Lazeez's Corner

As I work on the moderation end of the Clitorides Awards site , I've become aware of something. Many of the nominated stories are no-sex stories. As in not a bit of sex in them. The clitorides awards were created to promote the erotica writing community; even the name 'clitorides' is a reminder of that. So my question to the community is: Should no-sex stories be eligible for the awards?

Hello everyone, Back on February 15th, 2007, Souvie posted the following in message on Usenet in the ASSD group (alt.sex.stories.d) id Message-ID: <dqk9t2tihhc7as6cf8qv704v44utjfqttk@4ax.com>: > I will not be running the awards next year, someone else has taken them over. I'm sure everyone'll find out eventually. In the meantime, it's been fun. :) > I'm going to email Kenny and see if he wants me to do the Silver Clits for the time he's been away, and it's possible the person who's taking over the GCA will be taking over the SCA (depends on what Kenny says). > Now that I have no legitimate excuse not to write, I still won't be writing. It's not fun right now and if and when the fun returns, maybe then I'll pick my pen back up. Well, time has come to reveal that I'm the one who volunteered to try to handle the awards. I'm sure many of you have already known or guessed that little fact. I registered a domain for them, it...

This post is now old and irrelevant after the various changes over the years. I've implemented some important changes in the story delivery mechanism today. The new system has the ability to deliver long stories or long chapters in multiple pages. Explanation: Storiesonline is a busy site. Very busy site. In order to keep the site running smoothly and responding as fast as possible to readers' requests, the reply time for those requests must be kept short. The servers have limited numbers of connections. So the faster each reader got their file and their browser disconnected, the faster the server could respond to another reader. In order to keep connection times short, I tried to keep files as small as possible. That meant for long stories that took a while to reach the readers' browsers, I used to divide the story into chapters and long chapters into sub-chapters. That's why some stories have 'Chapter 1A', 'Chapter 1B' etc... While the old way was perf...

Looking for a story that is supposed to be on storiesonline, but of course, can't remember the author or the title: The main character is hired or rents a house. That night he and the house move back in time. The next night he goes back to the present. The owner who lives nearby comes by and tells him that this happens and sometimes the person living in the house doesn’t come back. The owner’s sons come over and clear more of the land around the house and the house and the cleared land goes back. As he picks up travelers the house grows with the need. It becomes as large as a castle with underground garage and target range. Appreciate any pointers

It's been ten days since the implementation of the new voting system, so I thought I would keep everybody up-to-date with how things are shaping up. First thing to report is that voting is up. The number of basic votes cast per day added to the number of TPA votes cast per day is about 30% higher than the previous week's number of basic votes cast. So it seems that many people were not using the old system and were encouraged by the new one. So for those who were afraid that the new voting system will lead to people moving away from voting, rest assured, it didn't happen. Second, the voting form wording change is affecting scores mildly. The median of votes cast after the change is lower. It currently stands at 8.00 compared to 8.82 prior to the change. Of course, the Q Score is compensating for this difference and the Q Scores are more consistent. The number of TPA votes is about 30% of the basic votes number. So, it's quite high. I didn't expect it to be this high...

Well, it's done. Today, I implemented the display changes to show the new system in action. You can read the previous entries in this blog to see how these changes came about. First change is the voting forms. The old form has been redesigned with the new look and the wording has changed. It's very close to the temporary change that I implemented at the beginning of December, but with one major difference. The 10 is no labeled like before; the current version says 'Most Amazing Story', which makes it more attainable. Another change is the reversal of the order of the grades. It used to be that the 10 was the first item under the mouse, now it's the furthest one. This is a subtle change, but one I implemented to encourage readers to think before they cast their vote. The second change is the availability of the Expanded voting form. I designed the system to switch easily between the two forms and be able to set the default from within the form itself. This functional...

I'm working on implementing the new optional expanded voting form referenced in my previous blog entry Final Decisions . I need some feedback about the wording of the voting form. The form will have three separate criteria for the reader to select values for and I want it to be clear enough about the meaning of each. So for each criteria, I need a short, concise sentence that goes under each option, to explain what the reader is selecting. It has to be as clear as possible as to not leave the reader confused about what they're selecting and short enough to be simple. So far I've come up with: Quality: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Spelling and Grammar Plot: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Thoroughness of the storyline Appeal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Appeal to your personal taste. Also, I can't display all the numbers, so I must combine the three criterias into a single value to display. So far, the relative score is going to be in its own column and the expanded score would be in anoth...

I've made an important change to the site today. Tonight will be the last night that weekly counters are all reset to zero. From now on the system will keep track of the last seven days individually for each story. So, the weekly counters will now reflect a story's downloads in the last seven days regardless of which day you view the listings. Previously, the site kept track of weekly downloads starting from the weekly reset time of Sunday night. So, if you view the download listings on Tuesday, you get the tally of two days' worth of downloads. With the new system, viewing the top downloads list on Tuesday will give you the cumulative downloads since last Wednesday. The current system had the effect that any story posted around midnight on Sunday, had the biggest chance of staying on top of the download list of the rest of the week. Some authors took advantage of this by posting their updates and new stories on Sunday after 9pm EST; which of course is completely understand...

I want to thank everybody that commented and contributed to the discussions in the three previous blog entries, and who made suggestions. It has been educational. I've made up my mind on how to proceed next with regards to the voting system. While I don't like to lose any authors or readers, the current state of the scoring system is pitiful, and if left as it currently is, then it will only get worse over time, which, to me, is unacceptable. The suggestions by many were interesting to say the least, but a lot of it, while could be useful and helpful, is not feasible to implement. Everybody has to remember that the site is a busy one and I don't have unlimited resources. The site serves millions of pages per day and any change in the page, in the processing, in the data stored can have a huge effect on the site's performance and its ability to cope. For example, keeping scores indefinitely, in order to allow for dropping a certain percentage of votes, or comparing previ...

Well, it has been an interesting experience to say the least. If you haven't read my two most recent entries about changes to the scoring system on the site, you should read them. The gist of this blog entry is to tell you that ALL changes to the scoring system have been canceled and reverted. A recap of what happened. For the last couple of years, story scores on the site have been edging up higher and higher due to various psychological reasons. The median for all scores of last year is about 8.87. Which means that half of the stories are scoring more than 8.87 and the other half below 8.87. The results of this median is that story scores are in general, extremely high. Over the last year, I kept hearing from many authors how ridiculous the scores are becoming, and from readers how they can't trust the system to guide them to the better stories. The phrase 'I don't read anything that is not scoring over 9.25' came up very frequently. So, because of these things, I...

I canceled the planned changes. Too many authors asked for the removal of their stories from the site. Sorry for all the trouble. This is a follow up to my previous blog entry about the changes to the scoring system. If you haven't read that one, please check it to see what this whole thing is about. This follow up is to address as many of the comments that have been received so far as possible. A simple clarification: the voting system itself is not really changing. It still works the same way. It's the results representation that's changing to allow for a clearer distinction between tiny variations in the scores. I'm just shifting the median for all scores from whatever it is now, to an artificial one of 6. For example, the current top scoring serials on the site contains eight stories with a score of 9.77. The new representation would simply magnify smaller variations within the .77 bit. As for suggestions offered, there were plenty, and that's good. Few things ...

Since implementing the scoring system on the site in 1999, it has been the only controversial part of the whole site. Many users found it useful, some didn't trust it and some ignored it. To authors it's even more troublesome. Many authors expect the score to tell them how they did in their writing, they wanted it to reflect the effort that they put into the story regardless of the story's content and its subject's appeal to the readers. Those concerns and expectations are not something that I can really address. Authors need to simply realize that the score simply reflects how much a reader liked the story and whether they recommend that others read it too. It's like a thumbs up signal. However, there is a problem with the scoring system that I can address: Score compression. Score compression is when votes, like they are now on the site, tend to be mostly on one end of the scale. Last check revealed that the median for all scores on the site is 8.62! A median of 8...

I made few changes to the site in the past few days. I thought I'd talk about them a bit. The first two changes are in the way the voting mechanism and the feedback mechanism work at the end of stories. I've added some JavaScripts to make the forms submit to the site and return feedback without having to reload the whole page. The reason for the change is to make a better user interface. Previously (and currently if you don't have JavaScript active in your browser or doesn't have a supported browser), when a reader clicked the vote button in the voting form or send button in the mail form, the whole page would change, so to do both, one usually had to hit the back button once. With the change, the form simply goes away and the text changes to reflect the result. Overall, it works very well. Most people have recent browsers and most people have JavaScript active. The transition for the voting form was almost trouble free, but the one for the mail form was quite bumpy. Th...

Today, Saturday, August 19th, 2006, marks the deployment of a new version of the site's submission wizard. It's not a complete re-write but a significant one nonetheless. New features: Shortcuts: Designed for authors with multiple similar postings. For example if you need to post several chapters of a novel, separately, instead of clicking the wizard, then selecting a pen name (if applicable), then selecting 'New Chapter', then selecting the story - for each chapter, you can save the pen name, submission type, story, progress status, opt out of new categories, opt out of story's end-note, opt out of moderator notes. Also works for new stories, but of course with appropriate options (for example you can't opt out of categories because they're required). Basically, the version saves a lot of clicking. Delayed Posting: For authors that like to post something to appear later on the site. Other changes include some JavaScript enhancements to reduce the clicking r...

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Lately, I've been getting many requests for certain features for the library system, even though those features already exist in the Library, like update dates and a way to track serial stories. So in order to address those requests, I've created a page that shows a sample uses of the Library system on the site. I linked the new page from the various help pages on the site. The page can be found here . The new page shows how to use the library for tracking active serials, to remember stories for reading later and for managing bookmarks on the site, on other sites and on your own computer. Of course, other creative uses suggestions for the library are most welcome. A small request The last section of the new page details how to use the library to bookmark stories on other web sites and on your own computer. In that section I give a JavaScript snippet to use as a bookmarklet for adding stories from other sites and from your computer to the library easily. I created the code, but ...

I have a problem. Or should I say, I'm dissatisfied with something. Story classification. Currently, the site uses codes to classify stories, but this method has significant shortcomings in my view. It does not distinguish between main themes or story types from minor activities. I want to create an additional classification system that focuses only on main story types or genres, for example: Science Fiction, Western, Horror etc... and of course each genres could have some sub-genres. So far, I have no details about the supported genres, but I definitely want to make it in a way that stories can't have more than one genre. Main genres will replace some story codes like Scifi, horror. So, this is a call for suggestions of what genres to include in the new system, and if a genre definitely needs sub-genres, what they are. Try to keep in mind that a story can only have exactly ONE genre and ONE sub-genre. What's puzzling me the most is what genre can plain sex stories have? Th...

Well, the new reviewing system is mostly finished. I revamped the review display page completely and made it accessible to everybody. The old reviewing system has been integrated with the site. No more need for a separate log in page and different ID. Reviewing is easier than ever for those with reviewer accounts. A new reviewers section has been added to the site and it's only accessible for those with reviewer accounts. The funny part about this change is that it came with no real planning. I know I had discussed a new reviewing system on this blog a long time ago, but it seemed that I could never really plan it and implement it properly within a reasonable amount of time. So I kept putting it off for later. The way this started was with me thinking that the old reviews listing page is not particularly useful to either authors or reviewers if only premier members could access it. So I decided to give access to everybody and started by revamping the interface. Before this change, ...

To encourage readers to send feedback to authors, storiesonline provides an easy to use form at the end of every story and an email contact link in every author's page as well as a feedback link at the end of every blog entry. In order to encourage those who are reluctant to disclose their email address to still send feedback, the mailing system provided allows for anonymous messages. The system works very well and storiesonline, according to many authors, is the source of the most feedback received; which is very good for authors. However, like every system, it is possible to abuse it. Hiding behind the afforded anonymity, some cowardly people abuse authors by sending them abusive messages through the anonymous system. To deal with the problem, the mail system has been updated to allow authors to refuse all mail, or to refuse just anonymous email. When an author chooses to refuse all email, the site won't show any mail forms or links. When an author choose to refuse anonymous ...

This was a frustrating weekend. Inexplicably, still, some people are unable to access the site. The servers are online as usual. The DNS entries for the site are configured correctly. So why some Comcast, then Earthlink and now MSN users are unable to access the site? I don't know, and can't figure it out yet. Most of the problem areas were cleared yesterday about 1 pm - as evidenced by a sustained usage spike on the site; and for a period I thought the problems were cleared. However, today, when I got to work and checked my email, there were several messages still complaining about the inability to reach the site. To help with this problem, I've added two links on the left of this blog. For a long time now, since 2002, I've owned the domain storiesonline.xxx, but since.xxx is not supported by the ICANN, normal DNS servers don't lead you to the site if you simply typed 'http://storiesonline.xxx' into your browser's address bar. The company selling t...