Nominations for the 2022 Clitorides are open. As usual, the area where Lush excels — shorter work — is underrepresented with nominations. Flash and poetry are always lacking in nominations, and Lush has no shortage of fine ones here that deserve wider recognition. ( as well as plenty in other categories )
So head on over and make your nominations.
Possible to choose to a certain extent. I managed to find a word combination that brought up Nude Holly Day, but no luck conjuring up Her Cut to the Chase no matter what words I use to search for it. Specific story search is unbelievably wonky.
It's a step forward though. Have to take what small boons you can sometimes.
Luck on your quest. No time to read at the moment, but I gave you another tick each. The bottom seems to have fallen out of view accumulation. I suspect someone updated the bot/spider filter about July of last year by the way things look. Good that more humans are represented by the numbers if that's the case, but it sure makes these milestones take a while.
Not a huge deal, but notifications seem to be lagging. I'll have something new on my interactions page, but no notification. Then I'll come back some time later, and the notification will finally show up. Can't remember whether the one from two hours ago showed up ( I don't believe it did ) but I had one 4 minutes ago that still hasn't hit the notification bell.
Like I said, not a huge deal, but I thought I'd bring it up in case something needs a reboot.
Looking at the displayed one here on the forum vs. the raw banner for SitRD demonstrates the troublesome distortion uploaded images face. ETA: Just tried uploading an alternate banner that approximated as best I could the size it's blowing the banners up to, and it still distorts them. Downsizing overly large images I can understand. Why on earth 2.0 blows up smaller images — making them look terrible — makes no sense to me.
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/milf/stuffed-basted
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/mature/curl-figure
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/taboo/step-in-the-right-direction
Quote by BadDog9
When I add a cover image, I can't submit the story. If I remove the image it submits just fine. I have double checked the size and even made it smaller. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?
By "Can't Submit" do you mean that after you click the submit button, it just sits with the progress spinner and never progresses to the preview screen? If that's the case and you have slow internet, you might wait a little longer, because it takes a while for a story with an attached image to upload even on reasonably quick internet speeds.
:: sigh :: Just lost a post due to the logout bug.
It depends upon how old the stories are. Just before the category was suddenly removed and the Freemium model was introduced, there was significantly more daily traffic as tracked by web analytics sites. There were a lot of anonymous and free account holder eyes on stories, causing the views on all existing stories to be a lot higher than the rest of the numbers would indicate.
The drop in traffic after those two mentioned events was rather precipitous. The loss of votes from free account holders bailing wasn't exactly a drop in the bucket either.
So those older stories are heavily skewed. No doubt the additional real traffic brought a lot of bots with it as well. The bigger you get, the more spiders you have crawling all over you. Like you, I think having a number that better represents actual humans is good, ( assuming that's what it is ) but it certainly requires a mental adjustment of expectations.
Quote by CarltonStJames
It'll be the year 2100 before any of my stories reach famous status 😆, but I do love the vote of confidence!
Something can take off unexpectedly and just rocket up there, and it usually pulls a few others higher with it.
Although, looking back through the archives, it seems as if views sitewide fell off a cliff since around July of this year. I know the ratio on my last several releases has not looked right at all. 100+ votes, but not even 5k views? Do your views seem to be out of whack?
The sudden, steep decline makes me wonder if they've perhaps updated some bot/spider filtering of that number, because only the views seem off. That would be good in a way, as it would better reflect actual people reading. Makes Famous and Legendary hopes stretch off far into the future, though.
Then again, if that's what happened, it won't last long. The bot creators are more prolific than any of us could ever dream of being, and no filter list can keep up with them. The numbers will steadily creep up as a fresh wave of internet spiders invade.
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/quickie-sex/getting-her-sausage
https://www.lushstories.com/stories/quickie-sex/all-full
ETA: Well, they're centered, but at least they're not distorted. Progress. LOL
Now, let us see if I've figured out some things while adding the two newest banners.
Obviously not. There are external images above, but I tried the highlight and paste trick to make them clickable images, and nothing showed up. Can't add media in an edit, so I'll have to try again to see if I can at least display the banners.
Quote by IMPURETHOUGHTS
I have no idea but I use Samsung Internet Browser through Samsung Tablet. And linking images from pvt tumblr blog to forum instead of uploading said image to lush media file--the image won't get distorted.
That certainly helps. The albums take up such high prominence real estate that my eyes were glossing over the tabs at the top. I have the option to host my own images, so I'll certainly be taking advantage of that where necessary to eliminate distortion once I figure out exactly what options I have.
The design of the interface clashes severely with my expectations. I expect a drag to insert, or to click for an insertion menu on the attached image from my experience in similar environments.
The way Lush displays things like images from galleries now has forced me to upload my bigger cover images, because the more compact size I was using looks terrible — faded and distorted.
I'll quit rambling. You've put me on the right path, and I'll see how far I can get down it without getting lost. LOL
Quote by IMPURETHOUGHTS
In saying that, this pic was removed from my covers(its playing peek-a-boo)
Why? Idk lol not like I can access cover pics.
And this was the image that I uploaded to public media folder.
After this post, imma stay away from the help/lush has issues threads.
Pardon the tangent, but how on earth do you control placement of your attached images? The forum interface is about as opaque and unintuitive as anything I've ever come across.
I'm going to make this an all in one promo thread for my stuff. My forum ad banners sometimes only see 24 hours of service, and I enjoy making them, so I'm going to start putting them here.
If only I could make them clickable links, or even format posts so they could have adjacent links...
::cough:: Not so subtle hint ::cough::
ETA: And it automatically blows up the images to fill the post width? ::facepalm & sigh:: Oh well...
Something I picked up about this:
The order is newest to oldest until you reply to a comment on your own work. It will then remain backwards so long as the most recent activity is your comment reply. As soon as someone else generates an activity item, it will go back to the expected order.
It also only affects the first page. Clicking to page 2 shows newest to oldest on that page.
"Becalmed" was from a meme where a woman is shown putting her hair up and the tagline is "When he says nothing can make him feel better."
"Coming in Third" started with the memory of one of my buddies pulling off the mother/daughter hat trick for real, and the line near the end where the MC says "Tell your mom I said hi."
"You Serious?" is another meme start where it says "When you let your BF fuck your bestie because she's been single for a long time and you know we all have needs" and a picture of three in a bed where the one girl is reading a book and holding hands with her friend while her BF rails her.
"A Sale of Two Titties" comes from the title, which comes from a Monty Python skit. A lot of mine arise from a giant file of wordplay/pun titles.
My latest, "Catbird Seat" starts with looking for an idea for the Facesitting category. I started doing searches for phrases related to sit, seat, etc. That one popped up, the concept of the no pets popped in my head, and I was off to the races. I had to tweak it because it originally started with Alexa as the property manager's daughter, and that put too much of an air of real power dynamics that I didn't like. In the final version she thinks she has all the power, but in reality she's got no leverage, and they go along with it because it turns them on.
Not here and little chance it will be, because it's Sci-Fi/Fantasy and 100k words long, but "One Whore's Town" is another title start. Let me take a peripheral character from another story and give her a starring role in a tale of two prostitutes in a turf war that gets out of hand fast.
Maybe cast a line with a general theme/basic plot and see if that attracts any bites. The collaboration could even start right here on the forum at first. In another place I post, that's how chain stories where authors take turns with chapters get started.
"Want to collaborate on something?" isn't nearly as enticing as something like "Want to collaborate on a story where..."
Toss out several ideas you've come up with that haven't completely jelled. We've all got them. Maybe one of yours will mesh up with someone else's.
It's been over a year, and I finally have new stuff in the pipeline, so I thought it would be a good time to establish a new baseline.
Famous Track 20k+
Her Cut to the Chase 27971 -> 29548
Selfie Stuck 26036 -> 28728
Good Will 25554 -> 26651
Three Alarm 25716 -> 26621
Kitty in the Cream 24592 ->25720
Hard Times 24203 -> 25332
Summer's Heat 23868 -> 25057
Sunny Daze 23075 -> 24527
Jerk 23427 ->24392
You Serious? 24387
Souvenir 22819 -> 24208
Taste the Rainbow 22254 ->23580
Double Booked 21505 ->22549
Pole Skills 22393
Vicki Cleans Up 20907 -> 22200
And I'll Get a Pole 20246 -> 21959
Heart-Shaped Box 20959 -> 21656
A Sale of Two Titties 20602 -> 21445
Got Me Pegged 21019
Divorcing My Vibe 19704 -> 20555
About to join the 20k club
Clean Up - Aisle Eight 19131 -> 19818
Son Stroke 19908
Beholding Dawn 19462
Her Flock 19337
Trade In 19261
Legendary Track ( 40k+ )
Nude Holly Day 89902 -> 97188
Dip in the Lake 63562 -> 66550
A Fine Substitute 60614 -> 64147
Mom's Second Chance 49577 -> 56492
Mom's Stocking Stuffer 49914
Like Riding a Bike 45980 -> 48475
Bet Your Bottom 47347
Double Dip 45519
Quite Neighborly 42546
Her Own Skin 41368
A couple of newer stories debut on the Famous Track list. One actually never saw the list, because "Overheard" came out and became my 21st Famous Story between tracks. 
One story graduated to the Famous Track. Four stories reached the 19k threshold, including a recent one.
I finally did a full search and established a criteria for the Legendary Track at 40k+, so several stories joined those ranks. Most of them would have actually qualified for a while, but I was just winging that section with fast moving stories previously.
A little jockeying for position in the Famous Track. "Her Cut to the Chase" is less than 500 away from my 22nd Famous Story. "Nude Holly Day" is less than 3k from becoming my second Legendary Story.
As usual, this is as much for my own records as anything, but I certainly won't discourage anyone from clicking the links and pushing them one read closer. It's been a while, so here are some plugs for the two that are closest.
Nude Holly Day: Alan's assistant Holly is good at her job, and he couldn't be happier to have helped her when she was just a desperate runaway. When he takes a long weekend at his favorite retreat at the nudist camp after finishing a major new campaign, a very unexpected surprise awaits him. ( Mature, older man and young woman )
Her Cut to the Chase: It started by accident, but once Kimberly caught the young stud who mows her lawn checking her out, it turned into a naughty little game of wearing provocative clothing to catch his eye. It was harmless fantasy fuel, but an overheard conversation at the county fair makes her wonder if it couldn't be more. A stop at the Bingo tent may be the key to more than one jackpot. ( Milf, older woman and young man )
It's a tough call here for connected stories that aren't chapters or long stories split into parts by necessity due to the 10k submission limit. The response to long and multi-part stories falls off precipitously, so linking complete, connected stories risks feeding into that readership bias and hurting the overall performance of the linked stories.
I decided to go ahead and link mine up, because they're all Sci-Fi&Fantasy, Monster Sex, or Supernatural. Those categories don't get much traffic anyway, and the bias isn't nearly as strong with that readership. The benefit of the readership being able to quickly locate the connected stories is worth it for those, IMO.
Outside of that, I'd be hesitant. The series linking isn't noted in most listings, and isn't overly prominent on the story page itself. If something had a timeline where reading the stories out of order could cause someone to be confused, I'd seriously consider it. If someone gets married or has a kid in the second story for example, people discovering the first story after that would be thrown off-balance for at least a while. Major changes like that warrant a series listing to me.
Full, unabbreviated statistics. Search functionality. Two massive issues I had that are now solved.
Text search of your story list is a little wonky. It doesn't seem to search the entire list, but rather only the page you're on. Being able to filter by other criteria makes it manageable. I can remember the categories, and that creates a small enough list to be a single page for the most part. I can find what I'm looking for and see what I want to see at a glance with an acceptable amount of effort.
Likewise, using the specific story option for stories to highlight on your profile doesn't give access to your full story list either. Not a deal breaker for me, but it would be nice if you could choose any three specific stories.
( I'm guessing both of those are something that's already slated for tweaking )
Combine that with the new leaderboards, and I'm feeling infinitely more comfortable with the state of things. Bonus points for the excellent new series functionality.
I do think the leaderboards for each category should be featured as a link "More Popular Stories" right next to the two popular stories on each category's page. I think they'll generate a lot more traffic when linked from there, rather than only from the bottom of the page menu.
Please, at least give us the ability to link an image in our forum signatures. I hate how everybody is neutering signatures nowadays, but I'll sigh and live with it if I can just post an image and have it be a clickable link to the story. That is the final major issue I have with the migration to 2.0
While the ability for authors to remove comments on their own may seem irrelevant or even repugnant to some, there are instances where not having to cut through red tape is extremely beneficial. An online romance gone sour, where you've revealed personal details that then get leaked in comments, for instance. If that happens at the wrong time of night, such comments could be available for hours after you noticed them when mod intervention was required. Hateful and racist comments. Attacks on other authors. Spam. There are all sorts of reasons why having the power to immediately erase a comment can be a good thing.
Fortunately, Lush has a culture that not only generates a high comment ratio, but also one that is overwhelmingly positive. That doesn't mean that bad eggs can't crop up. If it happens to you, you'll be thankful to have that instant ability to eradicate the offensive comment.
If someone deletes your comment, and you feel it was unwarranted, you have a simple solution. Don't read, vote, or comment on their work again. They don't value your opinion, so don't give it. If it's something they do regularly, they'll soon find themselves in non-interaction hell.
Well, at least the real view numbers are available somewhere. It's an incredible pain in the ass to have to click and scroll every single one to see them.
Whatever the templating excuse for truncating the numbers in our main list is, it's insufficient as far as I'm concerned. If necessary, give us a private list that shows ALL the raw numbers in one location so nobody else has to see that "bad design" except the author. That would be a step toward restoring list sorting capability anyway. The excellent new series code already has the base elements of that in place. If it's going to continue to be paginated, we need searchability and/or sortability by any statistic as well.
We need to be able to find a specific story and see the numbers in a reasonable amount of time.
I've said it before, but no matter what scoring method is used, you'll always have a core of people who believe it's rigged against them. This choice is transparent, not mathematically complicated, and prevents downward manipulation. Such a fundamental change is never going to be ideal when work that has existed for years under different criteria is involved, but the solution offered for dealing with existing work is reasonable IMO.
As to contests, I don't believe the shortlisting was ever based entirely upon score. The one time I placed was ( as best I can determine from conversation at the time ) because very few people were on theme in a sponsored contest. My score and vote total were nothing to write home about from what I remember at the time, and I believe that was the reason for the complaints that started the conversation I'm talking about. If it was only score that determined the shortlist, I wouldn't have made it.
I've seen other stories place where the score wasn't in that upper echelon, but the story was most certainly deserving. I've never seen a winning story that didn't deserve to be there. My anecdotal observations indicate to me that solid stories had an opportunity to be considered regardless of the raw number of the score. Some probably slipped through the cracks due to large numbers of entries, but there was always opportunity for a well written story.
The new scoring method in fact removes the reason I stopped participating in contests. The more nuanced voting in contests hurt the long-term exposure of stories that didn't place, and there were too many top tier authors ( top tier in quality/talent, not followers ) participating regularly to leave any openings for anyone else. Thus participation was a net negative for me. The same story published outside the contest would score better, and thus gain exposure over the long term that outweighed the short term bump from contest highlighting. Absent the liked-it-but-didn't-love-it 4s that contest voting typically produced, there's no downward pressure on long term exposure from the new scoring method.
( Absent the by-category toplists, long term exposure potential has been seriously curtailed, but that's a different discussion )
The short version is that I think people are reading too much into the documented shortlisting process and unnecessarily worried that author followings will push everyone else out.
For all stories posted on site until the change, the current score will be added to
It's using the word score here that makes this unclear. It should be changed to vote total.
With that clarified, I'm ambivalent about the change in the scoring process. I'm more interested in whether we're going to regain real access to our views after the change, or whether we're going to continue being stuck with rounded off numbers. That's one of three things that's put me off posting any new work. The need to click through to each individual story page from an unsortable, unsearchable list to access our full statistics is frustrating enough, but not even having useful view numbers once you do is a deal breaker.
So a story with 100+ votes but only 38 likes has 60% of its original reader interaction just tossed in the fire.
::sigh::
It's been off ever since we could turn it off.
They really need to look into why it's coming up on the activity page, because that's a fight waiting to happen if the wrong person sees supposed matches.
Not seeing it now, but I've never seen it before, either.
If that's some sort of bug, it needs fixing pronto. Even if it's just a display bug of some kind, that's a panic attack waiting to happen. Imagine someone's spouse/partner seeing that.
Side note: There wouldn't be anything in that section for me if we hadn't been forced to fill it out right after the switch, and there's no way to null out the age and distance ones that I can fathom.
Just looked at the activity page and came across this:
Checked to make sure, and I'm set to "Not Seeking"
So why are my details being promoted to 77 matches?
There are some small publishers out there who do all the ancillary work like cover art, IBSN, putting it on the market at Amazon, Apple, Smashwords, etc. If you're not interested in the money, I'm sure they'd be happy to take both cuts, and perhaps invest a little extra into cover art for subsequent outings if it proves lucrative for their brand. Since there's no money changing hands between you, they would be more likely ( and able ) to keep things close to the vest and not ask any unnecessary questions that could jeopardize your "day job" or out you to the wife before you're ready.
If nobody bites on an individual basis, it's another option to accomplish your goal of getting it out there and keeping yourself away from it.
As things are currently, you can't rearrange the listing of your stories on your profile. It's latest at the top, and that's it.
What you can do is use the much improved series management to link those stories together. Pick the first story in a series, edit it, and go to the bottom where the "series" box is. There, since it's a brand new series, type a name for the new series. You will then have an option to save it, and it will be applied to the story you're editing.
Note that some submissions seem to go straight through without hitting the moderation queue when adding a series is the only change you're making, and some don't. It's a good idea to add a moderator note that all you're changing is the series addition. If it doesn't hit the queue, you only waste a few keystrokes.
Once the series has been created, you will see it as an option on any other story you submit/edit. So you can go to the next story in the series, edit it, select the series from the drop-down, and it will automatically be assigned as the second story in the series.
If, for any reason, you need to shuffle the order of the stories in the series, you can do that on your series management page. https://www.lushstories.com/my-series This is where the new series management really shines. There's a lot I don't like about 2.0, but series management is a joy to use compared to what we had in 1.0, and much more versitile.
It's also the exact sort of code that would be needed to rearrange the stories on our profile as we choose, so the heavy lifting is done for that feature. That gives me hope that we'll get it eventually.
If you want to see what a story that's linked looks like, here's one of mine. https://www.lushstories.com/stories/fantasy-sci-fi/facing-destiny-pt-1-of-2
Quote by naughtyannie
It's ironic really. I've been banging on for years about having a couple of badges for poems, roughly equivalent to the "Famous" and "Legendary" story badges but with lower "read" requirements, to reflect the lower numbers even the best ones get.
These could actually be achievable by a wider range of people, as well as promoting interest in a genre that Lush does better than most other erotic writing sites.
Have the powers-that-be shown any interest? Not a chance.
But propose something that's hardly anyone's ever going to get, and it's done.
Weird. 🙄
Got to agree. I don't write or even get poetry for the most part beyond rhyming couplets, but the amount of engagement a poem gets here in relation to stories ( especially flash and micros ) is orders of magnitude higher than it is on other erotica sites. That and the aforementioned flash/micros is something Lush does particularly well, and it could do with some prioritization.
Most of the other sites specialize in longer works, and have been around longer. Lush would do well to highlight one of the areas where it outshines them with poetry and short works to attract and retain the readers/writers/poets who prefer them.
