I wasn't the one who made the comparison to great works of literature, so I can't speak to it.
As for serving the purpose of an archive, I totally get that. I've taken several of my own, older stories down from my personal archive. But I wouldn't ask anyone else to remove those stories from their archives, if they'd previously asked for permission to post them, nor would I go through the trouble of backing the work out of auto archives, like the Wayback.
I think the difficulty we're having here is between Can and Should. Of course you CAN, and who am I to tell you that you *shouldn't* try to wipe the stories you wrote off the face of the earth? But. And it's a big, er, but, you also can't, and shouldn't, fault someone for being very annoyed when you take away a toy which you gave them, just because it no longer suits your purpose for them to have it.
And again, I think it's naive to think that *anything* we put into webspace can be erased forever. Believe me, I feel your pain around wanting old stories to be forgotten. I just try to look at their continued existance as a way to measure how far I've (hopefully) come. Or at least get a good laugh from.
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As for serving the purpose of an archive, I totally get that. I've taken several of my own, older stories down from my personal archive. But I wouldn't ask anyone else to remove those stories from their archives, if they'd previously asked for permission to post them, nor would I go through the trouble of backing the work out of auto archives, like the Wayback.
I think the difficulty we're having here is between Can and Should. Of course you CAN, and who am I to tell you that you *shouldn't* try to wipe the stories you wrote off the face of the earth? But. And it's a big, er, but, you also can't, and shouldn't, fault someone for being very annoyed when you take away a toy which you gave them, just because it no longer suits your purpose for them to have it.
And again, I think it's naive to think that *anything* we put into webspace can be erased forever. Believe me, I feel your pain around wanting old stories to be forgotten. I just try to look at their continued existance as a way to measure how far I've (hopefully) come. Or at least get a good laugh from.