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Why not allow URL's to a person's own site?

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hapax_legomenon
Rookie Scribe
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First, I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent idea for a website. It's an innovative concept to apply the DIGG concept to erotica. And then to award prizes for fiction. Bravo (and I will link to your site on my Story Recommendations site when I have the chance.

Really, I want to take part. But I anticipate some problems in taking part.

First, you are not providing a way for people to find the site of the author himself/herself. There should be a way for a reader/surfer to be able to go to the person's own website. That is an author's main reason for participating in this kind of site.

Second, there is a problem with creating multiple versions of the same story on the Internet. I frequently revise stories. Is there a way that I can update the story on this site after it is published?

A related more important question is maintaining multiple versions. Assuming I have the ability to revise/republish the work on your site, it still is a pain having to keep these two versions synchronized. Even if you are trying to encourage people to post entire stories on the website, you need to make it possible for readers to find the canonical version of the story. I would probably submit my stories if I had the ability to include a link to the canonical version of the story. But you need a URL to click to.

Third, creative commons and this. I would like a way to label/tag a story as creative commons. But you don't have a way to do this. I suppose I could copy and paste the entire license into the story space, but that would be a bummer. It would be great if I had a way to link to the URL.

I can appreciate the difficulties of allowing offsite URL's. You open yourself to spam/misuse by commercial interests (and obviously the adult content business has a lot of that). But you have gone to the opposite extreme. One way to do this is to specify types of URLs which are allowed, and then let people FLAG IT AS INAPPROPRIATE if it links to a site that violates your terms of what a "good URL" should be.


The only condition under which I could see myself contributing would be to begin every story like this.
***********************
You are reading Erotic Notion #14: The Ice Cube by Hapax Legomenon. The most recent/canonical version of this story can be found at this URL: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/99er14.html . This is part of the 99 Erotic Notions story project by Hapax Legomenon, which can be found at this URL: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/index.html This story (like others in the same collection) have a Creative Commons license. More information: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/expandedlegalnotice.html

(story begins here)
******************************
What do you think of this idea? Are you okay with writers who do something like that?


Finally, I was wondering whether the owner of this site (Lush) has any connection to lushus which wrote this incredible short story (now only available through the wayback machine.

I like the idea of this website, and I hope to be able to participate. I hope you can address these concerns.

Thanks .


Hapax Legomenon
99 Erotic Notions
nicola
Matriarch
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Hi Hapax,

Thanks for the valuable feedback. You make some interesting and valid points. We welcome all ideas to make this a more useful site for authors to post on and show their work. Answers in *** below:

First, I wanted to congratulate you on your excellent idea for a website. It's an innovative concept to apply the DIGG concept to erotica. And then to award prizes for fiction. Bravo (and I will link to your site on my Story Recommendations site when I have the chance.

***Thank you!***

Really, I want to take part. But I anticipate some problems in taking part.

First, you are not providing a way for people to find the site of the author himself/herself. There should be a way for a reader/surfer to be able to go to the person's own website. That is an author's main reason for participating in this kind of site.

***Perhaps it's a little unclear, but we have provided a place for Members to add a link to their own website. In your profile (head to the Forum, up top is "My Profile" - click and navigate to Edit Profile. In there is a place to put your URL). The WWW is public on all posts you do in the forum.

You also have your own homepage (http://www.lushstories.com/hapax_legomenon) which includes a Bio text box - we could open that up to include an Author's Homepage.

Where else would you like to see a link? We don't allow them in stories because of the inevitable hassle / abuse / security issues it causes. We could add an area for a mini bio or "visit the website of ~Member~" at the bottom of each subbed story? That would either need to be moderated, or more favorable, a programmatic solution rendering the link useless to link spammers, scrambling it, but still allowing it to work of course!

Infact the latter would allow an author to mention "the latest version of this story is available at http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/recommendations.html" as well - another of your concerns.***

Second, there is a problem with creating multiple versions of the same story on the Internet. I frequently revise stories. Is there a way that I can update the story on this site after it is published?

***Members can update / delete any of their own stories whenever they like. At the top of our homepage when you login, you will see a link to "My Stories" - everything is in there you need.***

A related more important question is maintaining multiple versions. Assuming I have the ability to revise/republish the work on your site, it still is a pain having to keep these two versions synchronized. Even if you are trying to encourage people to post entire stories on the website, you need to make it possible for readers to find the canonical version of the story. I would probably submit my stories if I had the ability to include a link to the canonical version of the story. But you need a URL to click to.

***Addressed above.***

Third, creative commons and this. I would like a way to label/tag a story as creative commons. But you don't have a way to do this. I suppose I could copy and paste the entire license into the story space, but that would be a bummer. It would be great if I had a way to link to the URL.

***I like the idea of incorporating Creative Commons tags / buttons throughout the site, even incorporating their licence choosing tool so that authors can easily tag their material, however that would require a re-write of the code to add a new page / section per member. Many authors use CC, and will probably have their own customised version of the licence on a page of their own somewhere - initially allowing a link for this purpose would solve that problem - the link would reside in your profile area, with perhaps a checkbox either in your profile (for all stories), or story submit page linking to it. Sound like a plan? ***

I can appreciate the difficulties of allowing offsite URL's. You open yourself to spam/misuse by commercial interests (and obviously the adult content business has a lot of that). But you have gone to the opposite extreme. One way to do this is to specify types of URLs which are allowed, and then let people FLAG IT AS INAPPROPRIATE if it links to a site that violates your terms of what a "good URL" should be.

***Good idea - but I think this would be unmanageable when we have thousands of authors on board and stories in their tens of thousands. I guess we could encode all outbound links so they are worthless in terms of search engine optimisers, spammers and the like http://www.lushstories.com/linkout/534373253765324652467723245 etc.***


The only condition under which I could see myself contributing would be to begin every story like this.
***********************
You are reading Erotic Notion #14: The Ice Cube by Hapax Legomenon. The most recent/canonical version of this story can be found at this URL: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/99er14.html . This is part of the 99 Erotic Notions story project by Hapax Legomenon, which can be found at this URL: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/index.html This story (like others in the same collection) have a Creative Commons license. More information: http://www.asstr.org/~99ernotions/expandedlegalnotice.html

(story begins here)
******************************
What do you think of this idea? Are you okay with writers who do something like that?

***A possible answer to stop you having to do that messy solution is mentioned above.***

Finally, I was wondering whether the owner of this site (Lush) has any connection to lushus which wrote this incredible short story (now only available through the wayback machine.

***Nope, not me!***

I like the idea of this website, and I hope to be able to participate. I hope you can address these concerns.

***Thanks again for the feedback - I am sure that between us we can work out a solution that makes everyone happy (except the internet blackhatters!).***

Thanks .


Hapax Legomenon
99 Erotic Notions

Cheers,

~ Lush ~
hapax_legomenon
Rookie Scribe
0 likes
From my standpoint, the page for the story itself needs to permit a link to the original URL for the story on my personal website.

You can disable hyperlinks (or make them invisible to search engines), but the URL needs to appear on the same lushstories.com page as the story itself. (at least as text, even if the reader needs to cut and paste it into the browser window).

If/when your site goes offline, people may be accessing it through the wayback machine, so clicking to the member profile might not work. (Wayback machine doesn't reliably archive dynamic database-driven pages. This happens to me all the time).

I don't really have a problem with disabling the hyperlinks, as long I can include it in the text (along with the license), so a reader can know where to go. I really don't mind adding a text comment at the top or bottom. I just am reluctant to have any page where the reader doesn't see a direct connection with my website.

For me, my motivation in posting here is to draw people to my website (and possible ebooks).

Anyway, I think I'll probably submit a few things, with these caveats.
nicola
Matriarch
0 likes
Hi Hapax,

Thanks for getting back to us so fast.

You can put the URL of where you want people to go to in your story already - check out this http://www.lushstories.com/stories/anal/test.aspx - people can cut and paste the url already, it's just not linked.

I've been going through your points with our programmer, and have come up with these suggestions - in summary:

Copyright

Totally agree we should have something to take care of this. Vital authors can protect their own work.

We really would prefer not to have people posting 50 lines of copyright notice at the start of each story however. Instead a simple (c) with link to their copyright text box / external site will be added - and linked to from story summary page somewhere, plus on the story page itself. This does away with having something specifically for creative commons - could be any legal notice you wish to add in there.

Story Footer area

The story footer area is probably superfluous seeing what you want to do already works. Again, check out http://www.lushstories.com/stories/anal/test.aspx

So all you really need is an area to insert the legals - either text box or link offsite?

~ Lush ~