Posting stories and poems? Please read!!!

With increasing frequency we are receiving requests from authors of the many humorous or poignant stories, poems, etc. that proliferate on the internet. When the authors find their work posted here, they often want us to correct/remove their work, give them credit for it, etc.

Just a few minutes ago, I handled a request from someone who wants us to correct "What is a Grandmother" - which, by the way, has been posted three times in the Jokes & chats forum:
http://davesgarden.com/search/index.php?search_text=what+is+a+grandmother

Now, I know a lot of you really like sharing these stories. But please keep three things in mind:

1) check to see if it's already been posted here - I quickly and easily found the three duplicates by typing "what is a grandmother" in the DG search.

2) if it's posted elsewhere on the internet, just post the link to it - don't copy it into our forums. That eliminates a lot of work for us when there's a problem with the text (copyright, changed wording, etc.) because the author can then go pester the other website to make the corrections ;o)

3) if you have checked for duplicates and can't find the story posted on any other website you can link to, please make sure you have the "official" version, complete with the author's name - believe me, some of these authors apparently have little else to do, and take this issue quite seriously, which makes a lot of work (finding the post, reviewing it, adding/changing/deleting information, corresponding back and forth with the author, etc.) for the DG administrators.