Story Submissions

[stinger503 (imported)]

I'm just gonna throw my two cents in. I think things in the "Stores that are too long" thread got blown out of proportion.

I believe JustAGuy was just giving his honest opinion about serial stories. He even backs it up (something often not seen on the internet) by saying that continuity becomes an issue. He then states the size of story he prefers.

I also feel that saying he's bitching, doesn't have to read them, isn't paying for it, etc. isn't really justified. We are in a author feedback board after all, what's wrong with saying your preferred length of story?

With the RSS feed thing, I actually disagree with him because a new chapter of a story is indeed new and people who are following the serial might want to know that a new part is out. But still, there's nothing wrong with him wishing or wanting those out, he just wants to read what interests him. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he probably wasn't trying to slander EA, or the great people who run it.

If there are other issues from other threads/messages then I'll have to plead ignorance. I just wanna read more stories.

So take a couple days off, you guys definitely earn it. Hopefully we'll be reading more stories soon enough.

[JustAGuy (imported)]

I'm just gonna throw my two cents in. I think things in the "Stores that are too long" thread got blown out of proportion.

I believe JustAGuy was just giving his honest opinion about serial stories. He even backs it up (something often not seen on the internet) by saying that continuity becomes an issue. He then states the size of story he prefers.

I also feel that saying he's bitching, doesn't have to read them, isn't paying for it, etc. isn't really justified. We are in a author feedback board after all, what's wrong with saying your preferred length of story?

With the RSS feed thing, I actually disagree with him because a new chapter of a story is indeed new and people who are following the serial might want to know that a new part is out. But still, there's nothing wrong with him wishing or wanting those out, he just wants to read what interests him. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say he probably wasn't trying to slander EA, or the great people who run it.

If there are other issues from other threads/messages then I'll have to plead ignorance. I just wanna read more stories.

So take a couple days off, you guys definitely earn it. Hopefully we'll be reading more stories soon enough.

Pretty much, as I was saying, I was giving my personal opinion. And you guys/gals made it more than what it was.

[P.P.Herz (imported)]

I believe JustAGuy was just giving his honest opinion about serial stories. He even backs it up (something often not seen on the internet) by saying that continuity becomes an issue. He then states the size of story he prefers.

The thread title wasn't "The size of story I prefer," though. It wasn't even "Stories too long for my taste." Other users in that thread had to point out that best-selling mainstream authors like JK Rowling and Steven King write almost exclusively long stories broken up into many chapters ("novels") because the complaint was not so much "this one user prefers shorter stories" as "nobody wants longer stories and the longer ones are pushing out the ones we really want." (I was paraphrasing there. Those are not direct quotes. You don't need to dig out direct quotes to "prove" me "wrong.")

I also feel that saying he's bitching, doesn't have to read them, isn't paying for it, etc. isn't really justified. We are in a author feedback board after all, what's wrong with saying your preferred length of story?

As I just said -- and had already pointed out in the "What is so difficult about

(http://eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=1731

8)..." thread -- saying what kinds of stories one personally prefers is fine, and should be encouraged.

Posting 1,000 words complaining about what one doesn't like and including 10 words saying what one does prefer doesn't count as positive feedback.

The author feedback board is not a place for heaping abuse on authors. (Constructive criticism is a different issue, but the difference between constructive and non-constructive feedback is something that will have to be addressed elsewhere.) The authors who post here don't get paid, any more than the admins do; they're all writing and submitting so that other people have something to read, knowing that the majority of people who do read their story won't even give them even one sentence of feedback.

If the "too long" thread had been more along the lines of "I've noticed a lot more long stories lately, wonder why that is" or "long or short stories, which do others prefer" then it could have been neutral in tone. Claiming that a short statement along the lines "...what I'd like to see more of is this" following paragraphs of complaints insinuating that one's dislike of certain types of stories is a general rule -- which is nearly as insulting to those who do enjoy such stories as it is to the authors for submitting them and the admins for putting the stories up -- makes the overall tone neutral is, given the current situation, at best ignorant and at worst malicious.

What was wrong with the post and comments you're asking about was that those statements were not just "this is what I enjoy and would like to see more of." There was a great deal of "I want this, I am entitled to read this, and screw the many people who want to write or read anything not to my personal taste, only what I want counts." Reread the thread in question with this in mind, trying to put yourself in the shoes of a) an author of long stories, b) a reader who enjoys or even prefers long stories including multi-part ones, and/or c) an admin who spends more time in a given week than you probably spend reading this site for relaxation at keeping the site up and running. Does it still seem that disagreeing

with the complainers' phrasing "isn't really justified"?

With the RSS feed thing, I actually disagree with him because a new chapter of a story is indeed new and people who are following the serial might want to know that a new part is out. But still, there's nothing wrong with him wishing or wanti

ng those out, he j

ust wants to read what interests him.

But there is

something wrong with him wishing or wanting those out, if in order to please him, everyone who does want to read the multi-chapter serial stories has to suffer.

No matter how much someone might enjoy a McDonald's sausage-on-french-toast sandwich, that doesn't give them the right to go into a McDonald's restaurant and start yelling about how cheeseburgers suck and McDonald's needs to stop selling sandwiches with beef patties on buns so he can have more sausage-on-french-toast sandwiches. Indeed, if someone were to behave that way, the McDonald's manager would probably tell them they were disturbing other customers and ask them to leave, and if necessary the manager might call the police to make sure the complainer left. Conversely, if such a person instead went into a McDonald's and approached the manager, or wrote to the corporate offices, to politely praise the sausage-on-french-toast sandwich and express a wish for it to be available all day, their opinion would be welcomed -- and maybe even rewarded, perhaps with that one McDonald's location adding the sandwich to its lunch, dinner or late-night menus, or perhaps with a coupon mailed back to the customer good fo

r future purchases of sausage-on-french-toast sandwiches.

If there are other issues from ot

her threads/messages then I'll have to plead ignorance.

Not to speak for the admins, but I suspect the way the feedback thread for "The New Neighbor Boy" got almost completely taken over by personal attacks against both the author and anyone who was enjoying the story may have contributed to the decision to freeze new submissions. IIRC there was also at least one thread created fairly recently just to complain about an author who had submitted poorly-formatted stories -- years ago -- under bboy, and in which it was implied that blame for allowing such annoying stories on the archive was as much the admins' fault as it was the author's. And I'm going to presume, being new to the forums as I am, that there are other threads I didn't (yet) see that also factored into the decision... plus who knows what kind of abuse the admins may have taken privately, via email or otherwise, from complainers.

I'm sure if you skim through the threads in

Story Reviews & Author Feedback

that have been started or commented on in the week before submissions were frozen, you'll find non-JustAGuy examples of stuff that might have contributed to the decision. I haven't gone looking specifically for evidence of who might have said what that factored into the decision, but I did come across plenty that seemed like it might have while just browsing the forums.

Punishing everyone else because one person pissed them off doesn't seem like how admins here handle problems, anyway. On the contrary, they seem to hand out temporary bans even to users they expect to misbehave again once their temporary ban is lifted; whereas on most sites, either once you're banned you're gone forever, or you face several bans of increasing severity but will still eventually be permanently banned.

[madepeel (imported)]

If I can add my $.02USD (2 cents) worth here... I've lurked here for years, and only recently actually updated to membership status. 99.9% of the reason I'm here is because of the stories. They have fulfilled the mental side of a LOT of my fantasies, without me needing to attempt to fulfill any of those fantasies in reality.

Like everyone else, there are stories I like and stories I don't. I utilize the tools available to avoid the majority of stories that I'm pretty sure I won't like (the gay/straight/female flag, the minor flag, the fact a story isn't in English [I'm "language challanged"]). In the case of multi-part stories, if it passes the 'flag' test, I'll usually read at least the first chapter and decide from there whether or not I will read any further chapters.

I sincerely hope that the ban on new stories is temporary - and I want to add my thanks to those people who have dedicated a large amount of their 'free' time to administer the story area, and especially to all of the authors past and present that have provided me with a LOT of hours of entertainment over the years.

[onlyoptionleft (imported)]

The Admins have a point. The way they feel about everything especialy the attacks on their judgement on what gets posted here it is justifiable for them to do what they are doing. It is understandable for them to feel so under appreceated for everything they do for us. I never really understood it until now.

I have lerked on this site off and on for the last several years, and as you can see this is my first post. I hope to be posting more in the future, since recent events in my life keep drawing me back to the EA for answers to my questions. The stories are what first brought me to the site, but the threads and the posts that have kept me coming back looking for more.

To the Admins, I know that EA is something you do on your spare time, and that you must really love the community to spend so much of your free time, so the rest of us are entertained. I wish you guys would reconsider the pulling of the new submissions, because I think, that some people feel, that they are being punished for what a few people had said about the stories that are posted here.

There are my two cents worth. More to come...

[Paolo]

Tried to post this earlier, and VB threw a fit!

There are new stories posted.

You can thank all those who submitted, the polite emails, and the kind posts asking they be reopened.

[NaziNuts (imported)]

Thanks to all for working this out. Maybe we who mostly read should take this as a reminder to give the hard-working authors positive feedback.

Now that I am online mostly WiFi I have hesitated to post thinking my airwaves are intercepted but I will find ways to say "Nice story about cocks and balls being sawed off" in ways that won't jar the McDonalds and Starbucks IT types.

Thank you to all authors. And again thanks to the good nuts around here who work like squirrels to keep this one of the best run and best designed web sites I know of. I would refer others here just for the technical and artistic aspects but again some IT types are uptight types.

- NN

[Dave (imported)]

I keep coming back to these threads and starting a comment and never finishing the comment.

I think it all comes down to this:

1) If I start reading (or writing) a story that doesn't please me, thrill me, excite me, interest me or whatever feeling I want from the story -- then I quit reading (or writing) it. That doesn't make the story good or bad. It doesn't make a novel good or bad. It doesn't make a TV show good or bad. It means I don't like it. That's all.

2) These stories on the archive are not written by scholars or English PHD's or grammarians or journalists. I don't expect much. (basic spelling, grammar and punctuation.) That being said, I still get lots of enjoyment from what might be a poorly written story that pushed my buttons and steams my glasses.

3) As I said in another thread -- as an author, a story requires a given number of words. Most of the time, I don't know when I start the story how many words. Some stories take 100,000 words (full length novel). Other can be 500 words or less (FLASH fiction) and some people write in Haiku. It depends on the inspiration for the story and the elements within. It never depends upon the reader.

Length might depend on the market. I always contend with editors who want "not more than 1000, 2000, 3000, or whatever number of words" but that editor is not the reader. If a reader came to me and asked for a short story dealing with castration. That story might be 500 words or 5,000 or maybe 50,000. I won't know until I finish the story.

What would I say to a reader who says "this story is too long!" I might say "fuck off" if I were impolite but most likely I would say nothing and look at the person like they were from Uranus or Neptune.

4) The managers of this board do not write the stories. They just post the stories and as such bear very little responsibility for the length of the stories. So to address length complaints to them is useless.

And that's where I will stop.

[NaziNuts (imported)]

The stories that tell me to fuck off are especially interesting.

May everyone Rock On and Fuck Off in all the best ways.

- NN

[Ernie of Maine (imported)]

Paolo and to one and all, for all your hard work. You have maid me vary happy Thank you:) Ernie of Maine