To Display or Delete: the Pros and Cons of De-publishing Stories · 9:21am Dec 27th, 2015
One of the fundamental eccentricities of fanfiction is the way it is published. Because everything tends to be self-published, centralized, and loosely moderated, removing a story from circulation is a lot easier than in traditional publishing. Taking down a story is often a simple click of a button.
For today’s meandering discussion, let’s talk about de-publishing stories.
De-publishing a story has obvious pros. It helps the author curate their own library of work; if they feel something is subpar, then de-publishing restricts access to it. If the story represents views or ideas the author no longer agrees with, removing it can help to prevent misrepresenting themselves. And if the author has re-written a particular story (or written a story that covers similar ideas/plots), then de-publishing the original version can prevent readers from reading the older version by mistake.
Leaving a story up, however, has its pros as well. If the content of the story is embarrassing, then leaving it up can avoid the Streisand effect. After all, this is the internet: someone saved a copy of it somewhere. Since literature is subjective, chances are someone somewhere will enjoy the story, in spite of the author’s judgment of its quality. Finally, leaving stories up serves as a lesson to both readers and authors. Readers can see how the author has improved (possibly learning from their mistakes), and authors can get a greater understanding of the story’s strengths and weaknesses from further comments.
Personally, I have always seen fanfiction as practice before anything else. To me, fanfiction can and should be entertainment, but it’s first purpose is as a learning tool; a training ground for writers and readers to improve their understanding of fiction.
In that spirit, I have only ever de-published one story. It was the very first thing I posted to FIMfic, and it was so bad that I felt certain no one could ever learn anything from it. I have left up everything else, however, even my earliest stories. I have even gone one step beyond that, and published things that I know are terrible in the hopes that someone will get some value of them (be it my most recent “story”, my scraps collection, or my fic graveyard).
How do you feel about authors removing fics? As a reader, have you ever felt strongly about a story being removed? As an author, have you ever felt strongly enough about one of your fics to remove it? And does de-publishing a fic really have any tangible effect, since someone downloaded a copy of it anyway?
as a reader i find it quite frustrating if i finally get around reading a story, then want to go to the site and see if there is anything new to it and only find that the story is not there (yes i am chronically months behind on reading new stories, so i save whats there on release and read the html on my phone when i get around to it).
often they are gone without explanation or any kind of closure, just gone (thats when the fun part of digging for answers starts).
i can understand that you sometimes feel like something you wrote while ago was an awful idea in hindsight and just want it gone.
i guess ff could use like a scraps folder for these cases
There are several stories on this site I'm not happy with, but people still enjoyed them. I don't want to take that enjoyment away just because I feel every piece isn't my absolute best. On the other side of things, seeing someone else delete a story is never a good feeling. If I liked it, then I'll miss it. If I didn't, it still feels like the author chose to silence all of his or her critics at once than to listen and learn from them.
I'm not a big of DFE, but I've removed two stories from my gallery. One was execrable, poorly-written on a deadline just to fulfill a contest requirement, and had hardly any views. The other was a part one I had no real intention of continuing. Both times, the act happened at least a year after they were published, and I wrote journals pointing it out and explaining why. I mean, that's the least courtesy you can give your readers. :B
I don't like people deleting stuff; if you bothered to put out the effort to write it, what's the point of deleting it? Just seems like a waste to me.
I've gone one step further and published stuff that's unpublished. Well, sort of.
Stories should never be de-published, even if a story is bad.
It can serve as a constant reminder to never make the mistake again and learn from it so the author can move forward and improve their skills. In hopes of writing an even better story next time. People can redo their story but to completely erase the story from existence would be unfair to any of the readers and the author.
Depublishing is bad. The work has been done, there are people that will like it, and often there's at least one person that is already a fan, even if they don't say anything. It is frustrating as a reader to see authors delete their work because they think it's not good enough, it embarrasses them, they're sick of working on it or feeling a nagging obligation. As a hypothetical author I can't relate; my future self is often my biggest fan, as I don't publish much of anything and I enjoy looking back on what I've created or failed to create to see how I've changed, what I used to think and feel, and to put myself in that frame of mind again. As a person with low self-esteem, I think the ephemerality of the internet is tragic and allows people to make mistakes while in a bad state that can never be undone, even by themselves.
There should always be the option to detach from a work, to put a link in some 'Ignored' section of your digital life that never intrudes on your attention unless you go digging. But obsolescence of culture? It is valuable information that is being lost, even if it's 'just' pastel pony porn. People found it valuable, even if it was only your past self, and people may find it valuable again. That shouldn't be disregarded.
3645611 That reasoning is why I have a story entry for scraps. Considering how little attention such collections get, however, putting something in a scraps pile is functionally identical to removing it. No one really pays attention to them (and rightly so, since they mostly exist to sate curiosity, not entertain).
3645700 Then that raises a question: would you remove one of your stories if neither you nor your readers liked it?
3647475 As someone who re-reads my own past work for entertainment value (because I'm a narcissist), I don't have any issue forgetting things that I feel are bad. Due to the way fimfic works, my older works also get significantly less attention, making it even easier to forget about them. I also put the stupidest stuff on an alt, so I could more easily distance myself from it.
I agree that something being part of a public catalogue is valuable in and of itself, but let me play the devil's advocate for a moment. If something has had its 15 seconds of fame and gotten all the views its going to get, then does removing it from the site really have much effect? If its availability weighs on the author that much, then why not remove it? After all, everyone who wanted to read it has already done so.
It is because the internet is inherently ephemeral that removing stories is not a big deal
3647691
Hmmm...
Not if I think I could learn from it. If somehow I let through something that had absolutely no redeeming features for anyone, I'd delete it, but I don't think I'd submit it in the first place.
3647691
thats because not many follow such story collections. collections are usually not a very promising thing to follow.
i meant it like a different section of a user's story overview page, kinda like scrap galleries on other art sites
3647691
The internet should not be ephemeral. We're leaving a majority of our culture, artifacts and information in an impermanent form. Even if no disaster occurs, the information that describes our culture as we are today will degrade due to bitrot. It has inherent historical value, and there is no such thing as "all the views it's going to get" until it is deleted, because then it does not exist to get more viewers. Everyone who wanted and will want to read it has not already done so, there is imperfect information on what is available to read now as well as uncertainty as to who may want to read it in the future.
I enjoy reading old things of mine that are bad. It gives me a point of reference to see exactly how much I've improved. It also gives me the closest thing that I will ever have to an objective viewpoint on my own work.
3648823 Well that raises a chicken-and-egg question: is the content of the internet disposable by design of the content, or is the medium in which it is delivered force it to be designed that way? Does something that caters to an incredibly specific audience--occupying a very specific moment in time--have value beyond historical curiosity?
Considering that large swaths of history are already idealized and abridged (even to the point of being nothing like the real thing), I don't think we as humans even have the capacity to properly catalogue our own culture. I was actually discussing a similar topic with a friend of mine today; we were discussing how the popular perception of prohibition and other recent cultural periods are nothing like the actual thing.
The internet isn't quite old enough to have become idealized yet, so it's one of those questions that can only be speculated upon. I suppose when the current generation of internet users becomes old, we'll be able to give a real answer, but by then our current habits will have already had an irrevocable result.