brush up on what their expectations are, because when we see people blatantly ignoring them we assume they don't care and thus decided we're like every other Who group that accepts everything that comes through our doors. While we do our best to inform everyone what they're doing wrong, we can't babysit incoming submissions like this anymore, it's taking far too much time for us to sort out in a group as big as this.

If we find repeat offenders (and there are quite a few) we are in talks about starting to ban those who continually disobey the rules, we don't like having to resort to something like that (and compared to a lot of groups on dA, we're very lenient) but if it saves us the frustration of having to remind that person over and over again what they're doing wrong well... We have no choice.

All I'm saying is please for the love of all that is holy, read the rules and everyone will come out happy!

Thanks in advance,
:iconmarker-mistress:
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:iconsineadmeehan:
*SineadMeehan Sep 14, 2011  Student General Artist
I had read the rules, and didn't realize one of the paintings i submitted wasn't suited for here. So I am sorry about that. It must get incredibly frustrating for those running the groups. Il make sure to take better care in the future.
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:iconmarker-mistress:
=Marker-Mistress Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Don't worry, as I said in my other response I really do appreciate the fact that you've communicated with us about it. It really helps more than you know :D :D
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:iconlangue-skulptur:
~Langue-Skulptur Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
I've given up trying to enforce those guidelines. I can name about 5 people off the bat who, daily, submit outright violations. It baffles me as I greet every new member and ask them to read those guidelines.

Really, I decline and move on. Outright violators never ask about it so either they don't care or they went and reread the rules.
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:iconmarker-mistress:
=Marker-Mistress Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Yeah it's really a hassle to try and enforce them when there are so many members involved violating them. Typing out the same sentence over and over telling them to read the rules follows me into my sleep lol

If stuff gets declined though I don't think we should have to tell them twice, they should have the ability to just go and look at their deviation and run it up against the rules and figure it out themselves.
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:iconlangue-skulptur:
~Langue-Skulptur Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Ah, see your group has four times the members mine does, so I can see how that would be a much bigger problem.

Something I learned about submission guidelines is that if you can enforce it yourself, don't bother writing it down in the rules. I see you have a 1 deviation per day rule. There's a setting that will prevent users from over-submitting. The same goes for submitting to folders that shouldn't be submitted to at all (my group's Featured folder).

Now looking again (boy the guidelines have changed) you have quite a long list of rules. Maybe there's a way to consolidate them for the shorter attention spans.
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:iconmarker-mistress:
=Marker-Mistress Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
The guidelines are quite short actually, the rest of that widget are the summaries for each folder so people can choose the right place for their work they just need to read what applies to them.
Like I mentioned before, there are groups out there way more anal/harsh about enforcing their rules than we are, people are actually getting off easy here. And we do have the limits in place to keep others from submitting more than once a day so that helps a bit. In the end it's just up to people actually doing the right thing and reading before acting.
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:iconlangue-skulptur:
~Langue-Skulptur Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
Groups more anal than mine? Impossible! :P Well probably, but I haven't seen many strict DW groups. I can only think of two others besides my own that are really nuts. Your rules are quite lenient, just wordy.
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:iconmarker-mistress:
=Marker-Mistress Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
It really just applies to dA groups in general. The fandom itself if fairly tame, but it's when you get to individual groups with a high amount of membership that you find the people that try to put up as many messages to keep members in place. It may be wordy, but how else are we going to find out who read the rules and who didn't? Call it a test of will, read the entire thing and be blessed with a successful submission. Fail to read it and we decline and know exactly that the person didn't bother to do the right thing.
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:iconlangue-skulptur:
~Langue-Skulptur Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
I don't mean wordy as in too detailed, but wordy as in, the exact same meaning could be pared down to fewer words. I've found people are more likely to read it. That's why I put most of my "do not submits" into list format.

But I shouldn't be telling you how to write your rules, sorry about that.
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:iconmarker-mistress:
=Marker-Mistress Sep 14, 2011  Hobbyist Traditional Artist
No worries man. I'm going in right now and setting things up into a different format so it's not a huge wall of text anymore. Hopefully it'll help! lol
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