2022-11-11
    We will not be accepting AI-generated art into the galleries. This goes for the subject as well as the background and other elements in the piece. 
As of right now, AI-generated art is vast with more and more generators being created for others to use. Each one has its own system of "learning" from the data on the internet. Some capture "assumptions" of art based on the prompt you type in. Some "blend" together images you can upload to it yourself.
    Because of this, artists can have their works used without their permission to "train" the AI-generator or even have a very closely related spoof of their work created. This is not what HARPG wants to promote in the galleries as we fear it may infringe on the rights of artists. There's no way we can safely or easily trace the roots of the generated piece. We've always promoted creating your own art with sources free for you to use either via stock or your own imagination. 
    In the future, as this new technology develops, perhaps we will come to accept specific generators that we know create completely different works of art as we know this can be an awesome source of inspiration for art. For now, however, because the technology is too new and misunderstood, we will not be accepting any AI-generated art. 
This includes but is not limited to site such as:
ArtBreeder
Craiyon
DALL-E
DreamUp
Midjourney
Nightcafe
Wombo

2021-10-14
We will not be accepting any Pay-to-View content such as premium content or subscription-based content.
This is due to the lack of moderation we would have as admins. We wouldn't be able to view the content to make sure it is appropriate material for the group and the galleries. We want to promote sharing our HARPG art and not present pieces our members would have to pay to see.  

2020-04-21
Hello! You may have noticed the stock guidelines and gallery submission rules have been updated. There are a lot of people submitting right now who haven't read these; doing so will perhaps give you the answer as to why your submission hasn't been accepted! On a similar note, please avoid resubmitting unless you've checked the rules, are certain you're in line with them, and it's been like 1-2 weeks' wait. We do sometimes miss submissions, but resubmitting every day or several times a day just clogs up the queue and makes things take more time.

If you've read the rules before and are good at following them, and you're coming to this journal worried that things have gotten changed that will lead to some kind of crackdown - don't worry! The changes are actually to allow a few more things to be accepted! Here's your TL;DR on new things we are now accepting into the Sales folder (along with things that have been previously accepted):

Pedigreed sale foals that have complete info and unique art
Drawn stud or brood sheets and non-commercial “Available for Breeding” journals (i.e. list preexisting horses open for non-commercial breeding)
”Looking for”- journals focused on real breed purchases or breedings, RP partners (for created breeds, please refer to that breed’s group instead).
Originally drawn, finished tack sets for sale. Tack may be displayed on a premade horse base but the tack itself should be unique lines.
Complete and originally drawn stable maps/designs for sale
Raffles for any of the above  (free-to-enter; pay-to-enter are lotteries, which deviantArt doesn't permit at all)


These are on a trial basis for now to see how it works out. Many have not been allowed previously because submissions got flooded with USD slot sales, ads that were only relevant to members of closed breeds that already have their own group, or repetitive recolored lineart sales, in a group that has always been focused on relaxed downtime hobby art, not commercial art (nothing wrong with making money off your work, that's just not what this group is for). Hopefully this rule set will make a nice compromise!

Take care of yourselves and each other, and happy arting!

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Hello hello! The fourth anniversary update is live, check out the activities if you haven't yet- HARPG 10th Anniversary Celebration. As a part of the most recent update, the Roleplay and Interaction Hub has gotten a facelift, and we hope you'll find it useful! Feel free to note the group if you have suggestions for future prompts.

We're also delighted to unveil the official HARPG discord! Be good and have fun!

Thirdly, the HARPG team is stepping in to assist in running the HARPG-SecretSanta group this year! Head over and give that group a watch if you're interested. Sign-ups will open shortly.

---

Hi everyone! We said we were hiring a new admin... well, we got a ton of great applications and it was incredibly difficult to narrow down the list, so one became four. Please give a big welcome to Annacaza, Siocain, DarkAngelLoveNight, and sokaede! Thank you again to everyone who applied, it's awesome to see so much enthusiasm for the group

^{~Helsinge
March 31st 2017}

---

Hello, everyone!

We are experiencing some technical difficulties at the moment as we are revamping the group. Please bear with us and let us know about any issues you are experiencing. We should be up and running in no time, and lots of exciting things are in store for the group, so stay tuned!

Thank you for your patience!

~Mistyhills
^{March 9, 2016}

---

Greetings, everyone! My deepest apologies for being so silent for such a long time. My computer had finally kicked the bucket on me, and it took way longer than I expected and anticipated for my new one to arrive. On top of my own personal technical issues, we've also been combating several issues on dA's end in regards to group settings that we're having to learn to work around.

So here's what's up:
-I am currently going through all of the massive backlog of work that I couldn't get around to due to the lack of a computer, so if any of you have any immediate questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to note either myself or the group.

-The Winter Ball event closed on February 28th. BUT, given the unexpected delay, an extension until March 31st is being offered to those of you with last-minute entries. There will be NO MORE extensions after this. This will give me time to get things ready for the results.

-Prizes for the primary Winter Ball event will be announced in this journal: fav.me/d8939ol

-The secret raffle prize will be announced after the drawing. This will also be announced in the journal linked above

-Please make sure that you read our updated fav.me/d8kbxu9!

We had a monkey wrench thrown into the gears for a bit there, but now it's back to business!

Thank you for your patience!

~War-Chant

^{March 23, 2015}

---

March 3, 2015
Due to a dA update that changed how admins are able to (or, in our case, not able to) edit old journals, we'll be resubmitting our journals and getting our links updated, so please don't be alarmed if things take a while to work again! There is a link to old news at the bottom of this submission, so please take a look at that if you're curious about past happenings!

We also have a gallery submissions policy update, so please read the following:
Due to an excessive amount of design sheets being submitted to the group that we feel overshadow other submissions related to the HARPG, we will no longer be accepting design/adoptable/auction sales sheets. The HARPG is not meant to be a sale-place for your designs; there are other groups out there for that and we ask that you consider using them instead.
What sales will we accept?
Pre-existing characters now offered for sale.
Sales journals/ads that include existing HARPG characters.
What sales are not accepted?
Breed Imports
Design-Sales & Mass Design Sheets
What if my sales journal includes my designs for sale?
As long as your journal also includes pre-existing characters for sale, you may also have your designs listed on this ad. We just can't keep accepting design-page after design page as it isn't fair to the artists trying to submit other work, but whose works are being overlooked because people don't want to see adoptable designs in their inbox every single day.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns we ask that you send them our way, we just want to help as best we can!
Thanks for tolerating our temporary clutter,
x NewAgeStables

31/12/2014
From all of us to all of you, wishing you and yours a Happy New Year! Here's to 2015!


~HARPG Admin Team


*Just to keep everyone in the loop, we are still experiencing some technical difficulties with the group, but a ticket has been submitted to the Help Desk. Hopefully we can get everything resolved soon!



29/12/2014
Greetings, everyone!

So it's looking like things are far more broken than we expected, and we are currently dealing with a backlog of submissions issues until dA fixes whatever happened. Things are going into the wrong folders (again), voting is broken, and some of the admins are having problems actually logging into the site...so things are a bit frustrating at the moment.

I submitted a ticket to the Help Desk yesterday, but I believe that this is a site-wide problem, and the only thing that we can do is ride it out until things are back to normal.

I thank you in advance for your patience, and we hope to have everything cleared up soon!

~War-Chant


02/11/2014
Just a reminder that the admins do not just blindly accept or decline an image without checking it out first. If you list "no references used" and we find that you have used an reference (whether it's from a legit stock source or not), your piece will be automatically declined. We're not perfect and sometimes images that do not meet our standards slip through the cracks, so please bear with us. We do check every image that comes through and we try to catch as many discrepancies as we can.

Please do not use "no references used" as a way of trying to get around our new submissions guidelines! These guidelines are here for a reason, and we are asking you to respect them.

If your piece has made it through and someone points out that a reference was indeed used, your piece will be removed.

As always, if you have any questions, please read through this journal and our HARPG Gameplay Guidelines first to see if your question has already been answered. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

Thank you and have a great week!
~War-Chant



12/10/2014

I've noticed the continued trend of artists who are still not listing whether or not they have used references and/are questioning why we are asking that you list that information on your submissions.

Why do you ask that we list whether or not we used references?
Giving proper credit to your sources is a good habit to form as an artist, and we're asking that you provide us with that information so that we can continue to keep up with the standards we have set up for the group. To put it simply, the kind of art that we want to feature in our group properly lists credit and uses legitimate stock sources.

What do you mean by "legitimate stock sources"?
A legitimate stock source is one that you have expressed permission to use, either through a stock artist's Terms of Use, purchase, by receiving the artist's permission for use, or through your own photography. Google, Tumblr, Pinterest, etc. ARE NOT stock sources. Just because you find an image online does not mean that it is free to use.

Why do you care if someone uses a non-stock source?
To put it bluntly, not using a legitimate stock source is copyright infringement and we do not want to be a part of it or encourage it.

Why should I link my stock images?
Because it's the polite thing to do. There are too many stock artists being taken advantage of by people not complying with their rules, and that it not something that we want to perpetuate, if even passively.

This is stupid! Why should I have to list whether or not I used references?
If you have a problem with our new guidelines, then you are more than welcome to no longer submit your pieces and withdraw the ones that you have submitted previously. As much as we would hate to no longer see your work in our group, this has been a part of our new submissions guidelines since August, and it is not changing.


From now on, any submissions that do not have the required information will receive an automatic denial until they comply with our submissions guidelines.The admins should not have to repeat themselves 20, 30, 40 times a day asking for artists to list whether or not they have used a reference on every single submission that comes through the group inbox given the amount of time since the new rules were implemented.

Please understand that we are not doing this to be mean, nor is it personal. We are not trying to babysit every artist that joins this group, and none of us have any interest in doing so. Keep in mind that these are the standards that we have decided to uphold in this group, the decision was made after much discussion, and we are within our rights to deny submissions that we do not feel comply with our rules. We are asking you to please respect the rules just as you would with any other group, and I personally do not feel that asking all of you to list this information on your submissions is asking a lot.

Also, please do not verbally abuse the admins just because you are upset with any rule changes that we make. There are real people being these screen names that have real feelings, and there is absolutely no reason to be rude.

That being said, I hope all of you have a great week. Thank you for your continued support! As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, suggestions, etc., please do not hesitate to message the group!

~War-Chant



04/10/2014

Greetings everyone!

PinkPonyFarts has decided to step down as Founder in order to focus on her schooling, and has graciously given me ( War-Chant ) the position. A big thank you to everyone that has supported her and Carousel-Stables during their time as Founder, and for supporting all of our wonderful admins!

If any of you have any comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to contact me and I will do my best to address anything that you bring to me. All that I ask is for your patience during this transition period while I am going through all of the planned events (IE the HARPG Equine Affair).

I hope all of you have a wonderful weekend!
~War-Chant



21/09/14

Hey, everyone! In order to speed along the submissions approval process, please make sure that you are stating in the artist comments box whether or not you have used a reference AND provide a link if you have. This keeps the admins from having to ask on every submission for you to provide information on the references you may or may not have used.

Please keep in mind that we are NOT accepting submissions that use non-stock images as a reference as a way of respecting the image's owner's copyrights. If you have received permission from the image's owner, please let us know!

Thank you in advance! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask!
~War-Chant

29/08/14

Theres something thats been brought to our attention recently, and that is the amount of people that are using images found through google or non-stock websites and using the images they find for reference.

We would like people to know that we do not like this. It is actually violating the copyright of the photographer.

Every photograph ever taken, is property of the person who took it, and you do not have any right to use that image for your own purposes without permission from the photographer.

So we ask people to not use any non-stock photography for their images unless they have been given permission prior to making the drawing.

We mightve been lax about accepting these things before, but we will no longer accept images made with improper references. Theres so many great free stock providers here on dA, be sure to make use of the search function and check them out.

Side note, so many people are also not crediting their references, be sure to remember to do so! Its only the polite thing to do

Were pretty relaxed with all our rules/guidelines and its not like we'll hunt people down who do this or say they cant join, everyones welcome.. its just images using non-stock references wont be featured in our gallery. By references I mean people who get an image off of google/pinterest/etc. and copy it not people who gather various images to see how things look/move etc.

It has been brought to our attention that using images from Google Maps for overhead stable maps is also a violation of Google's copyrights, as seen in their Terms of Service HERE



10/08/14

Well... that just kind of came outta nowhere.
This is the HARPG groups first and last say on the act of reclaiming horses:

We do not support it.

Lotta people seem to have forgotten one key aspect on which the HARPG was built on. That is "Play at your own pace".
You cannot police the pace at which another player plays the game. If they're gone for years and years you cannot just walk in and take their characters, no matter what claim you think you have to them.
You cannot change any type of contract after a foal is born to favour you reclaiming said foal because you cannot retroactively apply changes to contract signees (signers?) without their approval. Likewise, you cannot make a contract and retroactively apply it to breedings that occurred before the contract's existence.  

All in all, this is a community game. Don't make it harder for other people to play.



OLD NEWS HERE