Does choosing the hide story option for one of your own stories only hide it from the list of your stories, or can it also disable the link?
I'd have assumed and expected the latter, but I was experimenting with hiding a few of mine that I'm not as happy with.
I hid them, logged off, cleared the cache, shut down my browser, and then went back to lush.
When I went to my profile (logged out, so not as "me"), the stories were not visible from my profile, as I'd expect them not to be. However, they were still accessible from pre-existing links / bookmarks.
Do I have to wait longer for them to be truly hidden? Or is there not a way of truly hiding them short of deleting them?
thanks,
OR
Hiding them should disable any links to the story. It should do everything but erase the links themselves. In other words, you might see the link as someone's favorite on their profile, but clicking the link should only generate a 404 error code. This is true even should you try to see it from your own, my stories tab.
I have stories kept in limbo for years and none of them have ever been viewable to anyone.
Like Milik said, hiding a piece (or making them "not visible") should make the story inaccessible via any link. You still have access to the story, but no one else can access it, even if they have a link to the story.
I've only hidden one piece--a truly awful poem that I hid after it hit 4.8--and as far as I could tell, it wasn't accessible from anywhere except my own account, logged in as myself. I eventually tired of even having listed in the total number of pieces posted on the site, and killed it entirely. I didn't follow up much after I hid it, though, so it's quite possible that it does take 24 hours or so to turn a valid link into a 404 page.
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Through experiment, which I did before my original post, I can confirm that existing story links do seem to work if you hide the story, at least in the immediate short run.
The effect I found was that the story disappeared from my profile, but that any links out there, eg the story had been favorited or was on story picks, still worked. These links still worked if I was logged out, so it wasn't a question of my own profile having preferential access to my own hidden story.
Maybe it just takes an overnight refresh cycle to make them more fully hidden.
As to why? Any number of reasons. I happened to be feeling peevish and was experimenting w hiding all my stories and deactivating my account. I knew that I'd likely change my mind and so deleting either the stories or my profile was not the way to go.
Another reason is an evolving sense of quality. Some of my earlier stories were the best I could do then, but I think I could do better now. I'd consider hiding some until I had the time to re-write them or polish them up. I can imagine hiding them in that situation, rather than deleting and re-submitting essentially the same story.
Gav will confirm this, but I’d assume the links will all still work, just the stories will be hidden from your profile.
So, unless you knew the link URL's, you'd never find the stories. Effectively hiding the story to everyone other than those who know of the link address.
The reason for doing it that way, is that the page generated for the story, comments, scores etc., will remain intact, and easily referenced in our database.
Gav may have added another layer, as Milik says, making the reference to the hidden story head to a 404 error code, but I'd be surprised if that's the case.
To be confirmed!