More from the Russian bots....

On 5 March 2009, the moderators of the maryrenaultfics (MRF) LiveJournal community posted a warning to members about a malware virus targeting communities on various social networking sites, including LiveJournal.Like most admin posts during the tenure of my_cnnr and trueriver as moderators, the post was actually put up by the former.
The community profile had been updated on 1 February 2009; but, although members had been informed of the fact at the time, details had not been given. For this reason, in "More from the Russian bots....", the mods took pains to inform people explicitly that the new rules now banned the use of active links off LiveJournal.
Initially members followed the ban assiduously. However, once the immediate urgency passed, they tended to decide for themselves whether an external link could (or couldn't) be considered safe. In January 2013, however, the rule was invoked by the mods as justification for placing one of the members on moderated posting status.
==Admin Post of 5 March 2009==
==Follow-Up Post==
No comments were posted at the time. However, the following day (6 March 2009), a second admin post was made, "Enough already about the bots!". This provided instructions on what to do if one were friended by an unfamiliar journal. This elicited several comments of thanks, such as the following:
==Consequences==
In the short run members were assiduous in disabling links, since they saw the rule as a reasonable precaution to protect both the community and themselves against what, at the time, was undeniably a serious threat. 
As time passed and the Russian bot problem receded, many members returned to the practice of including at least some active external links in their posts. In doing so, they did not follow formal guidelines from the moderators, for the rule, as given on the community profile, remained a simple ban. Instead, members made the decision on their own estimation of whether it would (or would not) be safe to leave a link active. As a general rule, they linked freely to their own journals, even when these were off LJ: Dreamwidth, in particular, was seen as a safe site. They might also link directly to stories they had posted to AO3,An example of a post in which direct links were made to stories on AO3 is queen_ypolita's "Non-spooky ficlets" (2 Nov 2013). One of the mods made a favourable comment on having new stories to read, but made no reference to the presence of active links in the post. articles on Fanlore, the Yuletide community, and the like. For the most part these transgressions of the rule (if that is the appropriate way to put it) were overlooked by the mods. Furthermore, the matter was not again raised formally within the community in later admin posts. 
===Example of Later Practice===
Consider the following example. On 10 November 2012, queen_ypolita made a post, "Purposes of Love, different editions", in which she discussed an ongoing series of comparison essays she had been doing on her Dreamwidth journal. The following is an excerpt:
Of the two mods, trueriver immediately commented that the posts represented "valuable work" that was "a wonderful gift to the community", while my_cnnr called it "another valuable resource for MR fans". Neither made any reference to the presence of an active link to Dreamwidth in the post.
Notably, in a reply to one of the other comments, queen_ypolita included a list of links to Mediafire, all of which were disabled—an indication that she was actually not ignoring the rule against links, but rather was interpreting it to mean that only potentially unsafe links should be deactivated. 
With examples like this in front of them, it is not surprising that newer members were not always aware that there was actually a rule banning all active links. That would not only have required careful perusal of the profile, itself a fairly lengthy document, but a disregard for the actual practice of members of the community.
===Another Case===
It should be noted that, even though the moderators at maryrenaultfics often disregarded active links to members' Dreamwidth blogs, this was not always the case.
On the 5th or 6th of January 2013, Naraht posted a notice to the maryrenaultfics community (under her LJ username, emily_shore) with the information that she was about to host a chapter-by-chapter (CBC) discussion of Renault's novel, The Charioteer, on her Dreamwidth blog.Shortly before posting to MRF, Naraht had polled her flist to see if there was interest in having a discussion of The Charioteer. This poll (#12494) was included in a more widely-ranging journal post, "A Charioteer readthrough and meta on the "World Wars megafandom"", which she posted 5 January 2013. Respondents were fairly evenly divided between Yes, No, and Maybe. She invited other MRF members over to participate, and included a live link.
Within very short order the announcement was deleted by the moderators, who placed Naraht on moderated posting status (i.e. any post she made to MRF would have to be approved by the mods before it would actually appear on the community). 
The mods appear not to have directly informed Naraht of their action. She learned of the deletion of the announcement when asked by greerwatson if she had done it herself; and learned she was on moderated status when she tried and failed to post her story, "No courage in him" to MRF.Personal messages sent to Naraht by greerwatson (on DW), and personal messages sent to emily_shore by fawatson (on LJ).
Given the timing, this may be the incident referred to in the following subthread within "Mary Renault LJ fandom",The discussion of MRF took place on the FFA post "Followed Them Home- FFA Post # 189", started on 24 February 2013. a thread on Fail Fandomanon:
At any rate, the incident continued to rankle (with both Naraht and the MRF mods) until, on 30 January 2014, she posted an entry to her journal, "maryrenaultfics and me," that discussed her impressions of the community over the period in which she had been a member (at that point, some three and a half years), with particular reference to the community rules. With respect to this particular incident, she said:
This omits the ostensible reason why she was put on moderated status (i.e., the failure to use an inactive link to her journal), but probably hits closer to to the underlying cause. Even more relevant, however, is something that Naraht only mentioned a day later in a comment:
At bottom, then, the mods may have felt provoked into action by having their own prospective CBC discussion of The Charioteer pipped at the post.
It should be added that the mods insist that they do not care what Naraht does on her blog, but feel that it would have been polite of her to let them know about her plans instead of using MRF as a personal message board. Furthermore, not being particularly involved in fannish activites (other than modding the comm), they approach fandom, fannish spaces, and fannish practices with caution and reservations. For this reason, they maintain that the ban on external links remains justified, and her inclusion of an active link to Dreamwidth was a blatant breach of known community rules.
==Current Rule==
The mods never extended the ban to links that are internal to LJ. 
The rule banning active external links still remains in the profile (as of November 2014). However, a limited exception is now permitted for members' own personal sites. Specifically, the current wording states that, "For the safety of all members, links to most external sources should be disabled," but with no definition of how "most" should be interpreted in this context. Buried later in the profile, though, is the information that members may link directly to their own LiveJournal blog or other site which they maintain. However, they are told to indicate explicitly if the link leads to a site other than LJ.
==References==
Category:Maryrenaultfics LiveJournal Community
Category:2009
Category:2013