Hi @osomar357. I never got to read the story before you took it down. You self-censored. 😄

I hope I can help clarify some things. The situation here is that we have to be true to the spirit of our community. It's not about censorship.

Here is some important perspective. Every community in The Ink Well gets to set their own guidelines for the content accepted in their community. We have done that to the best of our ability. We have carefully written our rules and guidelines, and we communicate them at the top of the community and in our writing prompts.

Consider these examples of how any Hive community can set their own rules and guidelines and require community members to adhere to them:

• A poetry community would not allow content about how to buy bump stocks.
• A vegetarian foodie community would not accept content about frog dissection or how to grill the best steaks.
• A photography community is under no obligation to accept poetry or self-help articles or even artwork that is not photography.

That said, any writer on Hive can still post any of those things to their own blog, or choose a different community that has different rules. Some of our writers publish content that contains sex or violence in other communities, and post only content that does not have those elements here.

The curator who read your story felt it "crossed the line" for acceptability in our community and went beyond a "PG" rating. PG means "Parental Guidance" and it's a term used in the cinema world to help parents determine whether a film is appropriate for a child. We use that as a metric for whether we approve the content to appear here in The Ink Well. (A parent of a 12-year-old might allow their child to see a PG-rated movie, but not an X-rated movie, for example.)

We also use the term "NSFW" which means "not safe for work." If a person couldn't safely read the content while their boss looks over their shoulder at their computer, then it's not safe for The Ink Well. "NSFW" is a standard metric used for content appropriateness, and you will see that in our rules. (Naked demons stimulating one another with tongues rubbing together is perhaps a step too far. I think most employers would not approve.)

Of course, it's a bit subjective. That can't be helped, because as our curator mentioned "we are just people." We are a community that decided long ago to maintain a standard that content published here must be safe for all ages, and for people who have experienced violence and sexual traumas. We do our best on a day-to-day basis is ensure that our community members understand and adhere to these guidelines.

I hope you now have a better understanding of what kinds of content will cross the line of our NSFW filter.

Wishing you the best this holiday season. Please keep writing. You have a wonderful creative mind, and I look forward to more of your stories!