SWG is a small part of a huge online Tolkien community and, indeed, we owe much of our success to the generosity of other group moderators allowing us to promote our group on their mailing lists. Given that, we've always welcomed--indeed encouraged--members who start a group related to Tolkien or writing to promote their group on the SWG Yahoo! group.
However, there are necessarily caveats to that. These are spelled out on our promotions page, but the gist for our Yahoo! group is as follows.
Firstly, SWG is a positive group that focuses on encouraging and improving the writing of its members. We do not support groups that focus on mocking, belittling, or bullying other authors. For example, groups that post stories without the author's permission solely to poke fun at them are not groups that we welcome on SWG.
Likewise, groups that promote themselves on our sites must allow open membership. Naturally, you are allowed to have criteria for membership--for example, members must be a certain age or must be willing to engage in a certain level of participation--but groups that intend to exclude potential members without reason or justification are not welcome to promote on SWG. In other words, if you've started a Silmarillion RPG and wish only to accept your friends, please do not advertise your group on SWG. If you've started an adult fiction archive and do not want any members under the age of eighteen, you are welcome to promote your group.
Secondly, please keep in mind that SWG is a group for not only adults but anyone over the age of thirteen. While we do not discourage sharing material that is for adult audiences, we ask that this always be made very clear and that all posts to our group be suitable for teenage audiences. For example, if you have started an archive for Maedhros/Fingon slash, then your announcement on SWG should be suitable for a teenage audience and should make it very clear that your group is for adults only.
Finally, as with anything, if your announcement does not have to do with Tolkien or writing, please mark it as off-topic or "OT." While it's safe to assume that some of our members would be interested in an original fantasy RPG or a Star Wars fanfic archive that you've started, then others may not. Please respect them by marking your message as OT. No one likes wasting their time on emails that don't interest them in the least.
Also, it is helpful to share your contact information with the group so that interested members may contact you off-list for further details on your new group.
Last updated 30 May 2008.