Yeah. Even if a writer posts stuff only to their own website and makes it clear that it's not to be archived elsewhere, ever, people will still save it to their computers. And if the writer then takes the stuff down, I guess they'd have to assume that, if people like and remember their work, it's probably going to still be findable if someone digs hard enough. Particularly through newsgroups and communities. The internet has a remarkably long memory.

That's cool that you contact the authors. It's a good way to do it. I guess some people move away and don't want to keep a fandom presence, but don't actually object to people still reading and sharing. Maybe it's not so much about people not wanting others to read their stories, but more about not wanting stories connected to someone's real name, or an internet name that they want to use for other things.

(I think the site that has my stuff isn't going away any time soon - I checked today, and it was last updated... today.)