Content Policy

Last updated: September 2026

Strofia is an open library of literature of merit. It began with poetry (*strofia* = stanza), but the umbrella is literature: verse and prose written with literary intent — poetry, short fiction, literary essay, letter, novel and drama. The vocabulary of types is open-ended.

The rule of scope: anything is welcome as long as it is literature and respects this policy. The work *is* the text — its value and its form live in the written word.

Out of scope — primarily graphic or visual content: comics, graphic novels, illustration and photography do not belong on Strofia. Their home is the sibling site illustrations.elier.org, which fits that kind of work better. A literary work may carry *supporting* illustration, but when the work *is* the image (not the text), its place is illustrations.elier.org. Non-literary text (manuals, documentation, marketing) is out too.

We start from the public domain (curated and verified) and add living authors through a member space, in phases.

Strofia has two doors over one URL scheme (owner = `public-domain` vs `@handle`):

• Canon — public domain plus member works promoted on merit. This is the reader's door and the site's identity: *an open space for literature*. The literary / curatorial bar is high. It is what you browse in the catalogue (by author, era, languages and search).
• Member space (`@handle`) — the creator's door: what a living author publishes under their account. The bar is rights + content rules + quality + honest labeling — not the Canon's literary bar.
• The bridge is admission to the Canon: a member work lives at `/@handle`; if it is curated / promoted on literary merit, it also appears in the Canon. The Canon grows without lowering the bar.
• Honest labeling, always: provenance is visible — *Public domain* vs *Published by @handle*. Canon is never conflated with self-published work.

These apply to every work, of any type, along four axes that don't get mixed up:

1. Rights / intellectual property. Public domain → rights term expired and verified. Member → declares ownership and chooses a licence; zero infringement, with a DMCA / takedown channel. See the terms and conditions.
2. Content rules (by purpose, not ideology or faith; no ideological veto). Strofia is neither anti-religious nor confessional: literature that *treats* the sacred is welcome as heritage (Hopkins, C. Rossetti, Herbert, Donne, Milton, Dante). What is not welcome is content whose purpose is devotional / proselytising / doctrinal — not for being religious, but for not being literary. Also out: non-literary purpose (propaganda), hate speech / incitement, illegal or harmful content, and work that infringes others' rights.
3. Quality — a minimum floor. No spam or filler. In the member space the floor is quality (genuine, readable work); in the Canon, the high literary / curatorial bar applies on top.
4. Scope = literature (text). Primarily graphic / visual and non-literary content stays out (§1); where relevant it is redirected to illustrations.elier.org.

> In short: for the open space, admission = *rights + content + quality + honest labeling*. The literary bar is an extra layer required only to enter the Canon.

• Published in advance: authors know the policy before they contribute.
• Written, consistent criteria — not arbitrary case-by-case.
• If something doesn't fit, we say so with respect and with a reason.
• We reject the *accept → remove → apologise* model: it frustrates authors and creates moderation debt.

“Work of the day”. The daily highlight picks short works, in the language the site is currently in, from (a) public-domain authors, or (b) living authors who have consented to show that work. This implies per-work visibility: an author marks which of their works are showable on Strofia and which stay private.

The intended model: the author keeps their rights and grants Strofia a distribution licence. Not yet decided: whether that licence is CC BY-NC (like the rest of the site) or another. To be confirmed before the member space opens.