Promotions
Quick Links: Banners | Around the World and Web | Yahoo! Group | LiveJournal Community
At SWG, we recognize that we are but a tiny part of a much-larger online Tolkien community and that our group serves but one tiny niche. As such, it is one of our goals to network with the Tolkien community outside of SWG and help connect our members to other groups that serve their interests.
We are generally open and responsive to sharing information about other groups on our site. However, SWG is not an ad service, and we do not wish to deluge our members with constant announcements that do not interest them. As such, we ask that groups remain aware and respectful of our promotion policies for SWG.
The following apply to all promotions made on SWG-run sites:
- We reserve the right to choose which groups to promote on which of our sites and to pull promotions at any time.
- Allowing you to promote your group or putting up a promotion on our site does not mean that the group is affiliated with or endorsed by SWG.
- Groups must be open to all members who meet their membership criteria. In other words, if you plan on allowing only your friends to join your new community, then please do not ask to promote your group on SWG. We are proud to have a broad, diverse membership base and do not look kindly on exclusionary practices. Reasonable membership criteria is acceptable as long as this is made clear on your group's page. For example, it is acceptable to ask only adults 18 or over to join your group or to require members to write one review per week to remain in good standing. Again, however, we reserve the right to determine what constitutes "reasonable membership criteria" and accept your promotion based on that.
- SWG is a group for members ages 13 and over. All promotions must be acceptable for this audience. Adult-only groups are welcome to promote on SWG but must make it clear in their promotion that the group is for adults.
- The group must not serve to mock, belittle, or embarrass other authors, artists, or members of the fandom community.
- The group must not post stories or artwork without the original creator's permission.
Banners
We've recently received requests for banners for authors and other groups to use to link back to SWG. As a fairly small community, we really appreciate when our members help us to promote the group to the broader Tolkien community. Much of SWG's success has come from members helping to get the word out, and these people are indeed our unsung heroes!
Several of our members are very talented with graphics programs and rose to the occasion to provide us with banners and buttons for our members and associates to use. Thank you!
We're storing these images on our server space and making them available for public use. Simply copy the code beneath the banner you'd like to display and paste it onto your homepage, journal, blog, or wherever basic HTML coding is allowed. The banners link back to the SWG homepage; however, you're welcome to "customize" your banner by replacing this link with a link to your stories, profile, or anything else on SWG that you'd like people to see. Simply replace the first url in the code ... but don't delete the quotes around it! Replace only the url.
To use this banner, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/logobanner1.jpg" /></a>
To use this banner, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/logobanner2.jpg" /></a>
To use this banner, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/scriptbanner1.jpg" /></a>
To use this banner, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/scriptbanner2.jpg" /></a>
To use this banner, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/silmarilbanner1.jpg" /></a>
To use this button, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/SWGbutton1.gif" /></a>
To use this button, copy and paste this code into any space where basic HTML is allowed:
<a href="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org"> <img src="http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/images/swgbanners/SWGbutton2.gif" /></a>
If you're skilled with a digital paintbrush (or even a real one!) and you'd like to help SWG spread the word, we always welcome new banners for our members and associates to use. A few things to keep in mind when designing your banners:
- Please save the images as JPG files unless they involve animation. Animated images may be saved as GIF files.
- Banners should be no larger than 400 pixels wide by 150 pixels high.
- Banners should include the name "Silmarillion Writers' Guild" or "SWG" somewhere on them.
- Images should be suitable for all audiences. Please, no nudity or blood and gore.
- Very important: Please use only your own artwork or get permission from the artist whose work you're using. Artists should grant permission for you to use the image as well as allow you to crop/modify it for the banner. They should understand that the banner is being used by SWG and will be publicly available for other Internet users to put on their pages. Unfortunately, it is not feasible for us to give credit to the artists' whose work is being used in the banners. A small copyright notice in an inconspicuous place on the banner is acceptable, but we reserve the right to determine what is acceptable for these purposes. The copyright notice should not dominate or detract from the banner. Please, no watermarks or large notices; we will not be able to display these banners.
- SWG moderators reserve the right to use our discretion in choosing which banners to display on our site.
Please send your banners to moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We will reply within a few days to let you know that we've received your work. If we do not reply, please query; the email may have been swallowed in a spam filter somewhere.
Around the World and Web
In an effort to stay connected to the larger Tolkien community, SWG offers other groups the chance to promote their events on our homepage and in our newsletter. Such groups are subject to the criteria listed above.
If you'd like to see your group's event promoted on SWG, please email our moderators with a copy of your announcement. If the announcement is over 100 words, please provide a brief synopsis that we can post on our site; we will link to the full announcment in our newsletter. Please provide a url and any contact information, dates, and any specifics that our members should know.
What kind of events are we looking for? Anything! Contests, competitions, awards, challenges, gatherings/moots, concerts, readings, new sites, old sites doing new things, publications, lectures ... if it's Tolkien-related, we're probably interested! Drop us a line at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org for more information or to post an announcment.
Promoting on the Yahoo! Group
The Yahoo! group has always served primarily as a discussion forum for our members. Because discussions of both canon and writing often wander into the realm of "OT" (off-topic), we've always been lenient with regards to what we allow our members to post here.
As such, any non-profit group is welcome to promote their group on our Yahoo! group. You must be a member of the Yahoo! group to do so. (Please do not join, post an announcement, and then quit. We are not likely to look kindly at this and will probably ban individuals who make a habit of it.) If it's truly of interest to our members and you are not a member of the Yahoo! group, please contact us, and we will see that your announcement gets posted. If you're afraid to go through the moderators ... well, you might ask if there's a reason for that.
If the group is Tolkien- or writing-related, you're always in the clear. If it's not, please mark your message "OT" at the start of the subject line. In other words, you're welcome to tell our members about your new cat fancier's club if you believe it will interest them. The subject of your post should read, "OT: New Cat Fancier's Club."
Please be mindful of the number of promotions that you do. There are groups that we allow to make regular announcments on our Yahoo! group. These groups usually have special permission from one of the moderators because there is a large number of SWG members who are involved with that group as well. If you find yourself making an announcement every week or you never post except to promote your group, that's probably going to get old pretty quickly. We like to keep our discussion group lenient, which means that members who abuse our leniency will be asked to stop.
If you post an OT announcment, please move any conversation about it to the private email accounts of any members involved. If you and two other members strike up conversation about Cat Fanciers Anonymous and how to stop your cats from scratching the furniture, that's great ... but it's not likely to be of interest to most of our members. Please take it to your private email accounts.
As has already been said, we are lenient, and we are likely to overlook what we believe to be legitimate faux pas or lapses in judgment the first time that they happen. If you're in doubt about whether to post your announcment here, some good questions to ask: Will this interest a fair contingent of SWG members? Is my role in the group one who frequently contributes to discussions, reads and reviews the work of others, and shares work of my own ... or am I just an advertiser here?
Or, always, when in doubt, feel free to contact our moderators. We are happy to help.
Promoting on the LiveJournal Community
The LiveJournal community exists primarily as a casual outlet for sharing and getting feedback on stories, asking research questions, and posting research and discussions related to Tolkien's canon. Off-topic posts are not allowed in the LiveJournal community. The silwritersguild LJ not only serves a broader audience but is open to anyone with an LJ account, so it is important to us that posting priviledges here are not abused.
You must have permission from a moderator before posting announcements on the silwritersguild LJ community. Please send a copy of the announcement to us at moderator@silmarillionwritersguild.org. We will reply to you within a day. If you do not hear back after a day, please query; one of the emails may have fallen prey to a malicious spam filter along the way. As with all announcments, LJ announcements must meet the criteria listed above.
As with the Yahoo! group, there are groups that have received blanket permissions to post announcements on the silwritersguild community. Again, this is because there is a large overlap between their group and SWG, and what they have to announce affects a significant number of SWG members. We ask members to use discretion when asking us to post announcements here and not to abuse posting priviledges.
Announcements posted that have not received prior approval from a moderator will be removed.