Lazeez's Corner

Blog

Norton flagging Storiesonline as malicious (false positive)

Today, the 18th of March, 2019, Norton Anti-virus package started flagging Storiesonline as a malicious site with phishing problem.

Of course, it’s a false positive. The page that Norton is reporting as malicious doesn’t request any info, so there is no possibility of phishing; how does their system flag something as possible fishing when there is no form on the page to input anything?!

I’ve submitted a request for reevaluation and hopefully they rectify their mistake quickly enough.

April 18, 2019
Storiesonline service disruption

The registrar transfer we announced last week did not go very smoothly at some ISPs. So the parked-domain ads page from the new registrar propagated a bit between the time I got the message that the registry has been transferred and the time I created the new record at the new registrar.

If you’re not able to get to storiesonline yet, be patient. It’s a matter of waiting this out until the DNS server you’re using refreshes the entry for the site.

If you’re in a hurry and you’re technically savvy, you can change your DNS server to 1.1.1.1 that should resolve it. 1.1.1.1 is privacy-oriented, fast and free domain name service that anybody can use.

Visit https://1.1.1.1/ for instructions how to make the change to this excellent DNS service on your device.

April 2, 2018
Halloween 2017 Story Writing Contest

We’re having our annual halloween story writing contest. Check it out:

https://storiesonline.net/contest/halloween-2017

Our monetary prizes have been increased. 1st Place now wins $500.

Have fun everybody.

October 17, 2017
Halloween 2015 Story Writing Contest

We’re having a story writing contest. Check it out:

https://storiesonline.net/contest/Halloween-2015

Have fun everybody.

September 16, 2015
Coming change to the scoring system

After following many discussions on the forum about the scoring system, it became evident that everybody notices that serial stories tend to score higher than single shot stories for various reasons. The most obvious reason for this trend is that those who do follow serial stories tend to be those who like them to begin with, so they will definitely score them higher.

Due to this fundamental difference in reader behaviour, it makes it unfair to compare single stories’ scores to serial stories’ scores when weighing each story’s score.

The change that I’ve decided to make to the weighing formula is to make it aware of the story’s serial status.

So the system will have two separate medians for the each scoring period. One for single shot stories and one for serial stories last updated in this time period.

I’ve tested this change already in the development environment and one thing became clear: serial stories’ scores will drop after this change and single shot stories’ scores will rise after the change.

I believe this change will make for a weighing forumla that is more fair for single shot stories that don’t benefit from inherent reader bias.

Although my mind is kind of set on making this change, I thought I would get your opinion about it first.

Please use the form below to voice your opinion.

Update: Before you post telling me that longer stories are better, this algorithm change isn’t about Long vs. Short. This is Serially posted stories vs stories (long and short) posted in a single shot. This isn’t about giving advantage to short stories, this is about removing formula bias against stories (Long and Short) posted in one shot. The change in algorithm does not look at the story’s length, it only looks at whether the story is posted in one shot or over time.

Update 2: Since most replies were negative, I cancelled the change.

June 23, 2015
Storiesonline Valentines Day Writing Contest

We’re having a new Writing Contest for Valentines Day 2015.

Write your version of a romantic valentines day story.

Valentines Day Writing Contest details here

January 7, 2015
Log in System changes (WLPC system)

Spoiler: For now, you can still use your user name to log in despite what the form says.

We’re making some changes to the log in system. We’re phasing out user names in favour of email addresses. This change started actually three years ago.

Previously, the system accepted only user names for log in.

The first change was to allow email addresses. At the time we changed the label on the login system to add ‘(or email)’.

The second change was to give priority to email addresses by changing the label to ‘Email (or username), with the username in smaller type.

Now, with the current step, we’re strongly encouraging everybody to stick to emails only (even though usernames are still acceptable) by changing the label to ‘Email’ only and changing the form’s type to ’email’. The type change will mean that password managers will prompt for new credentials. Update: Never realized that some browsers wouldn’t allow you to use the old user name in an ’email’ field. The form now is back to ‘text’ instead of ’email’.

The main reason for this change is that having user names and email addresses is complicating the cross-site login system (WLPC login) and causing problems.

The source of these problems is that we had user databases for each of our sites before implementing the WLPC system. Many users had accounts on Storiesonline and Finestories.

When implementing the WLPC system across our sites, we didn’t wipe any site’s database. We kept all accounts.

The WLPC system tries to match accounts from different sites and synchronize the data. When a user tries to use Storiesonline’s id to log in to Finestories or to the Clitorides Awards site, the system looks to see if the user’s email address exists before trying to create a local record for this user. Sometime, if they have already created accounts on those sites, there would be conflict on the site with if the user used a different email address with the same user name or some other user used the same user name as the one from the other site. Complicated to say the least.

To minimize the possibility of such conflicts, we must eliminate as many conflict points as possible. Since everybody is required to have an email address in the system, a user name becomes redundant. Redundant values are the best candidates for elimination.

So as of today, the log in system will ask for your email address, but will accept your pre-existing user name.

At some point in the future, we’ll make the announcement that usernames are not to be used on Storiesonline and Finestories anymore. The clitorides awards site doesn’t have this problem as it started out without using user names at all.

So, the best thing you can do is make sure that your email address is up to date and start using it from now on to log in instead of your username.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Update: Since this turned out to be more complex than a simple change on the form, I’ve set a deadline for the change. As of 2015-01-01 (more than four months from now), email addresses will be mandatory for logging in.

I’ve removed the ‘User Name’ field from the ‘My Account’ page to minimize confusion.

The notification will stay posted on the site until the deadline. It’s visible on all pages.

August 23, 2014
Storiesonline.net’s Author Listings Have Changed
Recently, I redesigned the authors’ listings on the site. It was a necessary change, but some are very unhappy with it.

In one way, they are a little bit less convenient to some now. But it was a necessary change.

What are the changes? Not much, I added paging to the listings, so now instead of each letter being displayed all at the same time, it gets displayed in chunks of 30 authors. Also, it’s better looking for desktop browsers.

This change made it difficult for somebody going for a certain author to get to their target quickly if the target happen to be on page Eighteen of a certain letter. For those browsing for discovery, it shouldn’t really matter.

The new display has a solution for those who are seeking a specific author. The page has a ‘Jump To’ field at the top. Just type the first few letters (up to 5) of the author you want and the page will jump directly to it. In a way, this is actually faster than scrolling through up to 500 authors on one list.

The reasons for change are:
1. Mobile: Scrolling down 200-500 names on a phone is very tedious. The new listings are way better for phone users.
2. Search engine indexing: Google and other search engines on the internet have limits on the number of links per page that they follow. The limit is around 100-150. Which means, when served with a list of 500 authors with each author having an average of 3 links, the indexing bots drop a lot of links and many authors don’t show up in search engines’ indexes. That’s isn’t good nor fair for those authors at the bottom of those lists.
Update 2014-08-04: Due to popular demand, and since this redesign didn’t really benefit the site from a performance view, I’ve implemented some code modifications that removed the listings limits for logged in users on non-mobile devices.
August 2, 2014
The Clitorides Awards are open for voting, Finally!

It took a while, but I finally finished the code for the awards voting system. I was supposed to be finished before the first of March 2014, but as these things tend to happen, I encountered life, work and coding issues. But that’s all water under the bridge now as they say.

So head on to the Voting Page and cast your vote for your favourite 2013 authors and 2013 stories.

Please note that for voting, it’s different from nominations, you have to log in to cast your votes.

On a side note, the awards site is now also accepting nominations for the award year 2014. The awards will accept nominations for 2014 until the end of January 2015.

March 11, 2014
The New Clitorides Awards Site is here!

As I promised a while back in one of the discussions about the new home page on SOL, IT’S FINALLY here.

The actual functioning, ClitoridesAwards site.

http://clitoridesawards.org/

It’s in beta status still. But, it’s practically done.

And now I need all the help that I can get. It’s simple really: Please use the site.

Test it out, explore every nook and cranny in it. Login (if you have a storiesonline.net account, you’re already registered). Nominate stories. Nominate authors. Check out the pages. Check spellings, things that look out of place, things that don’t work as they should, things that don’t look right at all and file bug reports for the stuff that you stumble upon. There is a bug reporting form on the site.

We need to find as many bugs as possible. We need to find them and squash them before new year’s. Which is the official launch of the site.

Few notes:

1 – The nominations submitted are most likely to be discarded by the end of the beta period. However, we definitely need as many valid nominations as possible in order to debug the code that will sort out the winners.

2a – The site uses the new Log in System. I call it ‘WLPC Login system’. That has one implication. If you change your password or your email on the clitorides site, then if everything is working properly, it will change your password or email on SOL too. The clitorides site doesn’t use user names, so those won’t be affected on SOL.

2b – Storiesonline doesn’t really support the new log in system fully. It only sends info to the ID server, but it doesn’t get updated beyond the initial addition. So if you have changed your password or email address on SOL in the last few months, then your new info may not log you in at the clitorides site.

Another thing about the new clitorides awards that needs discussion: The award categories.

The following categories I have no problem with:

Flash Erotic Story of the Year – up to 1,000 words
Short Erotic Story of the Year – 1,000 -> 7,500 words
Medium Erotic Story of the Year – 7,500 -> 20,000 words
Long Erotic Story of the Year – 20,000 -> 50,000 words
Epic Erotic Story of the Year – 50,000+ words
Classic Clitoride
Best Erotic Story by a New Author
Best Romantic Story
Best Erotic Science Fiction/Fantasy Story
Best Erotic MC Story
Best BDSM Story
Best Furry/Best/Zoo Story
Best Erotic Horror Story
Best Erotic Humor Story
Best Erotic Poetry
Best Voyeur/Exhibitionism Story

The above categories are fine.

The ones below I’m not sure about:

Best Hetero Sex Story
Best Same Sex Story

Do we really need a category for ‘Hetero’ story?

Maybe Gay/Lesbian needs its own category, but the hetero one is so broad that it is meaningless and undeserving to be a specific award category in my mind.

And of the existing ones, what the hell is a ‘Best Erotic Seasonal Story’? is that like for a holiday or occasion maybe?

Also, what about other genres that we have on SOL and other site’s but weren’t in the awards before I took over. Like Westerns? Don’t those deserve their own category?

What other categories have I missed?

Let me know what you think.

PS: I’m a busy man with a family, I’ve been spending a lot of time finishing the site. So I may not have plenty of time to respond to everything, but I will definitely read everything you guys contribute and take everything into consideration. I will reply whenever necessary.

December 8, 2013