Answering a question with another question, is there any way of ascertaining how many stories are written which don't make it to the Archive? By which I mean, how big a problem are we looking at? Is there a dwindling numbers of stories being written, which then reflects on the submissions to the Archive, or is it that people don't, for whatever reason, submit their finished stories?
I guess someone with nothing to do for a few days could go through the fanfic MBs for an entire year and count the number of completed stories posted. Any volunteers? <g> I know there are a few stories which aren't posted on the MBs (many of ML Thomson's stories come to mind, for example) but they wouldn't scew the results too badly, I wouldn't have thought.
Personally, I wouldn't object to the automatic option, but I also think it would be a great shame to lose the fandom's editing process. It makes us different (and better, dare I say?) to all the others and ensures that PG fic remain clear of inappropriate language.
Editing without the author's permission is a definite non-starter. What you *could* do is send an email to authors whose stories had been picked up by the automatic process offering them the chance to stop their story entering the Archive process (ie being edited, etc). If you don't receive a response from the author within a pre-defined time-frame, or you receive a negative response, the story doesn't go on the Archive.
Yvonne
