Having a friend of mine that acts as Sysadmin for five different websites, I've gotten a look at how rough this kind of restructuring can be, and frankly I'm rather impressed that you've all already made this much progress. I hope you're intending to take a -hell- of a vacation once this is all finalized.

All of us should truly thank the hard workers here that design and run a well-organized and highly useful site for what some consider an unusual genre.

Some need friends. Don’t we all. Some need advice. Don’t we all. Some need to vent. Don’t we all. Some need to reduce venting. Don’t we all. Some need to be more thankful. Don’t we all.

Some write, both news and fiction, for cathartic release. Some read the fiction for other modes of release. Some laugh. Some cry. I have done both reading the stories and the news reports. I miss the laughs and I miss the cries. This is not at all to complain, though. Everything will work out. The foundation of talent here always makes things work out. I salute them. And, I thank them again for so often having let my puny voice be heard. I write fiction because I have a self-confessed absolute need to bullshit from time to time; I have always strived to be good at it. Sometimes I succeed and often I fail, but I still learn from the exercise.

All this is a long way to lead up to my point of the day. Just a reminder from the boards themselves on the wisdom of the old axiom, Truth is Stranger than Fiction. And, if the reporting of truth should certainly be absolutely protected, it begs the question that shouldn’t fiction be equally so? Some recent post headlines for Castration in the Arts and the News that illustrate the axiom:

Former cutter found with kiddie porn

See if you can spot the castration imagery

Penis damage pics

Dog Chews off 6 month old's testicles

Guy fired for sending framed picture of severed balls to female coworker

Nigerian woman and her maids tear and bite over parking space argument

Bangladeshi woman cuts off penis

Pic of knife used in Bangladeshi penectomy

Thai doctor interviewed about penis reimplantation due to jealous wives

Two Thai men lose penis in one night

You can buy severed penises in a jar

Special effects artist prepares severed penis prop

Penis disease pics

partial penectomy pics

Medical article showing picture of partial penectomy

Picture of doctor holding up amputated genitals

I, fr one, am thrilled that the stories are to come back. Thank you people for working hard to make it so.

Talula has written and demonstrated some wonderful cleaner-upper software, which means that the stories will come back slowly and not all at once. They've been formatted and reformatted so many times in all the reloads and moves, that some of them are in pretty bad shape. We may have to take liberties with some as far as where paragraphs should be, but other than that, it looks like the system is in place to start bringing them back slow but sure.

All hail the great Talula for this!

The stories should begin reappearing soon. Talula has spent a great many hours working on ways to bring the entire Fiction Archive into the modern era. He said that the oldest story that he's found so far was posted in 1994 and he knows that there was a system crash before then that destroyed all that came before.

The original program for the stories was originally written by Bboy, before such programs were regularly available, and it is incompatible with anything else in the known world. It's been a major code writing project and most of the stories will need tweaking to make them compatible. 10,000 stories may take a year or more to gradually edit for the new system, though some will be ready soon.

New stories, of course, will automatically be formatted for the new system, which will have some impressive bells and whistles available to play with.

Paolo wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:42 pm I'm only going to say this one more time:

It was either pull ALL of the stories, or the Archive would not have come back online as fast as it did.

As for p

Paolo wrote: Sat Aug 20, 2011 7:26 am

Paolo wrote: Sun Aug 21, 2011 7:42 pm utting the stories back online,

they WILL be back online. We have formulated a plan that will do just this, and hopefully protect us from the same sort of issue that REQUIRED us to remove the story archive in this case just so we could even GET back online to begin with.

I will not tolerate any more comments on what should have been done, and/or what wasn't done for a system that had been working and serving stories for over 10 years.

Plans are in the works, so there's no poi

nt in rehashing what happened.

Thank you.

I got home from the 2011 MoM a few minutes ago, and, after dragging a few items that went on the trip, decided to put some of my observations here. I was one of a small number of people at the MoM whose user name does not have a dark blue background.

So, as an "independent observer," I saw that the folks who run and manage the site are doing a really decent, diligent, thoughtful, and very caring job regarding getting the fiction stories back as soon as is properly possible.

As I understand, including from what I learned at the MoM (I had to re-calculate my budget for the rest of the year to find a way to pay for being there, so I can understand why not all that many regular members showed up), the denial of service by the DNS provider came as a rather sudden surprise, and figuring out how to get anything back online once the BME turn-off happened was, in my view, a tour-de-force of profoundly skillful information technology work.

From direct, personal, on-site observation, we who are regular members or newer would wisely be very thankful for the skill and effort of the beautiful people who run and manage the Eunuch Archive site.

Yes, River's pancakes were astonishingly good. So was the rest of the food. So was the fellowship.

You could not get there? Sorry to miss you, yet I can understand the difficulties of getting there; for myself, I merely needed to drive from the eastern shore of Wisconsin to Wisconsin's western shore, a trip short enough that I was able to find a way to cover the cost.

However, I was unwilling, for myself, to pay the cost of not being there. If I am alive and able to get about, I plan to not pay the cost of not being at the 2012 MoM. Perhaps I will be able to meet you and talk with you next year...

For myself, having met with and talked with the folks who run the Archive, as for "finding fault" with the folks who run the Archive, I find that to be possible only for someone who has not seen, directly and in person as I did, the dedication and the effort the archive administrators have made and continue to make.

I am familiar with disappointment, perhaps tragically familiar. Alas, the last time I checked, there just is not any blood to be squeezed from a turnip unless, perhaps, Someone nicked a finger while slicing one.

Of course, like anyone else, I may be mistaken. Give me a drop of real turnip blood and I will look for a hen's tooth to trade with you.

Is not mercy more useful than sacrifice?

It is my view that an excellent plan is being implemented. Excellence sometimes takes a little while to attain.

Don't be petty! This is exciting, wonderful news. I figured the stories were a goner. So happy to hear that there is a new system going into place. It is going to take a lot of time and work, and we must remember that change is inevitable. Thanks so much to the staff who make this all possible.

As one of the many almost always silent masses I would like to say thank you for everyones hard work and courage to bring back the stories. I think they really do a lot of good. For me personally it's like therapy where the doctor gets you to listen to your own thoughts. Some of the stories move me emotionally, others turn me on, some are just disgusting and some make me very concerned about the writers. But all of them made me feel much less like some freak. It's nice to know I'm not alone with my thoughts. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time write them down and thank you EA for making the accessible

No me malentiendan mis otros post que he puesto en esta discucion, solo trato de hacer notar que si uno mismo no defiende el su derecho de libertad de expresion nadie lo va hacer por uno, asi que pienso que hay batallas que hay que pelear aunque se sepa de antemano que se perderan.

jajajaja me vi muy 300 pero es la verdad.

Por otro lado agradezco en serio el trabajo que se toman para hacer y como ya se dijo la rapidez con que volvio el sitio de eunuch a estar en line se que es mucho tranajo esto del nuevo sistema lo se por que soy programador y tengo como ya dije un sitio donde soy el web master asi que solo me queda dar las gracias y esperar para conocer el nuevo sistema y dar mi opinion al respecto.

On the other hand, since they are with this new system and take advantage of stories some of you would like to propose the opening of a section (s) for stories in languages ​​other than English (Russian, Portuguese, French, Spanish, etc) I say if that is possible of course.

From Google translations:

Do not misunderstand my other post I put into This discussion, I just try to point out that if self does not advocate their right to freedom of speech no one will do for you, so I think there are battles we must fight even if know in advance that will be lost.

I was very 300 jajajaja but true.

On the other hand seriously appreciate the work you are taken to and as mentioned the speed with which returned the site back online eunuch is that much of this new Mobile Populations know because I am a programmer and I have as I am a site where the webmaster so I can only thank and hope to learn the new system and give my opinion.

There is no language section, but we do have nice, pretty, colorful flags now.