Hello all. I am Male, currently 20 years old, and attending community college. No offense to you, but I prefer to keep most of my personal information away from public viewing on any of my publicly anonymous online accounts and memberships with various websites, so that is probably all you are getting from me.

Link to the Spacebattles Forums Thread for Mechabiological: https:///threads/mechabiological-a-worm-si.341898/

--Petition Regarding the Automatic Deletion of URLs and Other Text--

Please copy and paste this petition or some variant thereof, with your name added to the list at the end, in your own profile if you agree with it.

Since as far back as I can remember, this site has had an auto-editor (or rather, censor) that automatically removes any text in a story, review, etc. that meets certain criteria, without even informing the poster of the 'offending' material in question when they click the button to post it. The criteria I know of includes primarily the systematic deletion of any URLs, attempts to describe URLs, attempts to even imply URLs, or anything that looks even vaguely like one of the above. The only exception to this used to be that links could be placed on a person's profile page, but even those don't show up anymore.

I would guess that some will claim there is a good reason for this, ranging from legal concerns to prior issues with links leading to objectionable content or malware-infected websites being posted, to problems with whatever coding the site uses to display the material in question, or some combination of the above, or some other reason that does not spring to my mind. Pardon my French, but I call Bullshit.

As regards any legal concerns, other websites such as Spacebattles, Sufficient Velocity and other online forums allow both links and URLs to be posted, and even do things to facilitate their easier use. They do not have legal problems as a result of this.

Objectionable content and malware infected websites are no excuse either. Creative Writing forums promote rules against linking to these using banners that link to a short rulebook, coupled with the presence of a "report" button and the ability to describe an infraction in brief when you first report it. I understand that the staff of Fanfiction Dot Net do not have time to sort through loads of reports, but this is merely a reason to restrict reportable offences to only a few, rare issues, not an excuse to let their own laziness punish the writers of this site.

As far as there being problems with the coding, I again call Bullshit. The plaintext of a URL can easily be put in plaintext for easy reading without interfering with any coding. Even if it can't, allowing them so long as spaces or other characters are included somewhere can easily solve the issue.

Any other such concerns have solutions that are just as easy or easier than the ones listed above.

On the other hand, reasons to allow the usage of links, or at least the typing of URLs, abound. Sometimes a reviewer might wish to refer the author of the fic they are reviewing to material found on another website to help improve their writing, as I have. Perhaps a writer does not wish to post a large amount of non-story, but still story-relevant, material in the middle of their fic when they could have simply written the URL for a page on which such material can already be found, thus vastly improving the flow of their fic and avaiding the ire of many of their readers. Perhaps they want to provide their readers with an image or piece of artwork, thus allowing their own mental image to be more fully realized in the readers' minds than what a mere verbal description can provide. I also know of at least one fandom off the top of my head that includes and references a fictional website on a number of occasions. I am sure that others can think of numerous more reasons to allow their use.

Also included within this censorship are any repetitions of the same character or combination of characters, such as an underscore (_), hyphen (-), or a fancy pattern such as this one (.*.*.*.) on a line of its own. Why this is in place is anyone's guess. Spelling obviously isn't the issue, because spelling errors abound within the fics on this site. Not that I would like to see a spelling censor either; if every misspelled or "misspelled" word was autocorrected or deleted then the posting of readable fanfiction, or fanfiction that uses terminology outside whatever dictionary was used, would be utterly impossible. So why is it included at all? The only thing it seems to do is make the creation of aesthetically pleasant linebreaks rather difficult for no reason whatsoever, unless the writer has figured out that for some reason it will finally work right if they put a word in the middle of it somewhere.

The only single reason I can think of to prohibit the use of typed URLs and such is if the administration of this site wishes to prevent writers from finding and leaving for better, more writer-friendly websites however they are able. Unfortunately, this is actually one of several primary reason that I myself rarely if ever post my own works on this site, as I have come to prefer said user-friendly sites instead, despite the relatively small readership present on them. There are still more than enough readers there for my needs.

-Petition written by JadeKaiser

Signed by:

JadeKaiser,

--End Petition Regarding the Automatic Deletion of URLs and Other Text--

Please make sure to ask me if you do want to adopt a story of mine; I will probably say yes, although if I look at your writing and find it sorely lacking the answer will be no. Sorry, but I can't stand to read the horribly butchered writing that I often see on this site. I get that people make mistakes in writing; that isn't at all what I am talking about. What I can't take is people ignoring all rules of grammar and punctuation or not even trying to spell anything they write properly. On top of that there are some who just aren't very good writers, and stand far below even me in that regard. People who seem to just write whatever comes into their head without regard for editing or consistency, or who are talented at making every protagonist they write a complete Mary Sue/Gary Stu.

Other people aren't very good writers, but aren't bad enough for the writing to ruin their good story ideas. These people I greatly encourage to keep writing until their skill in it matches their excellent creativity. These are the writers that could become like some of my favorite authors on this site.

I am a very strong Christian, and I expect this to show strongly in any stories I write that get far enough. I believe in the Bible as the holy, immutable word of God. I do not expect that everyone agrees with me or will be as nice about that disagreement as I will be. If you don't like it you will have to deal with it or read someone else's work. Flaming me about this is not appreciated. I do not flame other authors that write atheism, paganism, or immorality into their work, and I expect the same courtesy in return, to an extent. I know that wherever we go, there will be those who seek to persecute the followers of Christ, and that this site is no exception. However, I would prefer it if you tried to keep any religious objections to my writing to yourself with regard to my work, as I do for mine with regard to yours. Thank you very much.