As you can see, I have a new blog online.
I know it sounds and looks a little strange for somebody with a site like storiesonline to have a blog on another service. I have good reasons to have this little blog here.
- I don’t want to add more load onto the site’s line, it’s already loaded enough.
- What I will be posting here may or may not have anything to do with going ons on the site.
- I don’t feel like creating a full blogging system with comments and everything that goes with it, the services that I want to use are all ready available here, and I do want a comments section for you to post replies and discuss things.
So, hopefully, this blog becomes more useful with time and a spot for interaction with me, something that is not really possible on storiesonline the way it is now (and which I don’t really want to put in the effort to change).
25 responses to “New Spot Online”
Hey Lazeez, great idea. I understand about bandwidth and after finding out the cost just to have SOL ‘up’, I can definitely appreciate and respect your decision to find a blogger that has what you need and you didn’t have to write it! 🙂
Thanks for letting us know about it.
And thanks to you, I’ve created my own blogger on here…just in case! 🙂
I don’t know the details of your physical problems, perhaps I missed them or you didn’t tell us.
What matters most is that you get well for yourself and your loved ones.
An old quote I just made up; “The lack of good health just makes me sick!”
Get well and get happy.
rwade
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
As for this blog, you might float ideas for changes and improvements on stories online here in the future? I don’t have a big wishlist of upgrades for that site, but I appreciated your recent post in response to the steady drift of grade inflation on the top stories. Any other ideas how to maybe get people to think before they just throw another 10 on whatever story they most recently read? I remember a few years ago when Al Steiner’s Aftermath (still the best story I’ve read online for free) was the top score ever, and it was in the 9.5 range.
These days it seems like every new chapter of every decent story gets a 9.6 or higher, and the fans of every popular author automatically slap 10s on their guy’s new work, until the top scoring tales are all 9.7 or higher. Plus it seems like authors who update more often, even if they chapters are very short, get more votes and thus rise in average. Bowling for Hearts is a perfect example; it’s not a bad story, but it’s pushing 100 chapters, the sex is unimaginative, there is no plot, the story is a formulaic middle aged man’s fantasy, and there’s not one believable character in the entire saga… but there’s a new chapter almost every week, and it’s leading all stories with a 9.74 at last check. Then again, who am I to say what people should value with their votes?
I appreciate the effort to make scoring entirely democratic, but I just wish there were some way for higher quality stories to win the “steak once a week vs. spam every day” battle with the fast food style tales. I’d suggest a double scoring option, something like “story quality” and “sexiness factor” or something like that, but harbor no illusions that a double vote wouldn’t be double-stuffed just as badly as the current single vote system.
I don’t have a perfect solution, which is why I’m suggesting this as a possible blog topic, since some other readers might have better ideas than me.
Flux
fluxypoo@yahoo.com
(I didn’t post anonymously to hide; I just don’t have a blogger account since my blog has its own domain name.)
I also missed the details of your surgery, Lazeez. It sounds like you are OK now. We hope so.
Cheers,
Homer Vargas (but I just don’t feel like registering for anouther site.)
Hope eveything goes all right. And your site continues on doing the excellent job you and its doing.
Lazeez,
I hope that all ends up well and that you have a speedy recovery. I wish you and yours only the best. Take care and rest. I’m certain that we can hang on while you recover….
Merlin
davidrw99@hotmail.com
I just wanted to let you know that we all are wishing the best for you and hoping that your recovery is swift and thorough. I also wanted to thank you personally for all that you do. StoriesOnline has grown to one of the premiere sources of free online adult literature, and it’s success is owed entirely to your efforts. We are in your debt!
Alcimedes
jimseven@fastmail.fm
It is great to hear that you are getting better, Lazeez! As I have said before: “We Care About You!!!”
Best wishes for a speedy recovery, Lazeez!!!
Your Friendly TeNderLoin (JIM7)
:)))
ElSol here:
Actually I’ve got a different way of calculating scores.
(Number of dowloads/chapters) * Score = DCS points
My reasoning is that certain stories have self-correcting scores; in other words, only ‘fans’ will read them.
For instance, my own stories fall into this category… readers run fairly quickly if I don’t write their kind of stuff.
I think my system is slightly more indicative… of what I don’t know but since I’m taking a statistics class, this is a lot of fun.
Therefore the story you point out scores
(101725/96) * 9.74 = 10320 DCS points
SC: Kendall
(43731/12) * 9.73 = 35459 DCS points
AMR:
(114875/55)* 9.72 = 202860 DCS points
Of course… there is some humor to doing it this way…
Aftermath
(183650/22) * 9.6 = 80138 DCS points
—-
So I guess at the end of the day except for ‘money’ and the big prizes (Pulitzer and Nobel) all of this is just for fun.
80138… now THAT’S humbling.
ElSol
——
> I appreciate the effort to make scoring entirely
> democratic, but I just wish there were some way for
> higher quality stories to win the “steak once a week > vs. spam every day” battle with the fast food style
> tales. I’d suggest a double scoring option, something > like “story quality” and “sexiness factor” or
> something like that, but harbor no illusions that a
> double vote wouldn’t be double-stuffed just as badly > as the current single vote system.
I’m not an author (yet?), and by no means an expert on web stuff but a devoted fan of SoL. My initial idea for is to base something on number of people reading all the chapters of a story. So count not (just) the total downloads but the number of individual users downloading a story.
For instance, I have read every chapter of Night Hawk’s ‘Once More With Feelings’ at least once. That should count not for 48 or so downloads (2 views each of 24 chapters) but for 1 user reading 100% of the chapters. I know from Night Hawk’s yahoogroup that there are many fans who all read everything several times.
A consistency score might be worked out something like:
100 users reading 24 of the chapters, 80 users reading 23, 55 users reading 20, 30 users reading 15 and 200 users reading just 1. 100×24 + 80×23 + 55×20 + 30×15 + 200×1 = 5990 divide that by the number of chapters gives a consistency score of 249.58
Whether this is a meanigful stat or not I leave to others to judge!
Chris ‘Awkward’ McKenna
I made the first post on scoring solutions to avoid perpetual grade inflation. The other 2 suggestions are better than my initial half-assed one, but those assume a site sorting script that supports dividing by downloads. (Of course my suggestion assumed there could be 2 scores tracked separately for each story/chapter, which probably isn’t true either.)
If there is IP# sorting possible, that would certainly help, though I’m not sure that *just* one vote per person is really fair — after all, some of the stories are dozens and dozens of chapters, and reader opinions may change over the course of a long tale. Quite a few stories start off rather slowly, and get better as they go along.
Another possible solution would be a sortable “most popular” listing, where you could elect to view stories ranked by score, most downloads, most votes, stories updated within the last week/2 weeks/month, etc. The problem is that I doubt the database script supports that, and that it would add a lot of RAM load to the servers to implement those sorts of sorting options. (I’m not a statistician but I have worked on several very busy websites and I know how quickly server RAM and expensive bandwidth can be eaten up by seemingly-minor changes.)
Anyway, I didn’t mean to start the whole debate here or hijack this thread; I just wanted to suggest it as something lazeez might ask for feedback about in the future.
Flux
fluxypoo@yahoo.com
I realize authors look at the score they receive and this provides some satisfaction for the effort they put forth. All of this is subjective, I don’t read stories about certain subjects because they don’t interest me and I do tend to give a 9 or ten to one that entertains
me. I don’t know that any rating system you can come up with is worth it, if the number of downloads is high people must enjoy it or they would ignore it
First of all glad to hear you are on the mend. Surgery of any kind is no fun at any time. Hope this is nothing serious.
I have always taken voting very serious and tried to be very honest in my assessment. I visit Stories On Line for many reasons. Some times I’m looking for a story crammed with rip roaring sex. Sometimes I need a good story with a little romance and sometimes I need something with a little of both. Giving feedback and voting fairly is important to the author and to others who may choose to read the story.
In an earlier post, Flux said the best story was Aftermath by Al Steiner. I agree fully. It is the standard that I measure all others against. It was the first story I actually gave a score of 10 to.
Anyways, hope you get well soon and keep up the most excellent work on the best site ont he WWW.
rougher63
Best wishes for a speedy recovery.
On score inflation.
Aftermath got me hooked on SOL. Score inflation has certainly occurred since then. I think the median score is now about 8.8 (unweighted for number of scores). I think that scores are useful for readers.
Comments from regular readers are the most rewarding to me as an author. Fav, now Lib, count is really an interesting measure.
I don’t find a positive corelation between lib count or download/chapters with scores of my stories. I find that strange. Most read and most kept are not the highest rated?
I really hate to lose Steiner, Downey or authors of that quality from SOL. Losing high quality authors is of more concern than score inflation.
I admit, I read some continuing stories because I really like a character, i.e. Summer Camp or Spitfire and Messerschmitt, even if the chapters are unevenly written. I tend to wait up Sunday night for Spitfire. I guess that about as high praise as I can give.
Thanks Lazeez’s for providing a place for amateur expression and for reader enjoyment. Get well soon.
Rougher63
Thank you all for your well wishes. I’m recovering well and soon will be back to normal.
I’m preparing a long article addressing the voting issue, so I won’t waste space here and my time addressing each post. But I will be addressing interesting posts once I post my scores article.
On the library issue, I don’t bookmark every story that I follow. I tend to do it more for ones that I feel that I will be able to reread in a few years time and enjoy as much as I did first time round – and this is not many. The only stories that I have completely reread and enjoyed to the same extent are Deanna (sp?) Johns’ “Castle In the Sand” and my all time favourite story “Passing of Seasons” by Linda B (available at SoL).
Of the stories that I have read too recently to have reread, I think that “Dance of a Lifetime” by Frank Downey, “Thoughts, Sensations and Emotions” by Ms Friday, “Once More With Feelings” by The Night Hawk, and Sacwriter’s “Becka The Beast” (and sequel) are the most likely. Although I am sure there will be others that I will try, but whether knowing in advance what will happen reduces the impact of the story for me I don’t know.
The other stories that I bookmark are ones that are being updated only very infrequently (so I don’t miss an update) and ones that I am reading primarily on occasion that there is nothing new that I want to read – Al Steiner’s “Aftermath” fits into this category.
Chris ‘Awkward’ McKenna
Warlord here:
Just a note to tell you to get well soon.
As an author the notes about score inflation are interesting. Any single scoring method will automatically be inaccurate for a myriad of reasons.
Evaluation and feedback are still best method to track progress as an author.
Perhaps at some point other writers could be able to provide peer evaluations following some agreed standard format for multiple category scoring and comments.
Thanx for a great site that is a terrific venue for my stories
Take care
Warlord
I can’t remember if I mentioned this on ASSD or somewhere else previously or not, but I think that the current situation where you have to click the back button after voting in order to leave a comment on a story reduces the number of comments that an author receives (I have not writen anything suitable for SoL so I can’t speak from a position of authority here).
I know frames are frowned upon these days (I’ve never understood why), but to my mind having the voting in a separate frame to the comments would be a good idea. If this isn’t possible, then a comments form on the results of the voting page, or a link back to the comments from that page would be advantageous.
Chris ‘Awkward’ McKenna
Dear SOL Webmaster,
I have not one clue why you “went under the knife”, but I wish you a speedy recovery. I very much appreciate StoriesOnline.net and now the only erotica I read, is from this site. I had been reading from several others, but my computer became infected with more than one virus and spyware that had to come from one of those other sites. Therefore, I feel safe reading SOL and have even persuaded a few of my favorite authors of erotica to move their work to SOL.
I like your new BLOG very much. It is classy!
Get well soon and remember … “Getting old, is NOT for sissies!”
A loyal SOL fan
From Popeski (I’m already registered at enuogh sites)
I’m praying to ALL the Gods, Goddesses, and other Supreme Beings and Entities that your recovery continues apace to a grand conclusion.
Your site has provided many hours of pleasure and has even helped, at times, to aleviate mypain.
Due to some physical issues, I must download and reformat a story before I can read it. Therefore, I cannot participate in your rating procedure. What you have is the fairest, IMHO, that can be achieved with what you have to work with.
Keep up the good work and get well
Popeski
Things I would like to know about those who score stories: Age & gender. My inference is that it is about 85% male readers with about 50% female writers.
It is difficult to judge a story based on recorded votes unless the stories take place over time, several chapters, Aftermath was a masterpiece from day one…cmsix has written several great stories, and is the process of tying them all together.
These writers are producing 9.8 to 10.0 scores.
There are other writers scoring 9 plus over their careers, many excellent writers.
But who do I save, who do I turn to, who do I bring up to read after I fix my sub-sandwich and get a cold beer
then lean back and enjoy my lunch reading a great story.
It’s the stories written by the those who tell the best stories, there is no difference betwix Al Steiner, cmsix, and Shakespeare, (mayhaps the big Shake said it more poetically) but the point is to tell the story well and first…have a story to tell.
About these scores.
There’s a fairly new story called Collision Course and After by someone called Volentrin. It’s a good idea, but so appallingly written that it’s virtually impossible to read. The characters are shallow, the situations are too implausible even for fantasy and the editing and punctuation don’t even warrant comment they’re so bad. And yet it’s got a 9.32.
I seriously think that 7.5 would be over generous, yet there it is, 9.32 voted by more than three hundred people. There’s some serious problems with this voting system, or the cultural level of the of the hundred or so people who voted that this story was “Excellent”
I also came to SOL when I lost my newsgroup access to Aftermath. I wish Al would post on SOL more. 🙁
My sugesstion for a quick fix on the scoring issue. Remove the numerical values on the scoring index. Just have values like Excellent, Great, Average, Boorish, Needs Work….. And randomize the order.
Maybe the scorer will then actually think before they submit the score.
Fawks
PS (2) What kind of surgery did you have?
How much does it cost to keep SOL up?
If a score had 2 votes and was 9.5, could it be brought down to a 7.5 with only 2 more votes? Just wondering. Thank you.