Hey all, I recently changed one of my stories from Public to Moderated after one user began posting chapters to it that were <30 words and relatively nonsensical. I have since denied two more chapters from this person, one of which was <10 words, and sent them a polite message asking to please proofread and add content to their chapters. I much prefer this system to outright deleting chapters, as it gives them a chance to change their work, or otherwise keep it as is for their own personal reading/posting elsewhere. If I were to delete the chapters they already posted to my story, would they be gone for the user who wrote them as well? Or would they be returned to a draft state that the author can still access? Also, would they get a notification telling them that their chapters were put into this draft state? I hate the idea of deleting someone’s writing without their knowledge, even when it’s something that probably took them just a few minutes. I feel like editing/deleting other peoples’ work is a very slippery slope, and I don’t want to start going down it. If there’s no way to remove the chapters from the story without severing the author’s access, I would rather just leave their chapters up and keep the story in moderated mode for the future. But if there is a way to put an already-published chapter into moderated mode, so that the author has an opportunity to make changes or take it elsewhere if they want, please do let me know. P.S. does anyone else feel bad about putting a story into moderated mode? I managed to avoid it for two years, and all of the existing contributors have the “Author” role so they shouldn’t need my approval, but I don’t want the story filled up with low-effort and nonsensical chapters. Especially when the people posting those can easily add 4+ a day. Thanks for the help!
Hey Raljo, Thank you for your post! If you delete a chapter, it goes to the trash, and the author won't get a notification. If you decline a chapter, the author gets a notification, and the chapter goes back to draft mode, giving them a chance to fix it or take it elsewhere. You can't directly move already-published chapters to draft mode, but you can delete them and then recover them from the trash to put them back in draft mode. Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.
If I remember correctly, you can only do that if you are the author of the chapter you want to delete. If you delete another author's chapter, it will appear in their Deleted Chapters list but it might not appear in your Deleted Chapters list. (After a chapter is 7 days on the list, it gets deleted completely.) No. I would even consider "Moderated" the standard option. In my experience, the additions to "Public" stories are lower in quality.
I think that's perfectly reasonable for my chapters that I delete myself, but for my chapters that are deleted by other people, I think a longer term might be a good idea. 4 weeks, maybe?
