Chinese GL

[ETA: These rules, with minor adjustments, have now been formally added to the comm rules in the top stickied post. Please respect the spirit as well as the letter of these rules and that will save everyone a lot of unpleasantness.]

This has been on my mind for a while because the boundary between fan work and commercial/paid work in the general c-media and c-novels fandom is relatively porous. It now seems to be established practice for publishers to recruit artists and translators from within fan communities, and fan artists and fan translators often take up paid work alongside their (non-commercial) fan work.

While it is obviously right for people to be able to pursue their ambitions, and to seek financial remuneration for their skills (though I would always, always advise reading the contract very, very carefully), there is also value in maintaining this comm as a non-commercial, fandom-only space. This is especially the case as such spaces are becoming increasingly rare. Maintaining the comm as a non-commercial space also allows members to engage more freely in critique and discussion of commercially-published works.

With that in mind, I am proposing to add the following to the comm rules:

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No Commercial Use Policy

This comm is a strictly non-commercial, fandom-only space. Members should therefore not engage in any commercial activity on the comm, including (but not limited to):

• Promoting their commercial projects. This includes projects in which they are not directly involved, but which are carried out under the direction of an organisation with which they have a commercial affiliation (e.g. if A is an artist who contracts on a regular basis to work for a particular publisher, A should refrain from making posts promoting that publisher's titles). Of course, everyone remains free to recommend, review, discuss and hype up commercial projects in which they are not involved (regardless of whether another member is involved) and to which they have no commercial affiliation, in the usual fandom way. Members who do fan work alongside commercial work remain welcome to plug their non-commercial fan work;
  
• Carrying out market research, such as product testing, focus groups, surveying members as to their reading preferences and habits, favoured genres, willingness to pay, demographic characteristics, and so forth;
  
• Crowdsourcing ideas and suggestions for the purpose of developing a commercial project.

Not a rule but a strong suggestion: when a commercially-published work or a commercial project is being discussed in the comm, members who are involved in or commercially affiliated with that project should refrain from participating too actively in the discussion. This is to avoid a 'chilling effect' on the ability of other members to discuss that project freely. In response to a review, for instance, a simple 'thanks for reviewing this!' would be fine. A rebuttal of the points raised in the review would be problematic.

Comm members are free (and indeed encouraged) to subject commercially-published work to rigorous critique, discussion and review. This is the case even if another member is involved in the production of that work. There is no expectation for comm members to 'pull their punches' (so to speak) when discussing a commercially-published work simply because another member is involved in it.

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If you are working on a commercial project that falls within the interests of this comm, you are of course free to construct a space to promote that project outside this comm. It is good to have a diverse range of spaces for conversations on these topics. By the same token, it is valuable to maintain this comm as a non-commercial, fandom-only space, to encourage specific types of discussions.

I would welcome suggestions for refining these rules, making them clearer, and perhaps adding more scenarios I had not thought of. However, I'm committed to the basic principle underlying them.

I'll leave this post stickied for a week, and will then formally add the proposed rules (with appropriate adjustments, to take into account any suggestions) to the comm rules in the top stickied post.