Delete my stories please

[haileytraynor]

Hi, I have some stories I’d like to delete but they have other contributions and some of them have over 1000 chapters, so it’d kind of difficult to delete, so I’m looking for a moderator to just go ahead and delete it for me.

here are the stories:
https://chyoa.com/story/Video-Game-Humiliation-[Archived].21761

https://chyoa.com/story/Humiliation-Games.41808/map?chapter=1080752
https://chyoa.com/story/Video-Game-Humiliation-[Archived].21761
https://chyoa.com/story/Book-ENP.35311
https://chyoa.com/story/Dear-Diary.31569

I’m basically looking to clean up my library and get rid of stories that I don’t have interest in continuing or have been dead for a bit and they’re a bit difficult to remove.

thank you

 

[Alternate Path]

Hmm, deleting seems kind of extreme, especially if it involves other peoples contributions. I assume you just want your stories section to be cleaner? If so shouldn't relinquishing ownership of the story remove it from the section? I assume when you take ownership of a story it adds it to your stories page, so in reverse it would remove it right? Or am I misunderstanding something?

 

[haileytraynor]

These are stories I created. They are retired stories. Ones that have either been replaced by newer ones like the video games one, and they haven’t been contributed to in awhile. It’s just a pain to delete them, but I do want to delete them not just relinquish ownership. I just want a moderator to do so because I can’t

 

[wicker]

These are stories I created. They are retired stories. Ones that have either been replaced by newer ones like the video games one, and they haven’t been contributed to in awhile. It’s just a pain to delete them, but I do want to delete them not just relinquish ownership. I just want a moderator to do so because I can’t

I agree with you. A story owner should be able to just delete their stories no questions asked.

 

[Gambio]

Alright let me give you an example

Lois Lane's Night out currently has over 7000 chapter. it's creator is exxxidor456 but the overwhelming majority of chapters were written by @Zeebop

If it were possible for the author to just delete their story, exxxidor456 would have the ability to delete what has to amount to tens of thousands of hours of work of other authors.

This is probably the most extreme example on here, but nonetheless, its a very good reason you can't delete your story after someone has added to it.

 

[haileytraynor]

It’s just with my situation, I already replaced the story and the authors have moved their chapters over. Some of the others just didn’t have significant contribution. But I’d figured I’d list them anyways to get them out of the way. My philosophy is moreso, I’d rather make sure that I am in control of anything that is associated with my brand. If they were more General concepts, I wouldn’t mind, but when it’s my name and a majority of my contributions, I’d rather remain in control of what’s going on. It’s also more of a unique scenario of me having revamped the published story and I’m just now wanting to remove the retired formatted story but can’t because it has so many contributions. No one has really lost their chapters or works because it was all moved over anyways.

 

[haileytraynor]

Additionally, if I was so devoted to deleting my story, I could just go through and delete the chapters individually anyways. So that’s where I think there’s flawed logic behind, I can remove their chapters but not the entire story. I think at any given time the person who has the most responsibility over a story is the owner. Now if I had a situation where I didn’t want to be involved anymore and the story was still active, I would simply transfer ownership to the most active author, but that would also be MY decision to make at the end of the day. As I expand on my brand and my name, I want to make sure that anything I’m attached to has my oversight and overview. I don’t think anyone has more of a right to that than the owner. But I also wouldn’t just remove a story that had over 1000 chapters. In fact, the ones I listed besides the Video Game one are stories that have little contribution and were kind of dead on arrival. The Video Game one, like I said was already replaced as I had already informed the authors a year ago and had them transferring their chapters over to the newer story, so the archived story has just now lost its purpose having done all that.

 

[haileytraynor]

The policy I would be in favor for would be; if a story hasn’t been updated in the past 30 Days, then the story owner may delete the story. If a story is currently active, and the owner does not wish to be attached to the story, then they may either transfer ownership, leave the story on public, or put the story up for adoption.

I think that would make it fair while still preserving the authors right to delete a big story. Because I think it’s always the owners right to do with their story what they want. But I do understand the conflict of other authors contributing more, but I also think every author assumes the risk of losing their work when they don’t own the story. Just like if a parent company decided to shut down a studio like Disney did with Blue Sky, even if Blue Sky was against it, it’s still Disney’s decision at the end of the day.

 

[gene.sis]

The story owner has the copyright over the content they created and can remove their content as they see fit.

When an author adds a chapter to a story, the copyright for the chapter author's content doesn't go to the story owner.
The chapter author still maintains the copyright over their content.

In general, the content of other authors shouldn't be deleted without giving them the chance to make a copy of it.

I also think every author assumes the risk of losing their work when they don’t own the story.

That means that no author should ever add to other users' stories but always start their own story.

Just like if a parent company decided to shut down a studio like Disney did with Blue Sky, even if Blue Sky was against it, it’s still Disney’s decision at the end of the day.

It would only be vaguely similar if you paid the authors to contribute to your story.

 

[TheLowKing]

I also think every author assumes the risk of losing their work when they don’t own the story

That means that no author should ever add to other users' stories but always start their own story.

Story owners already have both the ability to delete other authors' contributions, though. The only thing OP is doing different is 1) doing it at scale, and 2) asking CHYOA staff to save him 50 clicks.

I agree that casually throwing out dozens of chapters of other people's writing just because you got tired of/embarrassed by/annoyed by/etc your own writing is a bit of a dick move, and I'll join the list of people in this thread who've asked her: please don't. It's not hurting anyone to keep it there. If you must distance yourself from it, add a note at the start saying how you feel about the stories, or indeed as you indirectly suggested elsewhere, transfer or otherwise give up ownership of the story.

However, I also think that it is, in the end, up to the owner of the story. That's the whole reason why they're the owner. And yes, that's also one of the reasons people shouldn't trust that their writing will remain available and unchanged in perpetuity. (A note about this somewhere might be good.)

 

[haileytraynor]

This really wasn’t supposed to turn into this huge debate. The story I was asking to delete was already replaced and the authors were informed of all the moves and changes that would be happening. Everything else that was deleted was over 1-2 years inactive and also didn’t have great contribution. I could have simply just deleted them individually as stated, but I figured while I was already asking, I’d save myself the trouble of doing so. I do believe that the story owner is the person who inevitably controls their story. I also think that IP can be argued. If I create a character and someone builds off that character, the rights to that character do not just transfer. For example, I’ve contributed a lot to Lauren’s Little Secret. But I do not in any way own the rights to now make story on my own about Lauren. Likewise if someone contributes to my story about a character that I created, they do not then have the ability to distribute the character as they will. If that is how IP operates here, that is a big concern and you’ll end up with more story owners pulling their stories or closing them off.

For me, I had ideas that I thought people would contribute to, ultimately they didn’t. Sometimes I simply revamp the story like I’ve done with a few that are then expanded on and better liked. If I head in a different direction with a story that is only 10 or 20 chapters in, then yes, I should be able to delete the chapters and restart. Sometimes that’s necessary in order to prevent a dead story. Otherwise why give the owners that permission? They would just be a glorified editor.

Also, you assume I didn’t inform the authors of this when they’ve all known about this. So that’s a lot of assuming about my character without even knowing the full context.

Also saying I should pay every author when everyone volunteers their work and time, is absurd. That’s not how this works at all. Every author assumes the risk of losing their work when they contribute to someone else’s story. Why do you think I focus on my own now? But saying that an owner is forced to keep my work undeleted when there’s of a number of reasons that it could be deleted for like rule violations or inconsistencies just because I contributed one or two chapters, that’s just plain stupid.

 

[haileytraynor]

I’ve had hours of written work deleted due to loose guideline enforcements that could probably have been contested and argues. There’s already odd rules on some content. But I was not compensated for those deletions. I don’t expect it either because it is the site’s choice on how they choose to enforce things. Literally long ass chapter depths have been completed gutted by moderation without any ability to save or look at the deleted work. But now that I want to voluntarily do so, now it’s a problem. That’s some really backwards logic.

 

[haileytraynor]

I like CHYOA. It’s probably the best platform right now to post work and I like people having the ability to build off work like my Video Game collection. But there’s also a lot of flaws that CHYOA has. If you want to introduce the ability to monetize work, that’s up to you. Probably would be great for a lot of people and the site. But putting the onus on the story owners to pay for work that they want to delete, that’s some really odd logic right there. And if you stretch it far enough, it’ll end up with everyone pulling their stories from the site because they don’t trust it with the rights to their stories and such. That’s something Nexus Mods learned when they told mod authors they wouldn’t be able to delete their mods since so many users have their mods. And what did mod authors do? They pulled their mods from Nexus and put it on a different site. So yeah, maybe let’s not jump down the rabbit hole of intellectual property because I guarantee you people will have big problems with that.

 

[gene.sis]

However, I also think that it is, in the end, up to the owner of the story.

As I stated above, the story owner has the copyright for their content.
That includes the right to decide whether their content is displayed or not and where they are fine with their content being displayed.
So they can of course delete their content.

I also think that IP can be argued.

As I stated above, the chapter author has the copyright for their content.
That includes the right to decide whether their content is displayed or not and where they are fine with their content being displayed.

Chapter authors don't give up their copyright just because they add their content to someone else's story.
The same way as any author doesn't give up their copyright when they add content to someone else's website. (By publishing content on the site, you grant a revocable right to the site to display your content.)

All that still means that the story owner only has the copyright for their own content. They do not have the copyright for the content that has been added to their story.

So the story owner can delete their own content and publish it somewhere else if they want to.
If they want to publish the content that other authors have created, they need the permission of these authors. (Also see the CHYOA Rules regarding republishing other authors' content.)

If I create a character and someone builds off that character, the rights to that character do not just transfer.

If the chapter author depicts a character or concept that belongs to another author, they very well might not have the right to republish their content as is.

Still, the chapter author can modify their content and reuse it as they see fit as long as that doesn't violate the copyright of the story owner.

Thus, the chapter author should have the chance to make a copy of their content before a story owner deletes it.
In my opinion, this should be a feature of CHYOA. But as of now, it isn't. (E.g. when a chapter gets deleted, it is moved to the chapter author's "unassigned chapter cloud")

Also saying I should pay every author when everyone volunteers their work and time, is absurd.

If someone voluntarily grants you the right to display their content in a story owner's story then you can display their content in your story.
That doesn't mean they transferred all of their copyright to you. They only grant the story owner the revocable right to display their content.
If the story owner wants to use the content of a chapter author somewhere else, they need the right to do so. That can be done with the chapter author's permission. The content owner is free to decide whether they want to do that or what conditions need to be met.


There is also no mention that you should or have to pay any author.
Your example

Just like if a parent company decided to shut down a studio like Disney did with Blue Sky, even if Blue Sky was against it, it’s still Disney’s decision at the end of the day.

depicts a company with employees who get money for doing their work of creating content.
(There is also a brand that is owned by the company.)
The employees create content for the company. Their salary is the payment for doing that.
The company then owns the content the employees create.
If another company "buys" that company, they own that company and have sort of command over the employees.
The parent content then also (sort of) owns the content the employees created.

So if you want to apply that example, then closing the subsidiary would be like laying off the team of authors that got hired to write a story.
If you continue that example of yours, the story owner would have paid the authors and thus would still own the content they created even after they laid off the team of authors.
So I will repeat that your example

would only be vaguely similar if you paid the authors to contribute to your story.

I’ve had hours of written work deleted due to loose guideline enforcements that could probably have been contested and argues. There’s already odd rules on some content. But I was not compensated for those deletions. I don’t expect it either because it is the site’s choice on how they choose to enforce things. Literally long ass chapter depths have been completed gutted by moderation without any ability to save or look at the deleted work.

I can't imagine that content got deleted by a moderator. If so, please let me know more about what happened.

In general, CHYOA will (if possible) restore content on request of the chapter author that has been deleted by another user. It usually requires some information about the content and sometimes is a lot of work.
It would be better to have an automatic solution as I described above but until then, the content of other users shouldn't be deleted without giving them a chance to make a copy of it.

But there’s also a lot of flaws that CHYOA has.

Yes, there are many things that can be improved.

putting the onus on the story owners to pay for work that they want to delete

I really don't get how to twist my statements to reach a conclusion like that.

And this

And if you stretch it far enough, it’ll end up with everyone pulling their stories from the site because they don’t trust it with the rights to their stories and such. That’s something Nexus Mods learned when they told mod authors they wouldn’t be able to delete their mods since so many users have their mods. And what did mod authors do? They pulled their mods from Nexus and put it on a different site. So yeah, maybe let’s not jump down the rabbit hole of intellectual property because I guarantee you people will have big problems with that.

basically implies the exact opposite of what I've stated above.


Again:
Every user who publishes content owns the copyright for their own content.
If a user publishes content on the site, they grant the site the revocable right to display the content.
If a user publishes content in another user's story, they also grant the revocable right to display the content within the story.

 

[zankoo]

Not that anyone is browsing these forums for legal advice, but I would like to offer this -- copyright is a legal protection against the unauthorized use of original works. It's not universal control. I may be the copyright holder of content on this site, but if someone deletes it, that's not an abuse of my copyright. You can read more about how copyright works here, if you're so inclined.

Consider this analogy:

A library contains thousands of books. The people who own the library didn't write any of them. The books all carry copyright -- and the agreement between the rightsholder (the author, probably) and the distributor (the library) is such that the author has granted the library permission to make the book available to the public. That is authorized use.

Example 1: I go to the library and borrow a book, take it home, and then throw it in the garbage -- that was an unethical move on my part, but it's unrelated to copyright. As far as both the author and the library are concerned, I did not abuse copyright. (As far as the library is concerned, however, I probably did abuse my borrowing power, which likely included some kind of rules against keeping or destroying books.)

Example 2: I go to the library and borrow a book, take it home, adapt it into a screenplay, make a movie, and then sell my movie to Universal Pictures. This was most definitely an abuse of copyright, because I have created unauthorized use of the book by making it into a movie without permission from the rightsholders. (Note, the library has nothing to do with any of this -- and would not be held liable, if the book's author sued me for copyright infringement.)

--

In terms of CHYOA, deleting a story containing other people's chapters is most definitely not an abuse of copyright. It might be unethical, and the folks who wrote those chapters might be disappointed or hurt, but their copyright was not abused. Truth be told, if people are concerned with their creations, they should not rely on a single website (which they don't own and which has no responsibility to protect writers) to house their work for them.

Again, copyright protects writers from unauthorized use of their work. Whether a deletion was done maliciously, accidentally, for personal reason, or whether the website was deleted or changed ownership -- none of that has any bearing on copyright. If I wrote a chapter for your story and you want to delete your story (including my chapter), I believe that should be your right and authority to do so -- and doing so is not an infringement of my copyright.

At the moment, I don't see much from CHYOA that explains what happens to my content after I publish it here. I don't see that it's protected, that it's not protected, that I own it, that they own it, etc. I don't see any guidelines on the ownership of shared content. Maybe I missed it when I signed up (because that was a while ago!), but perhaps an early landing page for folks -- and something easily linked within the CHYOA Guide -- could be some simple language around that.

(And if @Friedman or anyone else is looking for someone to propose policies in this regard, I would be interested in such a thing.)

 

[haileytraynor]

Not that anyone is browsing these forums for legal advice, but I would like to offer this -- copyright is a legal protection against the unauthorized use of original works. It's not universal control. I may be the copyright holder of content on this site, but if someone deletes it, that's not an abuse of my copyright. You can read more about how copyright works here, if you're so inclined.

Consider this analogy:

A library contains thousands of books. The people who own the library didn't write any of them. The books all carry copyright -- and the agreement between the rightsholder (the author, probably) and the distributor (the library) is such that the author has granted the library permission to make the book available to the public. That is authorized use.

Example 1: I go to the library and borrow a book, take it home, and then throw it in the garbage -- that was an unethical move on my part, but it's unrelated to copyright. As far as both the author and the library are concerned, I did not abuse copyright. (As far as the library is concerned, however, I probably did abuse my borrowing power, which likely included some kind of rules against keeping or destroying books.)

Example 2: I go to the library and borrow a book, take it home, adapt it into a screenplay, make a movie, and then sell my movie to Universal Pictures. This was most definitely an abuse of copyright, because I have created unauthorized use of the book by making it into a movie without permission from the rightsholders. (Note, the library has nothing to do with any of this -- and would not be held liable, if the book's author sued me for copyright infringement.)

--

In terms of CHYOA, deleting a story containing other people's chapters is most definitely not an abuse of copyright. It might be unethical, and the folks who wrote those chapters might be disappointed or hurt, but their copyright was not abused. Truth be told, if people are concerned with their creations, they should not rely on a single website (which they don't own and which has no responsibility to protect writers) to house their work for them.

Again, copyright protects writers from unauthorized use of their work. Whether a deletion was done maliciously, accidentally, for personal reason, or whether the website was deleted or changed ownership -- none of that has any bearing on copyright. If I wrote a chapter for your story and you want to delete your story (including my chapter), I believe that should be your right and authority to do so -- and doing so is not an infringement of my copyright.

At the moment, I don't see much from CHYOA that explains what happens to my content after I publish it here. I don't see that it's protected, that it's not protected, that I own it, that they own it, etc. I don't see any guidelines on the ownership of shared content. Maybe I missed it when I signed up (because that was a while ago!), but perhaps an early landing page for folks -- and something easily linked within the CHYOA Guide -- could be some simple language around that.

(And if @Friedman or anyone else is looking for someone to propose policies in this regard, I would be interested in such a thing.)

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m talking about. Everyone is assuming here that I had like malicious intent or that I didn’t take the proper steps without even knowing that I had already made the authors well aware of this and/or there was not significant contribution in the first place. Like one chapter sandwiched in the middle of 90% of my work that is a minor nuisance to delete. The work deleted did not affect any author who contributed to the works. It also wasn’t even meant to be this big debate or todo. And like you said, there should never be a complete reliance on a single website. I’ve seen multiple websites get shut down entirely and have lost half of my work because of that. Or I’ve had times where I spent multiple hours on a chapter and lost it completely to either a refresh or the site just completely crashing. Writing for free also always presents more of a risk than being paid for it. Heck even paid content isn’t guaranteed like how Patreon just did a mass wiping of almost all adult content (ABDL, ENF, and other similar types of creators) and many found their whole source of income lost in the span of 12 hours. Or how many adult sites are getting ID restricted by the government completely destroying any privacy and their whole user base.

Anytime you write for any website, you should always assume you’re going to delete it and have saved copies to turn to if you’re super concerned with losing it. I keep all my stories that I know I would hate to lose on either my own website (blogger) or on google docs. But even those aren’t completely accurate secure. Like when Adobe Flash shut down, a lot of small devs and creators lost their entire library of locations. Now, they did have time to save it, but without the ability to play it, it kind of renders some projects useless and some can’t be converted. I’m not saying you should live paranoid or skeptical of every person. But even I as someone who contributes regularly on a daily basis, would understand if an author/owner did choose to wipe clean their works or leave entirely and I happened to be collateral. Also, if CHYOA is concerned with authors deleting stories, why not have other authors works move to unpublished chapters when an author deletes their story? That way, an author can still delete what they want, but no one loses anything. Now, I know the answer is that it’s more complicated, but I do know that it could be an option to meet people in the middle. I mean if I want to put my story up for adoption or transferring ownerships, I also know that’s an option, but there may be a good reason I don’t want to do that such as in my case, it would be redundant because all the authors transferred their chapters to the new story anyways.

 

[gene.sis]

Everyone is assuming here that I had like malicious intent

I can't see that in this thread.
I mostly see concerns that users might lose their content and all the work they invested in it.

Also, if CHYOA is concerned with authors deleting stories, why not have other authors works move to unpublished chapters when an author deletes their story?

As I already stated in my previous post, that would be a good solution.
As of now, nothing like that is implemented.

In terms of CHYOA, deleting a story containing other people's chapters is most definitely not an abuse of copyright. It might be unethical, and the folks who wrote those chapters might be disappointed or hurt, but their copyright was not abused.

I completely agree that deleting an author's content most likely doesn't violate their copyright.

I also don't see where such a thing might have been implied previously.


The points of mentioning copyright in the first place:
- to point out that you have the right to remove your content
- to clarify that you do not relinquish your copyright when you add content to another user's story

The point of the further explanations:
- address the voiced concern that authors wouldn't have the right to revoke the permission to display the content on the site, i.e. that they wouldn't be allowed to delete their content
- to point out that you need the permission of the copyright owner to republish their content

As already stated several times, authors have the right to remove their content.


Whether a story owner has the right to delete other authors' content is not stated anywhere.
So I would say they can do that. And in some cases, there might even be a responsibility to do so.
However, I would also say that it is best practice to make sure that those authors have the chance to create a backup of their content. (And to be clear, I am not saying that the original authors weren't given the chance to make copies of their content here.)
If an author's content got deleted without them having a chance to make a copy, CHYOA will try to help them get a copy of their content. An automatic way to achieve that would obviously be preferable and it would be good to implement such a feature.

At the moment, I don't see much from CHYOA that explains what happens to my content after I publish it here. I don't see that it's protected, that it's not protected, that I own it, that they own it, etc.

While it might not be written down, the practice is that you grant the site the revocable right to display the published content. (Given that you are the copyright owner of the content or that you have the right to publish the content.)

If you publish or republish content, you should keep these things in mind:
- Republishing content without having the copyright owner's permission might violate the copyright owner's copyright.
- Republishing content without having the copyright owner's permission violates the CHYOA Rules.
- Republishing content with the copyright owner's permission but without meeting the requirements of CHYOA Rule no. 4 violates the CHYOA Rules.