The house rules for published work

These guidelines are for anyone who publishes a poem or story on Storgy, and for anyone who reads, answers or reports one. They apply on top of the terms of service, and describe how we run the part of Storgy where writing is public.

Your own poems and short stories. Not other people’s, and a credit line does not change that: a poem copied out under its author’s name is still not yours to publish. The public-domain poems in the library are already on Storgy, so there is no need to repost them. Translations are the exception, and only of public-domain work, with the original and its source named on the piece.

Storgy does not generate poems. Its feedback tools read what you write and respond to it. The critique is written by Claude, from Anthropic. Using these tools is fine, and a piece you publish needs no mention of them.

One thing to know: the Poem Checker can suggest a rewrite of a weak line. That suggestion is text generated by an AI, and the rule below applies to it.

Text generated or rewritten by an AI is not allowed on Storgy. That holds for a whole piece and for a single line, and for what people write in readings and notes. We do not run AI detectors, because a detector’s guess is not evidence. We act on reports and on what we read.

A reading or a note answers someone’s work, and the work is what it answers. Be exact: point at the line, the image or the break, and say what it is doing. Be kind. A hard judgment of a line is welcome; a judgment of the person who wrote it is not. No links, including links to your own work. Abuse, threats and harassment are removed.

Anyone can report a piece or a note, from the piece itself, signed in or not. Choose the reason that fits: abuse, spam, plagiarism, AI-generated text, copyright, or something else.

A reported piece leaves the directories while we look at it, though anyone with its link can still open it, marked as under review. We look at every report within a day, and the writer is told the outcome and the reason.

Your first three pieces are read by a person before they go live, usually within a day. While a piece waits, it is marked as in review. Once three of your pieces have been read and approved, new ones go live when you publish them. We can also hold new publications for review across the whole site if we need to.

If a piece breaks these guidelines we remove it, and we may add a strike to your account. A strike puts you back in review: your next pieces are read by a person before they go live, as at the start. Three strikes close publishing on your account. Every removal and every strike comes with its reason, and you can see it. If you think we have got one wrong, email hello@storgy.com and we will look at it again.

You confirm when you publish that you have the right to. If a piece on Storgy uses work without that right, report it from the piece. If you hold the rights and want something removed, the full process, including what a notice needs and how quickly we act, is at /legal/dmca/.

Whatever its form, we remove:

• unlawful content
• harassment and threats
• hateful content aimed at people for who they are
• sexual content involving minors
• spam
• impersonation of another person