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[parakletos]

How are you defining this category?

Looking at some of the stories nominated under AU wouldn't/shouldn't really be classed as such. They may no longer comply with the books but AU is normally defined as diverging from the books rather than being over taken by it. Thus The Meaning of One would be considered AU and The 7th Horcrux would not.

Thanks

[Bella]

The way I believe we're classifying it is that any deviation from the books automatically counts as AU. I don't really understand your point with "The 7th Horcrux" - if it explores a storyline that is part of the books, but in a completely different way, how is it not AU?

[bluestickie]

I get what you mean, it's like a story that was a "future" story at a time before one of the later books came out wasn't AU when it was written, but is considered to be now.

As a general rule of thumb, just go by what the author has tagged in the summary/info.

[Maxtaf]

Could you clarify this? It's always been a bit obscure for me. I mean, the ONLY stories that don't deviate from canon are the ones that Rowling herself wrote. ANYTHING else could be considered AU. Where's the line?

[Bella]

if a story follows canon, it's generally not AU. Ie, a story about Ron and Hermione getting married is regular fanfiction, a story about Draco and Hermione getting married is AU.

this article explains it well I think :)

[SickPuppy]

Yes, the article does explain it well, but your explanation makes no sense in regarding the AU category.

An AU story changes one or more events to pursue another direction, or explore the ramifications of that change.

With your explanation, almost any story written pre-DH becomes AU, unless it was a missing moment.

The Seventh Horcrux is a story written before DH, and thus it can only be Post-HBP or Pre-DH, whatever you want to call it, but it isn't AU. And I'm not sure how much After The End belongs into that category either, since the story is pre-OotP.

Look at the dates, check when the story was written. That should give you enough info to see if the author really intended to write his own sequel to a story, or an alternative universe story. The difference is huge.

And that difference is really important. If you accept the nominations for wrong categories, your polls won't mean much as people will vote for the most popular story, even if it doesn't belong into that category.

In the end, your effort to organize this will end up being worthless, if you don't check whether the stories actually belong into those categories. You don't need to read them, just check how the authors classified them, or let the users complain if they feel a story doesn't belong into a certain category.

[bluestickie]

If the author has classified their story as AU, it can be nominated in the AU category.

Topic closed (if you're still confused, you can PM me).