Community Standards
- Authentic Voice: We celebrate genuine human writing. Real stories. No AI.
- Mutual Respect: Every writer and reader is treated with dignity. Disagreement is fine. Cruelty is not.
- Welcoming Table: Writers of every background, experience level, and perspective are welcome here.
- Safe Space: We protect writers from harassment, plagiarism, and exploitation. This is your platform.
- Literary Integrity: We hold the work to a standard. Submissions are reviewed. Quality and heart matter here.
- Growth Mindset: Every writer was once a beginner. We celebrate the journey.
Standards for Writers
When you submit to Writing Café Journal, you're joining a community of writers who take their work seriously. We ask the same of everyone who publishes here.
✓ We Expect
- Original work.
- One person, one submission
- No plagiarism
- Acceptance of light editorial feedback with grace
- A real email address we can reach you at
✗ We Will Not Tolerate
- AI generated or AI assisted content of any kind
- Plagiarism or submitting another person's work as your own
- Multiple accounts or fake identities
- Harassment of editors, other writers, or readers
- Content designed to demean or harm any group
- Attempts to manipulate editorial decisions
Standards for Comments and Readers
When you leave a comment on a piece, you are a guest in that writer's space. The writing took courage. Your response should honor that, even when you disagree.
✓ Good Comments
- Engage with the writing
- Offer constructive perspective when you disagree, respectfully
- Share your own experience if it relates to the piece
- Encourage and support writers, especially new voices
- Keep it relevant to the piece or the topic
✗ What Gets Removed
- Personal attacks on the writer or other commenters
- Hate speech, slurs, or language targeting any group
- Harassment, threats, or intimidation of any kind
- Spam, self-promotion, or off-topic links
- Doxxing: sharing private information about anyone
- Trolling or deliberate bad-faith provocation
Critique the work, not the person. You can disagree with an essay without attacking the writer. "This challenged me" is a conversation. "This writer is terrible" is a reason for removal.
Content We Don't Publish
Writing Café Journal publishes across a wide range of human experience. We don't shy away from difficult subjects. But there are some things we won't publish, not because they're uncomfortable, but because they cause real harm.
- Hate speech: content that dehumanizes or incites hatred toward any group based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin.
- Harassment content: writing intended to target, shame, or intimidate a specific real person.
- Misinformation: deliberately false claims presented as fact, especially on health or safety topics.
- Exploitative content: anything designed to harm or take advantage of vulnerable people.
- Political advocacy: we are a literary platform, not a political one. We do not publish partisan content.
- Graphic violence or explicit sexual content: we are a general audience platform.
Difficult, uncomfortable, and challenging writing is welcome. Writing that weaponizes language against real people or groups is not. Our editors use judgment, and that judgment is final.
How We Enforce These Standards
We moderate Writing Café Journal actively. Submissions are reviewed before publication, and comments are monitored. We are not a hands off platform, we are a curated literary community.
Violations may result in: comment removal, editing or unpublishing of a story, a warning, suspension from submitting, or a permanent ban, depending on severity and pattern.
We will always err on the side of protecting the writer and the community. If you're unsure whether something crosses a line, ask us before you submit. We'd rather have the conversation than remove your work after the fact.
See Something? Say Something.
If you encounter a comment, submission, or behavior that you believe violates these standards, please let us know. Every report is reviewed by a real person, not an algorithm.
Report a concern via our contact form →
We do not take action based on disagreement with a writer's opinions. Reports are for genuine standards violations, not content you simply dislike.