Kicking myself

[Bramblethorn]

I think you all misunderstand me. I'm not saying there shouldn't be rules or standards, I'm saying that the method by which everything must be screened first seems outdated. You are all acting as if it's illegal to have any of those kinds of stories you're mentioning online. It's not.

Tell that to Frank McCoy or Thomas Alan Arthur.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Unfortunately, the real problem is always the same: money. We can drop suggestions like this 'til we are blue in the face (fingers?) but what the site really needs is an experienced product manager who would come up will of this and more and a handful of developers to implement it all (and migrate the site to tech stack from this century). In other words, a few million $ at the very least, which is probably orders of magnitude more than the site's current income stream.

I don't even think that they need that. A lot of the coding to improve the navigability and the searching on the site is easily coded. For instance displaying word count next to titles on story lists would take fifteen minutes.

Giving a breakdown of how many 1s 2s 3s 4s 5s a story gets on the control panel is a simple matter of html output. The data is already there. They just have to display it. Replacing the 'last 7 days' the 'last 30 days' etc with an input box asking the user exactly how many days they want to search back could be done in an afternoon, and most of the time would probably be for testing. Four hours at 75 bucks and hour, 300 bucks. Done.

Give my brother a grand or two and in a week he'd have this site doing our dishes (although I'm not sure that he'd want to work with the content here). Most of us know at least one person in our circle of friends and family who can do those sorts of things.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Well, not really. The server space needed for text, which is what stories are, is comically small. Putting illustrated stories aside for a moment, by space required, Literotica with all its stories could be hosted even on my own PC. That's how much storage space it requires.

I'm thinking of when spam attacks severely impacted the site, grinding it nearly to a halt for a couple of weeks - before your time. That resulted in the Comments moderation, which was at first done in batches, to protect against spam attacks. Something slowed the site to a crawl - I'm no computer boffin, but it was a major problem at the time. Five years later, some people are still saying their comments take a while to appear, while others post immediately. So the site is still doing something, one assumes for a valid technical reason.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Unfortunately, the real problem is always the same: money. We can drop suggestions like this 'til we are blue in the face (fingers?) but what the site really needs is an experienced product manager who would come up will of this and more and a handful of developers to implement it all (and migrate the site to tech stack from this century). In other words, a few million $ at the very least, which is probably orders of magnitude more than the site's current income stream.

Probably a major factor. But also, when a system has been run by the same people for twenty-odd years, just the effort involved in explaining it to somebody new can be a lot.

 

[MelissaBaby]

How many threads have we seen, here or in Story Feedback, asking why some new author's story was rejected? After all, they tell us, it was really good, just read this excerpt...

Kathy spred her gapping clam open widely and Bob said 'Wow Cathy Im going to fuck you so good. Yes, Kathy told him, youre Gigantic meat hammer will feel so good slamming into my cervinx. Bob shoved himself all the way inside her cock holster over, and over again. Kathy came right away after only 5 or 6 times. Her dripping pleasure hole throbbing around his massive cum pistol.

God knows how many like that Laurel weeds out every week. Put me down in the pro-moderation camp.

 

[Lifestyle66]

How many threads have we seen, here or in Story Feedback, asking why some new author's story was rejected? After all, they tell us, it was really good, just read this excerpt...



God knows how many like that Laurel weeds out every week. Put me down in the pro-moderation camp.

I agree.

It's never a "cum pistol". It's either a cum shotgun or cum squirt gun!

 

[MelissaBaby]

I agree.

It's never a "cum pistol". It's either a cum shotgun or cum squirt gun!

I don't want to see the cock holster than can hold a cum shotgun.

 

[TheLobster]

How many threads have we seen, here or in Story Feedback, asking why some new author's story was rejected? After all, they tell us, it was really good, just read this excerpt...

Kathy spred her gapping clam open widely and Bob said 'Wow Cathy Im going to fuck you so good. Yes, Kathy told him, youre Gigantic meat hammer will feel so good slamming into my cervinx. Bob shoved himself all the way inside her cock holster over, and over again. Kathy came right away after only 5 or 6 times. Her dripping pleasure hole throbbing around his massive cum pistol.

God knows how many like that Laurel weeds out every week. Put me down in the pro-moderation camp.

frantically takes notes

 

[Lifestyle66]

I don't want to see the cock holster than can hold a cum shotgun.

Oh, I wouldn't mind meeting her.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Well there is the under 18 thing they try to avoid. I think it's risk minimization strategy. Also it prevents a kind of denial of service attack where they were flooded by someone with ill intent to the site with inappropriate content, and then same person arranges for the authorities to find it. Nonetheless, the delay is frustrating.

There is another site with sixteen as the minimum, and I've never heard of them having denial of service incidents. They've been that way for the last five years that I've been a member.

 

[Booboobear84]

There is another site with sixteen as the minimum, and I've never heard of them having denial of service incidents. They've been that way for the last five years that I've been a member.

This was simply speculation as to what could happen, and what Lit's thinking might be.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I don't even think that they need that. A lot of the coding to improve the navigability and the searching on the site is easily coded. For instance displaying word count next to titles on story lists would take fifteen minutes.

Giving a breakdown of how many 1s 2s 3s 4s 5s a story gets on the control panel is a simple matter of html output. The data is already there. They just have to display it. Replacing the 'last 7 days' the 'last 30 days' etc with an input box asking the user exactly how many days they want to search back could be done in an afternoon, and most of the time would probably be for testing. Four hours at 75 bucks and hour, 300 bucks. Done.

Give my brother a grand or two and in a week he'd have this site doing our dishes (although I'm not sure that he'd want to work with the content here). Most of us know at least

I don't even think that they need that. A lot of the coding to improve the navigability and the searching on the site is easily coded. For instance displaying word count next to titles on story lists would take fifteen minutes.

Giving a breakdown of how many 1s 2s 3s 4s 5s a story gets on the control panel is a simple matter of html output. The data is already there. They just have to display it. Replacing the 'last 7 days' the 'last 30 days' etc with an input box asking the user exactly how many days they want to search back could be done in an afternoon, and most of the time would probably be for testing. Four hours at 75 bucks and hour, 300 bucks. Done.

Give my brother a grand or two and in a week he'd have this site doing our dishes (although I'm not sure that he'd want to work with the content here). Most of us know at least one person in our circle of friends and family who can do those sorts of things.

You’re assuming some things. A lot goes into deciding what enhancements to make in a software system. None of us know the architecture or tech stack this site is built with. The database has to be massive. There are cost/benefit analyses that has to be done, prioritization, considerations for developer availability.(pretty sure they have one) We think some of these things are easy, but I can attest that sometimes even small changes are much bigger than they seem at first blush. Even exposing a single datapoint can be complicated. Sure, there are things I’d like to see but I also k ow all of the above has to be considered. Agree or disagree, we’re still going to be where we are. Bemoaning the lack of word count on a strory considering all this site offers is pretty insignificant. But what do I know? I’ve only been writing enterprise level software for about thirty years.

 

[Britva415]

You are all acting as if it's illegal to have any of those kinds of stories you're mentioning online. It's not.

Not any? I mean, some pretty deplorable stuff was mentioned.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Kathy spred her gapping clam open widely and Bob said 'Wow Cathy Im going to fuck you so good. Yes, Kathy told him, youre Gigantic meat hammer will feel so good slamming into my cervinx. Bob shoved himself all the way inside her cock holster over, and over again. Kathy came right away after only 5 or 6 times. Her dripping pleasure hole throbbing around his massive cum pistol.

(swoon, fans self)

 

[gunhilltrain]

This was simply speculation as to what could happen, and what Lit's thinking might be.

Lit's thinking is inscrutable, but they seem extra cautious. After reading AH for years, I've noticed that a certain paranoia often creeps in from the writers. Somebody is always out there ready to bounce on us or the site for some infraction that is often defined by the site itself. Somebody here will bring up the age topic every month it seems.

 

[gunhilltrain]

How many threads have we seen, here or in Story Feedback, asking why some new author's story was rejected? After all, they tell us, it was really good, just read this excerpt...



God knows how many like that Laurel weeds out every week. Put me down in the pro-moderation camp.

Does that snippet violate site rules?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Does that snippet violate site rules?

Yes. Grammar must be at least legible in order to get published. That snippet violates that rule, so it gets sent back.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Does that snippet violate site rules?

My first submission was rejected for poor format and punctuation and it was a lot better than that.

 

[NatalieDePlume]

Not any? I mean, some pretty deplorable stuff was mentioned.

To the best of my knowledge, no. Someone above mentioned a couple names of people that got in trouble with the law and I looked them up and it appears it's because of "visual material" they were in possession of, not any stories they wrote.
But I don't know for certain, it could be part of it. Certainly there has to be a difference between writing a story about a couple sixteen year olds losing their virginity and something way worse and younger. I mean look at AO3 as an example. They have all kinds of questionable stuff. Just yesterday I published a story there and right above mine in the new stories list, someone had posted a sex story about cannibalism or something. I only read the summary. No thanks. But again, I'm not advocating for any of the legally questionable/reprehensible stuff to be acceptable, I'm just arguing there might be a better way everyone to can get their stuff published faster, by moderating after the fact.
Maybe setup some kind of system where if a certain number of registered members flag a story in a short period of time, it gets locked down until moderators can either approve or delete it. Allow the community to work the problem and self-police. Especially if it's only one or two people approving stories right now.

As for quality of content versus rule/law breaking content, I guess I personally don't care about the former myself. If someone wants to write bad erotica (me! me! sometimes at least - some would argue all the time) then fine. Sure readers might have to deal with a lot more cock cannons or whatever, but again a proper flagging/rating system for quality of writing might help. The site owners here might have a different opinion of what they want. They've certainly been doing it long enough and know more than me. But at the same time, people can get stuck in their ways, and attached to an older philosophy about how things should be done, when there might be a more efficient method that makes everyone happier. Or at least most people, most of the time

All of that said, I know Lit is a very old website. And I know that either one or two of the owners skim all the new work before approval. But that makes me wonder, how much traffic is Lit really getting? If that's even feasible for one (or even two) people to skim and approve all new work it can't be insurmountable. It might be a lot for one of two people, but obviously that's the way the site has been run for decades. Just comparing that to the other website I mentioned, where my story got published right away, there had to have been at least five others that got published within a five minute period. And that was just in the original work category. That website is mostly for fan fic and has hundreds if not thousands of categories. They are a much newer site, so whatever they are doing isn't destroying their servers or getting them in legal trouble. Yet people's work is getting published immediately. That site is run by a nonprofit on open source software. So clearly there are other ways that work. So if anything is keeping this place less gunked up, is it possible it's just less users/writers?

 

[MelissaBaby]

As for quality of content versus rule/law breaking content, I guess I personally don't care about the former myself. If someone wants to write bad erotica (me! me! sometimes at least - some would argue all the time) then fine.

I want readers. Every new person who clicks on a low quality story and decides not to return to the site is a potential reader lost to the rest of us.

 

[Britva415]

To the best of my knowledge, no

It occurs to me, "the law" isn't always even necessarily the big practical concern for website operators.

Internet porn has universally replaced ostensible moms with step moms, ostensible brothers with step brothers. The reason being that if they serve incest porn, whether actual or merely representational, the credit card processing providers will cut them off, and they'll lose their revenue.

That concern would appear to affect Lit, too, but the I/T category has no such fetters.

I donno what to make of that.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

f someone wants to write bad erotica (me! me! sometimes at least - some would argue all the time) then fine. Sure readers might have to deal with a lot more cock cannons or whatever

We already have that. I am not being the slightest bit sarcastic nor facetious when I saw that more than half the stories posted to lit are - in a literary sense (story telling, characters, setting, motive/plot, style/voice, theme, flow, etc) - absolutely horrible.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

We already have that. I am not being the slightest bit sarcastic nor facetious when I saw that more than half the stories posted to lit are - in a literary sense (story telling, characters, setting, motive/plot, style/voice, theme, flow, etc) - absolutely horrible.

Makes sense, though. Isn’t half of everything below average? +/-

 

[MelissaBaby]

Makes sense, though. Isn’t half of everything below average? +/-

Everything except the children of Lake Woebegone.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Makes sense, though. Isn’t half of everything below average? +/-

No actually, only 1% should be in the lowest percentile.