Updates

This is a announcement update of job responsibility change for the General category.

We have started reviewing the feedback from the TFL survey and one of the most common requests was for better communication between our staffers – particularly those dealing with finished/updated/closed forms and the troubles process. After some discussion, we have decided that an easy way of improving this process is to move the responsibility for ‘overdue’ or ‘too long on upcoming’ troubles from the troubles staffer to the finished/updated/closed staffer.

From now on, finished/updated/closed staffers will be in charge of sending out overdue warnings. We hope that this will streamline the overdue fanlisting troubles process by ensuring that fanlistings with F/U/C forms pending will not be troubled if their forms have not been processed. :)

This is a announcement update of definition edit for the General category.

The TFL and fanlisting definitions have been updated in response to feedback (from the TFL survey) that our previous definitions made fanlistings sound like mailing lists. We hope that these small edits will make things clearer.

This is a update of for the General, Musicians: Female, Musicians: Male category.

Please note that both the Musicians: Male and Musicians: Female categories will no longer accept screen actors and musical actors who sing in their roles on the basis of vocal contributions to soundtracks, as that is still under the wing of their acting commitments.

Fanlistings that were approved before this rule was implemented will not be affected. If you have any queries, please raise them at the boards. Thank you!

This is a announcement update of new category for the General, People Miscellany category.

As many of you will have noticed, we now have a brand new category here at TFL: the People Miscellany category. Some of the staffers realised that the “people” areas of the Miscellanous category were growing at an enormous rate, and we agreed that the number of fanlistings warranted a brand new category.

The specific sub-categories that have been moved are: Language and Culture, Lifestyles, Love and Relationships, Occupations, People, Physical Appearance and Voices.

All people-related fanlistings from Miscellanous have been moved into the new category, and the owners have been contacted. We are still in discussion about further changes to be made to the Miscellanous category.

The new staffer of this category is Brittany, the category is now in full working order and is accepting forms. Please be aware that any old rules for these sub-categories are still in place for the new category.

This is a announcement update of rule clarification for the General category.

We have had a few complaints that our troubles e-mails were unclear for the ‘inactivity’ rule (updating once every 2 months). Currently there is no requirement in the e-mail to add ALL pending members. TFL.org feels that if you have 20 members pending then you need to add all of those pending members if you are on trouble for not updating. We have had a few occassions where owners have just added a few members without adding the rest.

Due to this, and a few complaints from owners saying that the troubles e-mail is unclear on this issue, we’ve updated the e-mail.

The Inactivity troubles e-mail now reads:

We found that you had not updated in over two months. We require that all fanlistings are updated at least every two months. To be removed from the troubles list, all pending members must be added to the fanlisting, and all update forms must be processed. Even if no new members have joined recently, you must still post an update every so often to say that nobody has joined. Something like this will do: “DATE: No new members have joined recently!”

Again, this isn’t a rule change – you have always been troubled for not updating a fanlisting in 2 months. This is just a clarification from member suggestions. :)

This is a announcement update of lost e-mails/forms for the Fashion/Beauty, General, Songs: Male Solo category.

We are very sorry about this but we have lost a number of old e-mails from the end of May to the end of June in the Fashion & Cosmetics and Songs: Male Solo categories.

For Fashion/Cosmetics – ALL e-mails have been lost.
For Songs: Male Solo – only Finished/Updated/Closed e-mails

Note: the loss is ONLY from the end of May to the end of June. We have everything else :)

If you submitted an e-mail or form to these categories, please re-send the e-mail/form as soon as possible so we can begin updating the category. If you are unsure if this concerns your e-mail/form, please contact one of the staffers via our contact forms or the Fashion/Cosmetics or Songs: Male Solo boards.

We are very sorry about this, as well as the extreme backlog in both categories for these positions.

This is a announcement update of survey results for the General category.

As most of you will know, several months ago TFL held a survey that asked you questions relating to the network: from applications to troubles and everything in between!

We have collated the results and are posting them so you can take a look:
TFL 2005 Survey

All comments have been removed, but we will be going through each comment, along with the survey statistics themselves to take on board your suggestions and find ways to improve TFL.

However, if you ever want to make a suggestion, comment or complaint do feel free to contact us at any stage via the contact forms or staff feedback forms.

Thanks for participating in the survey! :)

This is a announcement update of TFL downtime for the General category.

On Sunday night, July 24, network maintenance will occur on the server TFL.org is hosted on for about four hours beginning at 11:59PM CDT (GMT-0500). We are not expecting any problems with this, but wanted to let you all know :)

Would you like to be informed of these updates as soon as they happen? Then join our network mailing list! All major TFL announcements are posted there.

This is a announcement update of a rules change for the General, Music Miscellany category.

Several changes have now been made to the Music Miscellany rules and subcategories. Please read through these changes below and if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact the category staffers though the contact forms or in the Music Miscellany forum.

• Sub-genres and fusion-genres ARE now accepted in the “Genres” subcategory. This also means that genres such as “Emo” are acceptable. The applications staffer is going to wait at least a week after this announcement before making any approvals for this genre (and others like it) due to this rule change.
• The “Songwriters & Producers” subcategory has now been removed from this category, and all relevant fanlistings have been moved into the most appropriate Musicians category instead (with the tag “- songwriter” or “- producer” after their name). All affected fanlisting owners have been emailed about this change of category.
• The “Song Genres” subcategory has had its name changed to “Song Types” to more accurately reflect the fanlistings contained within it.

This is a rules change update of announcement for the General category.

The rules have been updated about fanlistings going on hiatus:

You may temporarily place your fanlisting on hiatus in one of two ways:

1) If visitors are unable to submit join forms during this time (i.e., you take down your join form or the entire fanlisting), then your fanlisting can only be on hiatus for one month. You also must state the date of your return on the fanlisting’s main page. Fanlistings without return dates will be sent undefined hiatus troubles e-mails, and fanlistings that remain on hiatus after their return date will receive long-term hiatus troubles e-mails.

OR

2) If you keep your join form open and continue to accept applications during your hiatus, you can go on an ‘update hiatus’ for two months. You must process all join/update forms upon your return.

If you need to place your fanlisting on hiatus for longer than one or two months, you should make arrangements to have someone you trust update your fanlistings while you are away. TFL is not involved in this process in any way, so we cannot monitor it or control it. It is up to you to make sure your fanlistings are updated if you are unable to take care of them for an extended period of time.

For TFL network announcements via e-mail, please join the network news mailing list. :)

This is a announcement update of a rules change for the General category.

For several months now, TFL has discussed creating a rule on how we handle ‘double approvals.’ We have found that handling this has been quite difficult as it is often a mistake, but in some cases, applicants have tried to circumvent the rules.

However, we have decided that we need a definitive rule on what to do in these cases. From today onwards, this is our policy on double approvals:

If a double approval occurs at the network and the second approval is less than 2 months old, the second approval will be removed from the network. Both owners will be contacted regarding this. If the second approval is older than 2 months, it will remain listed, along with the first approval.

We feel that after two months, it would be unfair of us to remove the second listing, so have created this rule to cover those fanlistings that just slip under the radar.

Please note: This rule only is for double approvals that happen from TODAY onwards. Previous double approvals will remain listed and are NOT affected by this rule.

We encourage ALL owners to be careful of how their fanlisting’s name is listed at TFL, especially those of you that have fanlistings for musicians who may have separate stage names and real names. We often find that double approvals happen for subjects that have more than one name and when names aren’t spelt correctly. Please give our staffers ALL names for your subject, along with any useful information about a subject that can help us prevent double approvals.

Please give us an e-mail or post at the boards if you have any questions or comments! :)

TFL Network News Mailing List: Want these announcements posted to you? Join the Network News mailing list! All major changes to TFL will be posted there!

This is a announcement update of a rules change for the General category.

After a lot of discussion, we have decided to introduce a network-wide rule as to the number of fanlistings an owner can have on upcoming at any one time. These rules are:

6 fanlistings in a category and/or
20 fanlistings in the network overall

If an owner reaches these limits, the staffer has the right to reject the applicant. Meaning the owner must complete some of their pending fanlistings before they can be approved for more.

The reason for this rule is that we have a number of fanlisting owners who get ‘application happy’ or who apply for many fanlistings at once. Usually, these owners then end up with fanlistings on troubles (too long on upcoming), or they close their fanlistings before the fanlistings have even been built.

We have asked staffers to be careful with this rule in case Finished/Update/Closed staffers are behind schedule, but please feel free to use the Additional Information box to let Applications staffers know if you have submitted finished/closed/update forms recently. Include the URLs to your finished fanlistings in the box, also.

If you have any questions about this rule change, please contact us, or post at the board :)

This is a announcement update of e-mail change request forms for the General category.

Please note: If you have sent an E-mail Change request form and have not yet received a reply about it, please resubmit your form. Some forms sent over a month ago were unfortunately lost. Please remember that in order for your e-mail address to be changed, you must reply to the confirmation e-mail that we send to your old e-mail address.

If you’re not sure whether or not your e-mail address has been changed, please use the Your FL List to receive the list of all fanlistings under your e-mail address. If a fanlisting of yours isn’t listed under that e-mail address, or if it’s still listed under an old e-mail address, then you should send in a new E-mail Change request form.

We’re very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

This is a announcement update of for the General category.

APPLICATION WEBSITES
Staffers have noticed several applicants making ‘application websites’ for their applications. This means applicants have made websites to ‘prove’ their ‘worth’ as an owner.

We feel that these are unnecessary and are a waste of the applicant’s time. If a staffer gets sent an ‘application website’ or any correspondance other than the application form (not including contact forms that have necessary information, such as background information on the fanlisting subject or a new e-mail address for the applicant), the staffer has the right to not take this information into account when doing approvals.

We realise that you may feel eager or nervous about the fanlisting you have applied for, but PLEASE stick to the application form and not things like an application website! If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail us

RULE UPDATE
We have updated the ‘updating’ rules part to include fanlisting owners updating members information as well as adding pending members once every two months, the new rule reads:
“4. You must update at least once every two months.
* If no one joins in that time, please make a note on the index page saying so (e.g., “Last Updated DATE: No new members have joined recently.”) All we want to know is that the site is still active and being cared for.
* This also means that any pending members and/or update information forms should be added/dealt with.”

TFL 101
We have created an ‘introduction guide’ for TFL: TFL 101: Introduction to TheFanlistings.org
If you have any suggestions, please let us know!

STAFF JOBS
We have also created a guide for what each member of the TFL does, for clarity and also those members of the community that want to get involved: TFL Staff Jobs

This is a announcement update of a category name change for the General, Music Miscellany category.

We have decided to change the Music category name to Music Miscellany as we felt that it reflected the content of the category more accurately. All previous fanlistings from the Music category continue to be listed in the new Music Miscellany category and all subcategories are the same.

We hope you are happy with this change but if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a message in the Music Miscellany forum for one of the category staffers to answer. Thanks! :)

This is a update of a celebration for the General category.

As you will have noticed it is TFL’s Birthday! Five years ago, sometime in June Janine established the TFL network. Since then it has gone from strength to strength and has now reached its fifth birthday.

As part of the celebration, avatars on the message board have been increased to 100×100 size for the month of June.

We do appreciate all the support and enthusiasm you have all had for the network over the last five years and hope that TFL continues to grow. 10 years, here we come!

This is a announcement update of contact forms error for the General category.

We apologise for this, but any contact forms sent in the last 2-3 days (just to be safe) may not have been received by the staffer you sent them to. We also have no backups for these forms, so please re-send the form, or get in touch with the staffer you sent it to to check if the form got through.

We were fiddling and trying to implement some changes and mistakely made the forms go live. We apologise for this and all the forms should be working now. Thanks!

Shameless TFL Advertising: If you want important TFL news sent directly to you, join our Network News mailing list. All major TFL news is sent there :)

This is a update of for the General, Places category.

After some discussion, we have decided to add some new sub-categories to the Places category. There is now a sub-category for Continents & Sporting Venues. We have also decided to phase out the Misc. sub-category. The fanlistings that were listed under Misc. have been moved to more appropriate sub-categories within the Places category. We have also added a new rules about Mythological places. These type of fanlistings will be approved in the Mythological/Religion category.

This is a announcement update of an e-group change for the General category.

After many requests by our visitors and owners listed at TFL for better communication by TFL.org staff, especially for major network changes (like new rules) we have decided to re-vamp the TFL.org mailing list from an emergency announcements-only list to a ‘Network News’ group.

This means that any time there is a significant change to TFL (new rules, downtime, category additions) we will make a post to this group as well as the blog and message board. We expect that these announcements will only be made once or twice a month, so the group should not be spammed. Also, only the TFL.org senior staff are allowed to post there, so there will be no off-topic discussions.

We hope that this helps keep you all informed with what is happening at TFL and means less suprises for you with new rules :) If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post at the message board or e-mail us.

This is a reminder update of a policy for the General category.

We have recently had a few complaints from managers of celebrities about the use of the word ‘official’ on fanlistings, so we just wanted to take this chance to remind everyone that is listed here that the word ‘official’ can only be used if you have the approval of the celebrity/product itself. Even using something like, “official TFL.org fanlisting” can be tricky. Instead, when you are linking back to TFL, you can put something like, “listed at TFL.org” or “part of the TFL.org network”. Take a look at our helpful hints on legalities and formalities with fanlistings for more information.

This is really just a reminder, since getting these letters isn’t fun for us or you as owners :)