There seems to be a fair amount of muttering on the Helium boards about this, so I thought it was worth a discussion.

I'd have posted it there, but you can't post polls on Helium's forums. *sigh*

I'm all for author control of work they have created.

Yeah, me too.

From a business perspective, I can understand why Helium are reticent about deleting work, especially good work. However, from a member's point of view, this hardline attitude is frustrating, especially when you consider you HAVE to post work to get into the rating mechanism.

At least on other sites, if you choose to leave, you can "update" your work to something meaningless, an option not available on Helium.

If I were to suggest a compromise situation, I'd suggest that, as long as you haven't cashed out, you should be able to delete your account fully and without question.

I did vote as soon as I saw this poll but AOL kicked me off before I had a chance to post anything else grrrrr *&^$(*

I can't agree more with the frustration. I had no problems with getting one of my poems removed from a poetry site so that I could republish it in my book. It had been on there for 6yrs and they were absolutely fine with the request. With the way topics get lost or buried on Helium - and I thought I had heard somewhere that they remove outdated topics? So if they take the initiative to 'remove' at their leisure then the author should have this right as well. If you aren't making any money on a piece then you should have the absolute right to remove it.

Power to the people! Save the authors!

Ciao, what are you going to do with this poll or is it just to gather a general opinion?

I'm not doing much with it, Seph. It was more for my own curiosity than anything else, really, plus FOIB has polling tools or else I might well have posted this over on Helium's own forum.

I keep seeing Helium members post messages like "well, you should have read the terms and conditions when you joined", but few people are sticking their heads up and voicing a 'proper' opinion on the subject.

I am going against the grain here. I don't mind. I signed over rights and posted articles knowing the rules. I wouldn't be daft enough to post anything that I might need at a later date for publishers. as I get paid 125 Pounds for a 1200 word short story, so it would be a bit silly posting them there.

Helium are more than capable of changing the rules, Rachel. As Seph says, they'll happily remove content if they feel it's of poor quality or out-of-date (rather than against their T&Cs), but you don't have the same rights to delete your own work should the circumstances arise where you'd like to do so.

You might well be happy with that situation, but there are loads of people on Helium that are unhappy. It's not a case of being daft. You can't blame people who are dissatisfied with the site wanting their work removed, can you? It's entirely possible that circumstances have changed between a member joining and a mebmer wanting to leave.

I didn't say I blamed anyone for wanting to remove their work. I just stated the way I feel. Having said that I had this same conversation with ciao who refused to remove reviews, but have now done so.

Inclined to agree with you in that I dont post anything that I would worry about losing ownership of. Many sites, myspace being the classic own your stuff as soon as you post it with them, this is a bit of a worry being a musician and using it to promote your work, stictly speaking if myspace wanted to use by songs they could, although it is being fought by people as prominent as Billy Bragg and others. With written reviews although technically the same may hold true on some sites, I wouldnt lose any sleep over it.

For me, it's not really an ownership issue. I'm not a writer and the only other places I'd be posting are sites like Dooyoo etc.

If I were to leave Helium (or any other site), deletion of my work would be more to stop sites like Helium continuing to make money from my work than anything else.

Why do you think people in general shouldn't be allowed to control their own work, Rachel?

It's not a matter of people not being allowed to control their own work. It's a matter of knowing when they posted it what the rules were.

No, it's not. That's not why the question was posed.

In fact, the question was posed to stop/avoid exactly that kind of annoying "because the rules say so" comment, which crops up time and again on Helium.

Why shouldn't people be allowed to delete their own work (under reasonable cirumstances), Rachel?

I know of no other answer. That one works for me. Rules is rules. Why are you not allowed any more to delete articles from ciao ? Why are you not allowed to post over articles from dooyoo to the new review site. Each site has it's rules.

Ah, but just because the rules are in place (and just because they work for you), that doesn't make them a) fair b) right or c) unchangeable.

I would put money on it that if an author needed something removed because it was holding them back from being published Helium would be flexible. I can also see that if they openly publicised that people could remove stuff, they open the floodgates to all the drama queens on the site to get huffy and silly.