We're almost through the month of September. So we're popping in with a few reminders and updates!

Starfall Faire Activities

The activities for Starfall Faire this year are still ongoing. You can read more about them in the news post here, but we wanted to mention word search 1 has a typo. The search itself says "festivites" but the key reads the correct spelling "festivities" so there's a missing letter "i" in the search itself. If you circle "festivites" it should be fine.

Masterlist Art Accessory Clarifications

Recently there's been a bit of confusion internally about costs associated with accessories being added later on to approved base art. This is an area we've clarified once in the past, but recently have realized there was still a bit of ambiguity in the language surrounding accessories and outfits. Unfortunately, this has led to a few users being charged for accessories being added to base art that should have been part of a one time "free" allowance.

We've granted a few users back EC that they were incorrectly charged for the single time free allowance recently, but we recognize we may have missed others. If you believe you've been wrongly charged for an accessory addition in the past and not seen any sort of a refund, please submit a ticket with a link to the relevant elnin and design approval where you were charged for the accessory, along with any info you can provide, and we'll double check if EC needs to be granted back to you. Please note this is only applicable if you submitted the design approval yourself, and the elnin is currently in your ownership!

The recent confusion surrounding these costs has also led our team to discuss some different scenarios, like if the one-time allowance applies to an elnin for the rest of its time. For example, if an elnin's gone through other revisions over the years that were paid, is the allowance still considered limited to the first time it was done years ago, or is there ever a case we'd allow other accessories be added for free? With that in mind, we've adjusted the language slightly to add a bit more flexibility for small accessories between paid edits. Consecutive accessory edits will still have a cost to value review time and avoid abuse (we're opting for this approach over a time gate), but there should be a little more opportunity if someone's revisiting an old design to add an accessory on after the fact for no cost if they forgot to initially.

Regional Affinity Reminder for Prompts

We've been bumping into more prompts missing enough regional features or language lately, or cases where elnin are covering up more than half of the background so features are difficult to see. If anyone has had a prompt kicked back in recent months for missing enough regional specific features or elnin obscuring too much of the background, please be sure to revisit our Regional AP guide page. That page goes into detail about art and written guidelines for earning AP. Thanks for your patience and willingness to work with us in this space!

Prompt Rule Clarifications and Problems with Artificial Intelligence

This month we've been looking to clarify the group's stance on artificial intelligence (AI), as it relates to work submitted to the group. We'll also be covering some general expectations within the group that have been around a while.

The topic of AI hasn't been talked about much in an official context, so we're doing that now. As of this news update, we’ve added language to the group's TOS and a few other prompt-related areas on the site to be more explicit that AI should not be directly used in the creation of prompts submitted on site. These additions reinforce existing language that work must be your own. (Additions to several areas in this news post will be in bold.)

The World of Eyre Terms of Service states:

• Your Content must be your own and must not be infringing on any third party's rights. World of Eyre reserves the right to remove any of Your Content from this Website at any time, and for any reason, without notice. Work of any kind directly produced through the use of Artificial Intelligence is not accepted in this group. This includes slight modifications to work produced by AI.

The Community Guidelines state:

• Do not trace, copy, reupload, or otherwise steal another artist's work
• Do not plagiarize, copy, or repurpose another writer's written material
• Do not use direct output from generative AI for works submitted to this group (excluding translation tools)
• Do not heavily reference another person's art in order to create your piece. Even if it's not strictly traced, lifting the whole composition, color scheme, poses, or the like would still be against the rules

General Prompt Guidelines will now include the following note:

• Prompt submissions must be your own work, and cannot be commissioned, collaborated, or completed with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The only exception to the use of AI is for the use of translations (ex. Translating a written prompt initially written in French into English).

And Prompt Specific Guidelines state:

• Please only submit newly created art. Please do not submit commissioned works or previously-created art or art done on reused bases.
• Collab pieces are not allowed for prompt submissions.
• All submissions must be your own work. Works produced through the use of artificial intelligence are not accepted in this group.

Based on those guidelines and our recent additions, AI should not be used in the group to replace the efforts taken to create art and/or writing within this group. Please treat AI as a tool if used and use it responsibly. We just want to be extra clear on what expectations are for this group. Prompts must be drawn or written by you. They should not be created through collaboration with other group members or through the use of AI or via commission. All prompt art should be newly created and not traced or recycled. Commissions are not gifts, and art trades where users are obligated to finish "their half" are not gifts. We understand it's different if you want to reciprocate by giving gift art to others who have kindly done gift art for you in the past, but gift art should never be discussed as a trade of any kind. Please keep the good will in gifting!

We also want to be clear that we understand there are times when AI is a tool and being used as one to help people out. We know some users in our group use translation tools (that are likely AI) to take something they've written with their own hands and get it translated to English so it can be reviewed by our team. This use case is fine, since individuals are still writing the prompts and translation is not the type of AI we're worried about. We also know some people like referencing images, and as a group we recommend using sites where users can verify they are allowed to reference those images without infringing on any copyrights. This goes for AI too.

If you're using AI to help ideate compositions, absolutely do not trace any reference (AI or otherwise), but in good faith try to verify where certain sites or tools are sourcing their image data from. Make sure it is ethically sound. We do not condone infringing upon other people's copyrights or seeing other artists hurt by this movement. We also want to reiterate that while you can use AI to help you with ideating something (as long as it is done in good faith), any image or writing containing any amount of direct output from generative AI should be treated as personal and would not be allowed to be submitted to the WoE site as submissions.

Please note: these rule clarifications do not apply to prompts that have already been submitted to the WoE site at the time of this posting, including those that are still awaiting feedback or approval. If submissions created directly through generative AI have been approved in the past, this does not condone the use of AI-generated content moving forward.

Feyhallow 2023

Planning for Feyhallow is underway! This year, we plan to have the event run throughout November and there will be some guest artist sales as a part of this event. We also would like to do a myo/trait/mutation raffle for the broader community outside of sales during the Feyhallow event. (Entry requirements are still being determined for the raffle part of this event.)

A few notable details about this year's Feyhallow sales:

• This Feyhallow's sales will be kittom-focused.
• There will be two standard kittom sales and a subtype kittom sale (which will include faenin and djinnin subtype kittoms).
• All sales will be flatsale raffles (flaffles).
• The subtype kittom flaffle will be the first flaffle (earlier in November/within the first half of the month).
• Standard kittom pricing will not exceed $100, and subtype kittom pricing will not exceed $375.
• Artists are allowed to do payment plans, but not required to. (Some artists may do them, while others may not.)
• The event overview post will go live early November with design name and pricing details, as well as payment plan info (if applicable).
• Some of the standard kittoms may sport more limited mutations typically only available during special quests or patreon sales.
• Standard kittoms will not sport any subtype traits or mutations.
• There will be a cap of 1 kittom per user, so for example, if you end up winning a subtype kittom, you would not be eligible for the other kittom flaffles.

While we can't post all details currently since event work is in progress, we did want to give some advanced notice for anyone that's interested in subtype kittoms or standard kittoms and might want to save up!

Moderator News

Due to event planning, hiring of new moderators will be a bit delayed. The team needs to focus on wrapping up Starfall Faire 2023 as well as preparing for and running Feyhallow 2023. Onboarding new moderators while juggling the event planning and event itself in the next two months would be a lot, so we'll be circling back to hiring after the events have ended. Applications have been reviewed and we're confident we'll have time to properly onboard and train new moderators closer to the Winter months, hopefully around December or early next year.

In other news, the team will also be slowing down during the winter months for a well deserved break. Some staff are likely to have family obligations around that time and after back to back events (or planning) this fall, the team will need the rest time. We recognize if we onboard new staff around that time, it will be a bit slow for the new staff. That is intentional, aswe would rather be able to take the time to train new staff when the turnaround times are a little more relaxed.

As we get closer to December and the winter months, we'll include some more specific info on how long the break or slow period will be for, and give the community a stronger idea of when the team is back fully. While prompts will continue to run each month, we may still do small things, and quality of life work is still ongoing in the background, even with the events occurring. Patience in these upcoming months will be appreciated, since some mods will be encountering some of their real life job workloads increasing as the year starts to wrap up.