Yesterday, while a taking a stroll through the archive, I found a list of the most unloved stories housed on Harrypotterfanfiction.com. You might ask yourself how could an author abandon their story and deject it to live in the Hades of the archive? The only signs that the story(s) once thrived and/or existed for a brief moment in time are small notes that say, “I’m not working on this story, but I can’t delete it,” “waiting to be deleted” or “how do I delete this crappy story.”

It simply broke my heart to find all those misfit tales but I did the humane thing. I put the poor fics out of their misery and deleted them from the archive forever. **Wipes away tear.**

Many of you have obviously noticed that authors can no longer delete stories from their account menu. This feature was removed when the archive went through it’s extreme makeover. The only way to have a story removed is to nicely ask a staffer to do it for you.

There are several ways you can request a story removal. The one I recommend is to visit the ‘ask the staff’ section in the forum. There is a wonderful pinned topic titled, Story Deletion Request. You may post in this topic after you register an account, but it's still a simple hassle free way of letting us know you have a story that needs to be taken out of its misery.

Now some of you just aren’t ‘forum’ people so there is another option for you. We strive to make HPFF the most easy to use and helpful Harry Potter place on the web. This is why the staffers work diligently to answer each and every trouble ticket that comes across our Help Desk. If you’ve never used our trouble ticket system before then you’re in luck. Our trouble ticket area has also recently undergone a make over making it even more simple and easy to use.

Still, if you’re intimidated by all this technology and jargon you can do it the old fashion way. You can e-mail any staff member and we can remove your story.

I implore you to not leave your story lying around the archive with these hurtful “delete me” notes. At one time they were your plot bunnies and they deserve the dignity of a respectful removal. Also, it’s really annoying if you’re a staff member who is constantly stumbling across them while looking for place to plant hints for an upcoming competition…. Did I just say that?