Guidelines

The **fan-fiction policy** of the ***Harry Potter Fanon Wiki*** governs what type of fan-fiction stories are allowed, and how an editor must proceed in order to publish them here. Any stories which violate these guidelines will be subject to deletion by the administration team of the wiki.

## Story rules

* **All stories must be related to Harry Potter** - As this is a wiki related to Harry Potter and both its fanonical and fan-fictional elements, all submissions must be related to the Harry Potter franchise. As such, stories which only feature elements or cameos from Harry Potter characters are NOT allowed here.
* **Crossovers** - All stories have a limit of five included franchises, and Harry Potter must be included amongst these.
* **Language** - All stories must be written in English.
* **All entries must be given the proper rating** - How this is done is further explained in the guide below. However, check Fiction Ratings to see what kind of ratings exist, and which properly apply to your story.
* **Mature and explicit content** - Besides being properly rated, all stories which have either mature or explicit content must be flagged as such.

### Disallowed story-types

* Song fics;
* One or two liners;
* Stories where characters read another story, be it a real-world work (such as a Harry Potter book) or another fan-fiction;
* MST: comments inserted in between the flow of a copied story;
* Chat/script format and keyboard dialogue based entries;
* Any form of interactive entry: choose your adventure, second person/you based, Q&As, and etc;

## Instructions

Below are the instructions for how to properly publish your fan-fiction story here on the wiki. These are not just suggestions, but exactly what must be done. Any violation of protocol will be subject to deletion.

1. **Create a story article** - If you will publish your fan-fic here, then you must first create a story article. In the "Stories" category you have many examples of what a story article is. Create a chapter section, and use it to list all chapters of your story. Afterwards, these will be linked to the proper article where the chapter is. Once this is all done, you can proceed to the next step.
2. **Create a blog with the first chapter** - Following the example here, you must create a blog where you will post your first chapter, in whatever style you usually write, as long as it isn't a long wall of text without any paragraphs. In a multi-chapter story, the blog title for all chapters must be "**Story Name - Chapter ?**", without the quotation marks. The first section with "Title", "Author", "Rating", "Genre", "Published", and the "Disclaimer" are obligatory and must be done exactly as it is presented in the example. This is to be present in all chapter-blog articles, not just the first.
3. **Link to your story article** - In the "Title", as it is displayed in the example, link the story name to the story article you created in the first step.
4. **Source/HTML structure** - Be very careful when publishing a chapter, as the source (or HTML) structure of your article can become rather messy and the outcome is undesired. Check as many times as it is necessary to see if there are any mistakes or errors, and try to correct them. If you find yourself unable to, contact an active member of the administration for help.
5. **Index** - Once your first chapter is posted, add your story to the respective index, making sure to place it by alphabetical order in the list.
6. **Categorize the blog-story** - Once all the steps above are done, head to the "Stories published in the wiki" category and select the sub-category which applies to your story type. If yours is a multi-chapter story, create a category called "Chapters of (story title here)", and make it a sub-category of one of the appropriate index categories. While doing so, enter the editor and remove the "Blog posts" category from your article. All chapters of your story are to be placed under that category, and you must remove the "Blog posts" category from every new chapter. If it's just a short story, then simply categorize the blog-story itself under the "Index of short stories".