I don't see the correlation between you and being a psycho when all you want to figure out is the connection between the "trolls" and our registered votes

I must be a hundred IQ points beneath a baked potato

 

Damn it! I should have known this would happen!

I admit to being one of the fans of the idea of creating a public list of usernames posting troll comments and blocks of negative votes. In fact, I egged Nicola on in private pms. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Now we have a well-respected, published author, thinking some of us have named her as a troll, or at least, a troll master. Nicola said something, donb may have jumped to a conclusion, and the rest is history.

Everybody needs to calm down! This is exactly what the trolls want -- dissension in the ranks. Nothing creates hard feelings faster than suspicion.

Is Nicola on to something with her research? Probably. Does it point to an established writer? Possibly. Even if it does, does that mean that the writer in question is behind it all?

Absolutely not. As Nicola herself has pointed out, there are a handful of overzealous fans out there who, for some reason or another, feel that they have to be "involved" in some writer's lives.

In Lubutt17's case, some crazy asshole feels that is his calling in life to post as many vicious, character-assassinating comments on this good man's work as he possibly can.

ejls has some deranged fucktard who gets his jollies by posing as her and ridiculing the writings of others or soliciting male writers for sex.

Oediplex has some weirdo who apparently thinks he's doing the guy a big favor by voting O's work up while voting everyone else down.

I have some freak who alternately accuses me of being a homosexual or being the sock account of other writers.

Sarahhh apparently has the same kind of unwanted attention being directed at her.

Let's not go on a witch hunt here. OK, fine, let's go on a witch hunt, but let's make sure we know what we're talking about before we let the accusations fly.

I haven't spoken to anyone else about this, but I'm sure we all want the same things:

1. Protection and improvement of the site.
2. Limiting the asshole comments, and controlling the voting so it is an accurate representation of what the reading public thinks of our work.
2. Exposing the perpetrators of the disruptive, ugly deeds many of us have suffered, while at the same time protecting the integrity of, and respecting the feelings of, all legitimate members.

Again, if I helped to make this mess, I apologize.

 

I think the mess is mine. I read the posts by Nicola and, reviewing the story site like any crack-pot detective, jumped to a conclusion. Nic never stated the name of the person of whom she was speaking.

I told everyone the other day that I am an asshole and now I have proven it. I guess I should keep my fingers off the keyboard unless I really have something to say. Hopefully if I am called to say something, I can really try to be intelligent.

Sorry.

 

I'd say we need to reinstate the guest accounts like we used to have. Then everyone could post under the same account and no one would know the better.:excited:

There is no need to solve any of the sites problems or to work together towards some sort of resolution.

Every coin has a flip side. There are no solutions, only more questions.

I apologize for bringing anything that I might have attempted to, and I'm not commenting about anyone sending any stories plummeting to a messy death.

 

The sheer number of voters that I have come across by watching the top rated last 30 list is staggering. Some stories are getting voted up while others are getting voted down by the same users. But it is not the same EXACT users across the board. This is why I said I would not post anything I have found in a public forum or call names. There are simply too many and it would inevitably hurt feelings.

There are over 2,000 writers on this site. I do not think it is just one person doing all this. There simply is too much trolling going on for just one person to be wrecking this kind of havoc on the site. I don't think it's just writers or just some random person with nothing better to do. I think it is a lot of different people who have learned to take advantage of a weak voting system. And unless something gets done, they are going to continue to take advantage of the voting system.

It sucks. It's aggrivating EVERY one on this site. It's turning us against each other. It's driving off good writers.

There is only one other thing I can think of to do. We have all written requests at one time or another asking that something be done. You remember in school when they told you to write your congressman? Since nothing else is working, maybe we should start a writing campaign. One letter, outlining what we think could be done to better the site, the problems we are having. And every week, on a specific day of the week, everyone copy that letter and send it to the admins. A half a dozen people writing letters off and on for months has done little. Would sending dozens of letters every single day help any? Doubtful. But at least we would feel like we were doing something. If enough people start screaming at the same time, someone is bound to hear us.

The only other choice we have is to let bad enough alone. Yes, I said bad enough, not well enough. In other words, we can all just take our chances with the trolls like we have been doing. That's been working really well so far.

 

If I decide to leave worse off as it is damaged already, I won't be posting anything new around here. I can't send my literary children into harms way anymore and I refuse to.

There is another option and that is to shop around. Check out other avenues and see what any of them are doing to prevent these kinds of problems. Or if the problem lies with the ones who are voting on this particular site, we get to migrate to better nesting grounds

It really is up to all of us. Are our problems great enough that this place simply harbors a breeding ground for the ones who want the stories we submit to page 20 hours after they are validated?

Can any of us find anything close to this on the internet? Will we sacrifice some literary freedom for more control over our submissions and account in general?

It is up to you the writers to determine the path to take.

 

SS, if you, or anyone else for that matter, has luck enough to find another site that allows us literary freedom, then please, please, please let us know. Or at least me! I came across one other site that allowed anything to be posted, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I did go check it out at one time, but the site was so hard to use that I quickly left.

There is another option. Well, several actually. There are several adult blog hosts on the net. We could start our own blogs and link to each other creating a webring. There is also a few adult forum hosts that I know of. We could always start our own forum. I don't know what kind of censorship these hosts place on their members as their rules of conduct are a bit...hazy.

I prefer the idea of going to another site where we can all find what we are looking for in one spot. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

 

Oh Don, you poor baby!

Of course she was talking about me.

Funny she didn’t give the high sign to her friends pietpompies, pietsnot, pietkak, snotbal, snotkop, snotman, etc., who voted negative on my “My Little Sister . . . !” stories.

I might add that the Amazon sales rank of her book published in 2007 is 4,724,007 while the sales rank of my first book published in 2005 is 154, 326 and that of my 2nd book published a year ago is 57, 645. You see, I have all these fake identities with fake credit cards who stand in line to buy my fake books. Oh, and I have some new books to be published soon, and I sure hope pietpompies, pietsnot, pietkak, snotbal, snotkop, and snotman buy them.

Well, I’ll see you around, Don. Maybe. I am deleting all my stories here, like I said. It’s not just this, the last straw. My conscience has been bothering me. Obviously this site caters to underage stories and wacko stuff like raping 7 year olds and doing my doggy doggy. Just not my thing, but I made the heroines in several of my recent stories underage just to get more whatever. Shame on me. I mean, my little 13-year-old sister? You know, the one you dated. But the girls always get the last laugh (and money) in my stories. Oh Don, you poor poor baby!

 

No comment from the poor, poor baby.

 

The problem is that we can't agree on what needs to be done. My opinion is to limit voting and commenting to users who have at least 10 posts. More important than the voting, in my opinion, is to get rid of anonymous commenting.

But other people here have other ideas. Some have suggested a positive-only voting system, some have suggested a 1-10 voting system. Until we can agree on a solution, we won't be able to agree on what to write.

Believe me, I've shopped around. In my opinion, the three best sites on the net for amateur erotic authors are asstr.org, storiesonline.net, and xnxx.com (in no particular order). Of the three, xnxx.com is the only one with any kind of community. Sure I get emails from my writing on the other sites, but emails can't take the place of a good forum. The only other sites I've found with forums either cater to a particular fetish, or they have restrictions on content. Despite the trolls and bickering, XNXX is still the best online community for us perverted authors.

 

I agree with the 10 post limit on voting

There isn't going to be a permanent solution to this but the overall emotional tone is to make cheating that much more difficult.

Let the people who don't wish to register vote anonymously.

Maybe a sock hop is the solution:excited:

I don't think this suggestion would work but a rotation of stories on the xnxx site might prove helpful if voting was abolished in the way it is used to either bump one story or sink another. Votes shouldn't control where our stories go, it is meant to reflect the quality of a story.

Whoever is trashing everyone else needs to cut the games


One sold 100K books and the other sold 4M and they are both complaining about the trolls on a site

I'd like to see some profit from the drivel I write

 

An alternate...

Although I have decided to just lurk on the forum unless I had something specific to add, and have also decided to no longer post my stories here until something constructive is done, I thought I'd add something.

In regards to not posting my stories here, I felt that if they are just going to be voted down quickly so fewer and fewer readers find them, I can go somewhere else that may have less exposure but overall doesn't have the problems we've encountered here.

I applied for an author's account at asstr (dot) org. I have been reading stories on that site for years and there are no limitations as to content. It took a while to get an account setup (they're much faster now, I think), and it takes more effort to post/maintain your own story site, but I don't have a problem with that. The total reads of my stories don't approach this site, but over time, the numbers continue to go up.

As far as literary freedom and control there, it is total. No content restrictions and you can post, edit, change, modify all of your work anytime you want through the author interface.

(DC posts his stuff there and I've read all of "The Primdales" there, rather than here. Plain text format can be easier to read sometimes, although you can post html pages formatted exactly as you like, or even .doc files. Like I said, absolute control.)

Several of my stories received some negative comments here - nothing like what others have received - and have slowly been voted down. After posting the same stories on the other site, I've received absolutely nothing but positive feedback. It's almost like night and day.

Now there's no "community" as such like there is here. No forum to enjoy talking with other writers. Also no voting, and comments are only made through feedback forms... and you don't have to have one of those even.

I'm not trying to pimp for them, but I'm continuing to post my story series there rather than here. I'm here all the time checking out the forum threads, but my stories are going there.

The stories that I've posted here have been voted down so that very few readers find them now, but the negative votes seem to follow the pattern Nicola has found. A couple of accounts with no stories, recent join dates. I didn't try to trace their voting patterns. Maybe Nicola can do that and add them to her list.

I read stories here on the story site for quite some time before deciding to join and submit my own, so I've been here on the story side for a long time while my join date is only late last year. I still think XNXX is about the best overall site as far as number of potential readers combined with the forums, "community" and rating/comments (such as they are).

After starting to post my stories here, I quickly found out/realized that posting any comments on the forum will quickly result in my stories getting both negative comments and votes if someone doesn't like what I say. Well, that plus apparently just being part of the select writer's clique that we seem to be grouped into . So I've decided that being quiet and lurking is much safer for the stories I've posted so far. And it's the same reason why I will no longer even make a negative vote on a story- no matter how bad it is. I will be happy to vote positive on stories I like as that doesn't seem to piss anyone off too badly.

So I just wanted to de-lurk quickly and let you know about asstr. I know I'm happy to have my stories there and I'm happy with the feedback.

Now back to lurking mode. (But I'll be watching. )

 

Every breath you take..I'll be watching you:excited:

 

Oh, the power of a vote.

My little story 'Her Vertical Smile' was #1 on the Top Stories List for a couple of days - then one negative vote, by a logged in reader, and a 'friend' banished it way down the list. Still wish I had never discovered how to check on who voted how.

Saddened. Granted, the story should have never been there, but a friend who encouraged me to write in the first place. Saddened.

 

The 10 post vote would not put an end to the sock problem. All they have to do is say "great", "cool" "yeah" and they are free to start socking.

I bet there are large numbers of genuine voters who would not bother if they had to register.

The trolls are only few in number, but like any disturbance in a large crowd they are always noticed.

 

That's why I never look.
I come here to feel good, not to get pissed off at people.
I had my story on the front page for a few days, and although they tried hard to vote me down, the fans put up a hell of a fight.
Considering how few votes it takes, relatively, to knock one off of the front page, it's actually rather impressive that I stayed up there as long as I did.
The funny thing is that what knocked me off wasn't down votes, but new stories.

On the bright side DC, and Nicola's stories have been at 100% for a couple of days.
Good for them.:excited:

 

Call the POLICE!

 

LOL:excited:

I am glad (for the most part) that the trolls might just be other writers on the major scale, and not some unknown person with a vendetta to settle with all authors

I just don't see why we feel the need to blame fellow authors for being the troll. Obviously it wouldn't do anyone good to vote down people to give themselves more coverage. I would think voting one's own stories up made more sense than sending other stories plummeting. 250 positives is higher than 125 positives, but no one said the trolls are intelligent life forms:laughing:

 

The trolls are trying out a new tactic on one of my stories. A string of characters longer than any of the paragraphs in the story. That forces the viewable screen area to widen so that it's as if my story isn't word-wrapped.

I guess what the troll is hoping to accomplish is making the story harder to read and therefore reducing the number of readers who even bother with it.

Did I mention that we should get rid of anonymous commenting?

 

The story still reads perfectly for me. The comment is off the page, but who gives a shit about comments from an asshole like that.