Non-sequiturs: Unless the thread is already established as a random and/or comedy thread (or if the joke is 99th percentile good), stories get down-rated for being... not what people would expect. I think to date my lowest-rated branch is still the "Coconut Gun" gag I wrote years ago. And when I decided to make a "BJ World" thread that was about Billy Joel instead of blowjobs, I did it with the foreknowledge that some people would downvote it, even though I take Billy Joel very seriously.**
Stories Not About the "Main Cast": There are different tiers for this because there's a lot of soft cannon on this site, but the further you drift from the core of Jon-Karyn-Sarah, the more you risk getting low votes. A Mikey story is fine. A Jay Duncan story is a bit of a gray area. A Richard McMillan story is probably pushing it. If you write an episode entirely around a new character nobody's heard of yet, you take your fate into your own hands.
Things that Should Be Forum Posts: Sometimes a short "editor's note" at the top of a branch is necessary, but the longer it gets and the less relevant to the story it becomes, the more likely people are to be miffed.
(**VERY seriously. Ask me about any of his songs, any of his songs, including album tracks, including unreleased demos, hell, including stuff from his pre-solo career, and I'll tell you why it's a great song. Unless you pick "When in Rome." That one... isn't great.)
(**Oh, great. Now I kinda want to write a story about Richard McMillan and Billy Joel, and doing so would probably require a moderately extensive editor's note)
