I noticed a post from Cananite bemoaning the fact that there were only three story posts this month, and I would hazard that this also possibly reflects a reduced number of overall visitors.

The reason is screamingly, punch in the face obvious.

1. The story area is FAR less friendly than it was before the site went independent. I used to visit no less than every week, then you dropped the "New stories by date" feature (it only shows a month or so now).

2. Users have to register to read

3. Users have to post in the forums to continue reading

4. Because of 1-3 above, even keen former followers such as myself, can no longer be bothered to visit and trawl through all the stories to see what we might have missed.

I don't even know what the submission process is like any more - itr was bad enough before, but now that you've forced users to move from easy anonymity to visibility, just as all manner of government and big data organisations are getting busy profiling everyone on the planet, it comes as no surprise that people are extremely leery of interacting with you in any way.

If your intention is to expose your members to maximum current and future risk, I must congratulate you on a job magnificently done.

Perhaps if you insisted upon authenticated photos, facebook profiles, bank details and home addresses, your task would be complete?

Alternately, you could take a second to consider that not everyone is as ballsy (if you'll) excuse the pun, as you are. Many of us are not willing to put our balls on the line (okay, I'll stop now! simply to read or submit a few stories.

For many of you, this may be a support centre, or simply somewhere to chat to your friends, but don't force all of your visitors to fit into the same mould, or take the same risks as you're willing to. We don't all live in countries with permissive governments, and we're not all willing to sacrifice our freedom for this endeavour.

Even those of you who live in say, the US or the Netherlands HAVE to be aware of the fact that data is being stored now, for FUTURE use against us. In the US, we've already seen laws changed then retroactively applied to people who were guilty of no crime at the time, and even super-liberal Holland is becoming less open than it once was under pressure from Europe and the US.

If you want interaction from your visitors, permit them total anonymity, and make the process of visiting and posting as painless as possible.

I find it much easier to find stories these days, and while not all of the old ones are back in yet, I feel they have done a pretty good job.

You can now search the archive by sexual orientation, Null stories, penectomy stories, castration stories (couldn't do that before), and they are also organized by author and story name. The only thing I thing they could do to make it better is to establish a keyword search function, but I'm not gonna pester 'em about it.

Also keep in mind that putting in that password feature was a necessity to put a barrier to casual viewers. And by casual I mean people who wander in, read something and then go off and cause trouble because they don't like what they see instead of simply moving along and not coming back. By requiring a user account to access the stories, people have to sign up and indicate they want to see the stories - this prevents someone from wandering in and then acting shocked because they said they wanted to see it. It's a protection feature to the archive as it's been threated with being taken offline by authorities in various places in the past.

Having to register to read isn't a big deal. It's free and if someone truly wants to read the stories it shouldn't be an impediment to their doing so.

Keep in mind it's a royal pain in the ass to run a website such as this, so be careful that your observations are helpful and not simply criticizing.

--LT

Losethem (imported) wrote: Fri Apr 18, 2014 7:02 pm Having to register to read isn't a big deal. It's free and if someone truly wants to read the stories it shouldn't be an impediment to their doing so.

Keep in mind it's a royal pain in the ass to run a website such as this, so be careful that your observations are helpful and not simply criticizing.

--LT

It is not the problem with registration, it is two faced problem.

First that I usually read from a few devices, and entering password, (which you do not actually remember, cause who logs out from here?) on a phone/pda/tablet/pc/notebook quickly turns inconvenient.

And when I last time checked, the authorization did not last, requiring you to reenter password regularly, and lose where you were going (you click the story link, get redirected to the authentication page, then get redirected to main page instead of the story. Now you need to click back two pages, and return to the link you clicked).

The second issue - no matter how advanced search is implemented, the google search will probably be superior. With google search I pinpointed the story by a few vaguely remembered quotes more than once.

Ok. End of rant.

I gave up on story archive.

Easy solution -- just get a separate EMail Address and use it for registering this website. Most ISP's will allow you to have more than one EMail address per account. If not, there's all kinds of free services such as GMail and Yahoo Mail.

eunuch.org will still get your IP Address (as does ANY website you visit), but that is no different than before registration was required.

Even when you were "anonymous" (ie: no registration required here), your IP Address was always an available piece of data... If there was really some Big Brother Government conspiracy who's goal was to bust you for visiting this website, it is already too late for you. Your IP Address would have been recorded every time you came here (back when it was "anonymous"), and "they" would already have a good-sized dossier on you.

If you are really paranoid about it, use an Anonymous Proxy both to access this site and to access the EMail you'd use to register here. That will hide even your IP Address... Unless, of course, "they" are in bed with the owner of the Anonymous Proxy site.

The reason that the story archive is now set up the way it is, is because a few years ago, some idiot stumbled in somehow and ran screaming about how shocked he/she/it was and started all sorts of trouble for us.

Stories had to be put behind a member authentication page to ensure the security of not only the site, but the staff as well. We were threatened with legal action.

Before that, when Rachel took over BME, she started going on and on to me about how we were hosting child pornography, and that all stories involving even passing minors, had to be removed at once.

In short, it was this - or NOTHING.

To be blunt, no one on the staff here was or is willing to go to jail or put out money in legal processes for the sake of your reading pleasure.

As for submitting stories, the directions on how to do so are posted in every single one of Cainanite's posts.

Oh, and as for the old way of submitting stories - it was vulnerable to hackers, as it was "homemade" script. I wound up with several computer reformats due to entering the new stories bin and finding something nasty in there waiting for me.

As for collecting personal data, and the log-in, I find your childish remarks amusing. How many sites on the Internet require a log in? When did EA ever ask you for required personal information, other than a vague location? I have no problem with putting USA as my location, here, or anywhere. It's not like we want your entire life history.

As for posting in the forums, that's required ONCE - when you sign up for a log in. You never have to visit this page again. In fact, I really hope you don't.

All I have to say to those who don't like the story archive is DON'T LET THE DOOR HIT YOU ON THE ASS ON THE WAY OUT!

Wait, you only have to post once in the forums? Are you sure? The only reason I've been posting once in a while is to be able to read stories...

You all make good points and I do miss the old EA especially the stories but I really don't have a problem with this site.

You have to come back within a year to log in to keep the account active. That's it. Posting is not needed to read the stories.

Thank you, so only post once a year, got it. Yeah I believe this is my second time I've registered cause I did not post in the forums.

I see both sides and I am glad the stories are here. Sure it would be great to have more new stories and enhanced search, but it is a free site.

Thank you for your efforts!