Burning Void's Linking Policies

Our goal with our links listing is to create targeted, useful listings that will be of real value to the very specific types of people who use our site, and the subjects they have an interest in. Everything below is meant to support that goal.

• User Policies
• Procedures for Putting Your Link in Our Directory
• A Word on Content
• If You're Already in the Listing and Want to Edit Your Link...
• Reciprocal Links
• Linking to Us

User Policies

We encourage people to rate sites in order to help others better find sites they'd enjoy and find useful. This means we'd prefer for any comments to be polite and related to the quality of a site or its content or services. We will not tolerate flame wars, hateful or discriminatory material, and other such behavior. We can and will ban any user who engages in such behavior, and we reserve the right to delete any comment at any time for any reason. This also means that if you have a site in the directory, you should not go down the list you're in and rate every other site with one star. We want helpful, accurate ratings, not self-serving crap. If you get busted you and your link will be banned from the directory.

Guests (users who don't have accounts) can rate links, but that's pretty much all they can do; they used to be able to submit category and link suggestions, but due to excessive spam attempts, that's no longer allowed. Accounts are free and easy to sign up for.

We want this to be a useful resource for all of you. Please don't abuse that. Keep things friendly.

Procedures for Putting Your Link in Our Directory

Our links directory is pretty automated; go there and submit your link under the correct category and subcategory (you'll find a "suggest new link" link under the categories). People who email us and say "put my link in your directory" are likely to be ignored as spammers (after all, if you haven't even looked around enough to see the "submit link" thing, how do you know our directory is right for your link?). If you think there needs to be a new category or subcategory you can request that first. However, there are a few caveats to this whole process.

• Categories vs. links: This should be obvious, really. A category is for multiple links. A link is a link to a specific site. Do not try to submit your site as its own category. You'd be amazed how often this happens.
• Editing your link: If you want to be able to edit your link, you'll need to sign upfor an account before you submit your link, and be logged in when you submit it. It's free and easy. See below for instructions if your link is already in the directory and you don't have ownership of it.
• Approval: All links must be approved by an admin before they will go up. Please be patient; sometimes we're busy. In fact, sometimes we're very busy. If we think your link is borderline in terms of approving it we may set it aside until we have time to look at it more closely.
• Categorization: Submit your link under one category--whichever one is most relevant. Later, once it has been included in the listing, you can alias it to another category if necessary--don't spam the categories. Also don't spam the categories with a bunch of links to various pages on your site. Only submit major, self-contained sites or projects. Let the links to the rest of your materials speak for themselves.
• Sub-categories: We really do appreciate it when people put even a little effort into finding the subcategory their site fits into rather than just shoving it into a top-level category or dumping it in the first sub-category with a likely word in the title. When people don't even bother to try, we have to spend our time trolling around a site and trying to figure out where it fits (if we don't have time, we may set aside the link for a long time or even reject it out-of-hand). We really do appreciate the effort, and we're much more likely to spend the time and effort on sites that look like their owners actually tried.
• Search for your site: Search to make sure your site isn't already in our database before submitting it, please.
• Ratings and comments: We encourage people to rate and leave comments on links. Do not attempt to delete and resubmit your link in order to get around low ratings or unfavorable comments. Do not try to find a way around the restriction on voting (you can only vote once per site per year). Do not down-rate all the other links in your category or leave nasty comments on them; if we catch you, you and your site will be banned. Do not have your employees act as shills and leave glowing comments; if we catch you, you and your site will be banned. The directory is meant to be useful to our visitors--it isn't designed as free publicity for you.
• Music and noise: If your site plays some sort of noise without permission from the visitor, please note this in your description. Otherwise we will add a comment to that effect. Remember that unexpected noise can cause problems for visitors, including scaring animals, waking sleeping people, disturbing a shared environment, and interfering with any kind of sound or music the computer is already playing. This is a real personal pet peeve of ours. (It's also a personal peeve of our pets.)
• Referral links: No affiliate or referral links of any kind will be approved. See the next point.
• Behavior: When people go around looking for easy publicity they sometimes lose their heads and forget simple things. Just remember that the purpose of this directory is not to promote your site--it's to provide a useful resource listing to writers and roleplayers. Any behavior contrary to that purpose can get you banned from the directory. We're pretty strict in how we define sleazy behavior, too, because we're sick and tired of all the little things people try to get publicity.

If you can, please update your description as your site changes! We'd love to keep the listings as up-to-date as possible. If we happen to visit your site at some point and it has changed, we may edit the description or add a comment to that effect. We reserve the right to edit any description at any time for any reason.

A Word on Content

We take no responsibility for the content of sites we link to. It's impossible to police a links listing like this, particularly since sites change without warning. However, we do reserve the right to refuse or remove any link at any time for any reason, including but not limited to the following:

• Adult content. (Adult themes are sometimes okay--we do link to some horror-related sites.)
• Illegal posting of copyrighted or trademarked material.
• A bare minimum of content meant just to get people to click on banner ads and paying links.
• A site that crashes our browser or is otherwise unusable to us, whether the code is broken or the designer uses bleeding-edge technologies that shut out many of their visitors. And no, we don't use MSIE when we check your site.
• A site that's irrelevant to what we do here. No, really. Stop submitting your canoe stores to the writing links directory, and things like that. Also remember that this is a resource listing for writers and roleplayers--it isn't a place for writers to advertise their services to others.
• An entirely foreign-language site. We wish we could include them, but we can't reliably and easily check them for content, and such a large proportion of submitted sites are attempts to slip commercial content in where it doesn't belong that we're unwilling to approve something we can't check. Our apologies to everyone with such a site! We do sometimes approve sites that have an English version, as long as it's obvious that the versions really are the same material.
• Attempting to camouflage a commercial site with a little free content and slip it into a non-commercial category. Put it where it belongs.
• While we do link to some fledgling sites, if the site never actually goes anywhere we may remove it.
• We have a very low tolerance for sleaziness and manipulative tactics. VERY low. Attempting to go against the spirit of these policies is a quick way to get your link (and you) banned from the directory.
• Whim of the admins.

Link edits must also be validated by an admin, so don't attempt to use them to get around these policies.

If You're Already in the Listing and Want to Edit Your Link...

Sign up for an account. Then email us your account name and the title of your site in the directory (the URL of its details page, too), and let us know that you're the admin of that site and you'd like ownership of that link. We'll transfer ownership to you and you'll be able to edit it yourself from then on.

Reciprocal Links

There's one thing we want to make clear: WE DON'T CARE IF YOU LINK TO US.

Not that we wouldn't be grateful--we love it when people link to us! But when it comes to deciding whether we're going to link to you, we don't care whether you've linked to us. We have NO reciprocal linking requirement. None. Not a single bit of our decision depends on whether you link to us or not.

So stop with the manipulative tactics to get us to link to you, okay? If we're going to link to you it'll be because we think your site might be useful to our readers. It isn't going to be because you told us at great and flowery length what a favor we'd be doing each other by swapping links. This also means you can stop lying to us. You know who you are--you're the ones who say you've linked to us, that you'd appreciate a link, but that you'll continue to link to us whether or not we link to you.

Any attempt to sidestep the spirit of these guidelines is MUCH more likely to screw up your chances of getting listed than anything else is. And once again, we DON'T have a reciprocal linking requirement, so don't use yours as a bludgeon to get us to list you. Got it? Good.

(To those of you who are really nice people and don't do any of these things, thank you for putting up with this rant! We love you!)

Either your site is appropriate and we'll list it, or it isn't and we won't. End of story.

Linking to Us

Now that the whole reciprocal links thing is out of the way (you did read the above section, right? Right?) we can talk about linking to us. If you wish to link to us, thank you--we definitely appreciate it. We certainly think that we have resources of value to offer to roleplayers and writers.

If you want us to provide a short description to go with our link, you can use something like the following: "Errant Dreams provides resources of all kinds to cooks, writers and roleplayers: hundreds of articles, reviews, links, an email zine, and more."

If you have a mandatory reciprocal linking policy, don't bother to link to us. We really don't want to get another email telling us that so-and-so has linked to us and that they'll continue to do so if we link to them. Again, our link approval process is based strictly on relevance and merit.

Reprinting Material

Please note that all material on this website is copyrighted. You may link to anything you want, but you may not reprint or repost any of it without permission. We do prefer that people link to the articles or site rather than reprinting them.