EEEEK! So a friend of mine on fanfiction.net and I are going crazy backing up our stories. If you're a fanfiction.net member and post stories on it or are even an avid reader looking for your favorite stories - fanfiction.net has gone nuts and it's either an Admin gone bonkers or they are taking censorship protestors seriously.

If you find that your stories have gone missing or your favorite stories count has gone down, stories are being removed for the following:

- Authors Notes (not allowed)
- M rated material (Though they are making exceptions for what they consider 'tasteful')

"They are 'giving' authors a 48 hour period to back up their work, however, most are finding that within 10 hours of the email sent, their stories have been deleted. A lot of authors aren't even getting this warning.

Any delay in our stories being deleted for sex scenes is because it is one admin, going through them one by one. He first hit the stories that had been reported, then he's going through all the stories marked 'M'."

I am one of those authors that didn't get the notice! D: I really just post my Sess x Kag stuff here but I have forty other stories non-Sesshoumaru x Kagome related that need to be backed up Even if you are not effected because you don't have sexual content or anything that warrants deletion it is still a wonderful idea to back up works!

I just wanted to share in the even this is true and warn my fellow authors!

O.O I'm speechless

Thank you for a heads up!

What's this? An FF.net admin actually doing their job?!?! A bit over zealously, but still it's better than how they were literally doing nothing before, I guess Maybe they changed management, so to speak, or just got sick of fielding complaints about how crappy a job they've been doing in sticking by their own ToS.

I didn't receive any email (I already pulled everything but Stealing Heaven- and thank the gods, no way would they not have made me pull most of my fics, lol), but lord knows it's probably just a matter of time. Suppose I'll go pull it- since I was going to do it anyway.

Thanks for the heads up Kagome.

Story deletion from fanfiction.net? like really?! Thanks for the notice. I have 30 some stories there...I guess updating my other fics will have to wait now...

Author's Notes aren't allowed? Really? REALLY?

Well... I guess all of my stories will be deleted then. lol. Good thing I don't post there frequently. Dokuga is really the only site I post my stories on. FF.net is mostly a back-up and even then, I forget to post there more often than not. lol.

Still, I appreciate the heads up, Niwa!

I'll probably end up having to save my favorite stories in case they don't get posted elsewhere.

Seriously, right? I was shocked too that someone is taking their job seriously! Like I said - even if it isn't true it's still a great idea to back-up your stories! Things happen and I would hate for something major to happen at any site I post to and loose all my work in a freak accident.

Hmm, odd I got no email stating this I only have 3 stories on there, and they are posted here anyways but still, I am pretty sure my stories will be deleted : / I mean its a very small A/N, will that still count I wonder?

Well, true or not, I'd been kicking around whether or not to pull that one, last story from ff.net for a few months now, so this was kind of the push I needed to make a choice.

I left a message to my readers on my profile page thanking them all and then just . . . pulled it. Still feels a little weird though to finally be done with that site after 6 years and it (as I assume is the case with many who sort of stumble accidentally into the fanfiction world) it was the first site on which I'd ever posted any writing.

Huh- and as far as the authors notes, I thought it was only that you couldn't post an author's note as a chapter unto itself, not that you couldn't have any at all :/

If you all may please pardon my 'head to desk' moment...And I do apologize in advance if I came off as rude.

Actually, FanFictionNet does this every Two/Three years and reasons why some stories had been removed are because they may have been breaking the TOS in the first place. Also, they never allowed MA rating from the start. Just M, if you know your differences with Ratings. I know there are a topic over it in Dokuga. :/

And the Author's Note thing...Umm, they meant it as AN only chapter. You know, without anything from the story itself. You can have AN, if you already have a chapter and without interrupting the flow of it.

TOS pretty much already said what not to do and stuffs. So please...*head to desk*

FFNet just doesn't allow smuts, because they don't allow MA in the first place.

Does that clear up some confusion, I hope?

Unless you have smut in a fanfiction and foul language in a fic's summary, I'm pretty sure you're fine.

Beside, the site is trying to do their part (however rude they may have been) to uphold their rules. The rules never changed, from what I remembered, and I do know that the site is trying to do some improvements as well. So that may play a big part of it, I believe. So really, one can't exactly fault them for trying to see their rules in place.

The way they went about it however...that could use some work, I'd say. But with so many people and fanfictions on that site, that might be why...Gah, I'm rambling. Please excuse me.

Funny enough I just receive a bunch of messgaes from different reviewers that are also freaking out and are stating that they have stuff deleted and are warning me so I guess this is not a drill, hehe?

It does pay to read and know the rules, doesn't it? ^^; With that aside, while I do understand some people's worries, it'd be better if they don't panic too much over it. Otherwise that will cause more problems than needed.

:/ The fixes are pretty simple too. Just move the MA stories elsewhere more appropriate, check the summary for foul language, and remove unwelcome Author Notes. And understanding what was and what was not allowed on FFnet too.

I just feel bad for FFnet itself for getting so much unneeded hatred just for actually doing their jobs for once...

I honestly don't use FF.net much and I will admit that Spark was actually the first FF site I stumbled upon so I really don't hold much love for FF.net. (FP.net is another story altogether!!)

But I feel that the admins wouldn't feel as much hatred and readers/writers wouldn't be freaking out so much if they had been better organized to start with. Even with my inexperience with FF.net, I know that the admins there are notorious for never doing a thing they are supposed to be doing. lol.

It's true we should know the rules of a site we post on, but if the admins aren't keeping watch and making sure everything is done according to TOS, it will get to a point where readers/writer's completely disregard those rules.

To suddenly re-enforce them with so much gusto and WITHOUT any warnings ahead of time is really the wrong way to go about them. Sure, it's easy to remove the MA stories and the author notes and putting them elsewhere, but the problem is KNOWING that having such things IS a problem.

If I suddenly logged onto my FF.net and noticed all my stories are gone, I'd freak out and panic too. I surely hope the admins realize that. By doing that, they are creating more trouble for themselves because they are bound to get a lot of complaints and e-mails and accusations.

They could have posted a notice somewhere for everyone to see, actually send an e-mail explaining everything to EVERYONE, giving them a few weeks to back-up their stories or remove it, and THEN... get started on removing those rule-breaking stories if the writers choose to ignore the previous warnings. That way, there won't be any chaos of rebelling FF.net users.

One of the many reasons I love Dokuga is because I KNOW that the admins here will do things the RIGHT way and won't ever cause alarm with the users. They are constantly on top of things, which is more than what I can say for FF.net admins. True, Dokuga is smaller than FF.net, but if FF.net had taken care of their lack of useful admins earlier, users wouldn't be in such a state of chaos today.

True. I haven't thought about that. They should have working more rather than once every two years things.

But there's how many people and stories on fanfiction.net? I'd think that might be a reason of the lack of response earlier...*ponders* So I'd supposed that it was also partially their fault too, not just the writers. Your explanation made sense and gave me more to think about so thanks for that.

Again, I do apologize if I ever came off as rude. I'm just horrible at explaining anything really, let alone discussing on anything. Thanks for putting up with me. And I'm going back to lurking once more.

I hope this discussion at least brought some enlightenment on the situation though. ^^;

I have to agree with Theia on this one. It is important to follow rules, but FFNet has been notorious for disregarding their own TOS and is sluggish when dealing with things such as plagiarism. While it is awesome that they're finally getting everything together to work within their rules, it would be better to have given a warning. Most authors would comply, I imagine. It would be sad to see stories by inactive authors go, but as has been covered here, site admins take a responsibility for what is posted on the site, and have to act accordingly. That being said, FFNet giving barely any warning and in some cases none at all alienates both their authors and the readers. It's natural to be angry or upset when you realize something you worked on or followed suddenly vanished.

There are other avenues for fanfiction however, and I assume that people who are upset by this will post to other sites. The internet is a wonderful thing.

Yes, there are a lot of users and a lot of stories on FF.net, which is why if they found that they couldn't handle the amount of traffic, they should have gotten more admins. By simply ignoring all the ongoing problems on the site for so long, they are letting the users rule and the admins end up having no say in what goes on.

If the admins suddenly tried to take back control, the millions of users would rebel and try to overthrow the admins because the way users are thinking is that the admins don't care about the site or about their users. Does this remind anyone of a history lesson? I feel like I'm in history class right now. lol.

The point is, I understand why people are freaking out about FF.net suddenly and out of the blue deleting stories. Trying to fix a couple years worth of errors at one time is bound to be disastrous. And BECAUSE of how many stories and users there are on FF.net, that's even more of a reason why once every two or three years of rule-breaking story removal is too little. They should be constantly monitored so there's no chance of stories that aren't allowed on FF.net to be posted. And, at the very least, IF they are posted, at least the user will know that they are breaking the rules since admins carefully monitor such things.

That's my thought on this sudden FF.net story purge. I don't think you really came off as rude, persay, but I know you don't mean it in a negative way. A lot of people often don't think about both sides of a situation, so it's always helpful to discuss it in order to get a better understanding. =)

Just thought I'd take a sec and weigh in on this myself...

IF, indeed, the mods/admins at ff.net are enforcing their ToS and rules, it's a glorious day for all who have been plagiarized by some of the unsupervised kiddies over there. IF they are removing serial abusers - those who have been reported HUNDREDS of times - then I applaud their efforts. I'll believe it when I see some of them disappear, though.

It's always a good idea to back up one's stories, no matter what site hosts them. Keeping a hard copy, or a copy on your hard drive or a flash drive, is the BEST. That way, your hard work is not lost regardless of the cause! Having suffered through three catastrophic computer failures, I can attest to the value of backing up your system.

Now, a thought on ff.net's supposed method of going about enforcing its ToS so suddenly... I think it would have been much better on their part to communicate their plans to their users. If you will recall, we made every effort to make sure that all knew about the more stringent and narrowed ratings here. We had quite a discussion regarding it on the forum as well. In addition, I warn every single person that I believe has a ratings problem. The ONLY times you will see Dokuga delete a story without prior warning is if it's outright trolling, or plagiarism that has been thoroughly checked and vetted by all admins.

Any other time there are deletions, there will have been 7 days advance notice of a problem. In many cases, it goes beyond that 7 days - all the admins have real lives, and they're all pretty hectic at the moment! Anyway, just wanted to reassure everyone that nothing will change in the way we handle ToS violations here. You will still receive a warning, and still receive notice of potential deletions.

Okay, off to make dinner "happen!" (you know, that's when you wave that magic wand and it appears?)

~~Wiccan~~

Is it just me or was their rating system a little vague to begin with.

I'm going to weigh in too as a mod on one of the bigger sites (AdultFanFiction). Honestly, there is some stuff we out and out delete on sight as it's a direct violation of the rules. Some are stuff posted by underagers or when they were underage, plagiarism, unstories as we call them, anything by Anne Rice and stuff we have to legally delete. Though I understand the frustration so many are experiencing at losing their stuff, the truth of the matter is if it was in violation, it was in danger anyway. They do this once in a while, usually in the summer-they never give warning they are or tell you they are, that's just them, and all kinds of things get downed. I also do know there are several campaigns out there putting pressure on them to do something about a site full of kids that purports to not allow MA rated stories but has a site full of stuff no kid needs to read. I also know some are going so far as to report them to their ISP, something that can actually get the site downed completely and never to be brought back up. Sites that big are, usually, unless it's an isolated case, not going to give you warning before they down something in direct violation. I've seen stories over there that the title and summaries are clearly stating what they are for any kid in the world to see. While I feel for those losing things or losing stories that are their favorites, the truth is, they shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Another thing to ponder is this... They are trying to protect what is there and in compliance. I do know they were reported to JK Rowling's publishing company over some of the so-called 'reading' fics on the site that lift massive chunks of her books and put them in a story format (I know this because i know who did it!). Those, too, are going as fast as they find them. Is it a coincidence that this mass delete is coming on the heels of that? I don't think so... So, probably, they are trying to save what is there because there is no way that site can survive rounds with lawyers that powerful. Despite what everyone states as using fair usage for the basis of allowing fanfiction, that is something that won't stand up in court so sites do have to protect themselves the best they can. This is, probably, their way of doing that.

Just my pennies on the topic is all, not meant to be all knowing and in the know as to what is all going on....

Thank you for taking the time to reassure us about the way admins will continue to handle things on here, Wiccan! I knew I had decided to become a Dokugan for a reason! lol. I never doubted that the admins would stay just the way they are and continue to handle each situation in the right manner.

Now go wave that magic wand proudly!

I first found FFnet and I'm fond of it. While I know FFnet seems to have some mod/adm problem I sort of understand why. The site is HUGE and it's free. I think having that is almost... wow. I read fanfiction for more than one fandom and so I lurk around on FFnet constantly. I would be sad if the site suffered legal repercussion and had to close or something.

I also agree with two things that were said before:

1. It's very important to have backup of our stories. I rely much on email to do this because sadly, computers die more often than not.
2. When we do something that is against the rules... well, things we usually don't like happen. That's life. I guess we would all like to be warned, but this is more of courtesy, than a real obligation.

I've heard this story from another community as well with regards to FF.net. I agree that keeping your stories backed up on a flash drive or alternate source is very wise.

But until I see that Teensie-sama's stories are deleted, I'm not going to stress too much.

I am just a reader and review here on Dokuga (for now at least), but I have three stories on FF.net. All are rated M for violence and steamy situations, I have worked very hard on them. So, far I have not broken the rules put in place by FF.net, but I had full intention of writing a few love scenes, specifically one of them for the next chapter of one of them. I have never posted on Dokuga's forum, but when I saw this was being discussed I wanted to ask. My stories are all currently Sesshomaru X OC, and I was wondering what other fanfiction sites would be a good place to move to? (At least for the adult content). I hope this is not a rude thing to ask, but I am rather stressed about this possible move.
~Suki B

If you are +18 and legally able to post those kinds of stories (covering my butt), there's always Adultfanfiction.net. Link goes straight to Inuyasha index since that's what I have bookmarked.

Or Inuyashafanfiction.com

there is also the Wonderful World of Makebelieve