I’m actually very happy with all the work Hugh has put into the site software and also, if I may say so, with the stuff I added myself. I have the feeling that it could and maybe should be used for more.
So I’m wondering if it would be a good idea to create additional incarnations of the site with different themes.
I’m only interested in hosting gay sexual-themed stories. So a possible idea, among others, would be a site about all kinds of gay kinks (gaykinkystories?).
What’s your opinion on that? Maybe it’s just a foolish idea to begin with…
Are you in favor or opposed to this idea?
Would Hugh be ok with that?
It would be a competition for sites like nifty and gayauthors, so the question is, would it really be appreciated? Would you think that our system would have any advantage over these well established sites? Would it stand a chance?
It would have a much more difficult start, because there are no stories to start it with. I wonder if it would have any chance to be established at all…
I’m not sure I understand. Would it be like: you keep this site running as the “gay hypnosis sex stories” site, and also make other sites for gay fiction about other kinks, ie a site for transformation stories, and a site for BDSM stories?
Personally I am not sure of the need for you to create and run another site. You already do enough.
That said I will admit to not liking the old school formatting of Nifty so i dont go there anymore. Which means general gay adult fiction isn’t really got a home.
I don’t want to change gayspiralstories in any way. It will remain dedicated to stories around mind control, maybe even more stringent as it currently is. At the moment, there are a bit too many transformation and other themes, which only touch the mind-control aspect slightly. I know many people like these stories, but I’d rather see them in a different context.
That’s where my idea of a new site called ‘gaykinkystories.com’ would come into play. It would use the same software (and potentially the same servers as well, to keep the costs in check). There would be a new set of categories there, like feet, leather, sneakers, piss etc., but also known one like transformation, domination and rubber. All those kinky stories, which are not around mind-control, would find a home there.
Since I’d use the same software, I hope to limit the work I have to put into this. Of course, it will increase my expenses somewhat and it will cause some additional work. But on the other hand, more people would be able to find a new home to life out their desires, and, at the same time, I can keep gayspiralstories more tightly themed while not alienating writers and readers.
I’m more than happy for the code I wrote (which you’ve made so many awesome improvements on since I stopped working on it that it’s arguably more yours!) to be used on anything.
I think that the Spiral has two major things going for it which a lot of other sites don’t:
it’s mobile friendly
it allows for anonymous story posting and commenting
The anonymous posting and commenting allows authors to get valuable feedback that they wouldn’t otherwise. Sites like Nifty don’t do make it easy enough to give authors feedback (because people are way too lazy to send email).
I do think that creating a site that competes directly with Nifty could be worthwhile for making things a bit easier/better for readers and writers.
That said, I wouldn’t want to kill Nifty. I assume there’s a community around it, and lots of people involved in it. Creating yet another place that helps dilute that wouldn’t be a good thing. Besides that, it would need more moderation and attention.
I personally don’t think it’s worth it. I don’t think there’s the same need as there is for something in the form of the gay spiral. If Nifty or Literotica or Medium or Archive of Our Own didn’t exist, then I could see it. But you’re not making money off of this, and those other platforms already exist.
If its possible, I’d be really happy with a few new sites. For example, I’m totally fine with all the transformation stories on gayspiralstories, but it gets kind of annoying when I’m looking for hypnosis/mind control content and half the stories that come up are about age/race/body transformation. Those stories are great, but I think they need their own site for people to explore their ideas more expansively, rather than just a subsection on GSS.
I’m sure you could come up with dozens of site-themes and each one would have followers. The key would be creating sites that the most number of people would want to visit. I would think a boot or leather & boot site might get some traffic.
Thanks for all your efforts Martin - and now we realize why you do it: you consider it fun!
Every now and then I read a story here and after its conclusion, I wonder “where was the mind control?” Perhaps one path to take would be to examine all those non-mind control stories and see if there’s any common thread. From that one might consider creating a new site. Or maybe just a general site for gay fiction and then examine the tags and branch off from that.
I say if you want to pursue this idea then it should be (basically) meta categories within one site. Like, the main site will be ‘kinkygaystories.com’ and there will be sub-sites like ‘gayspiralstories.com’ and ‘gaybdsmstories.com’ which are all in the same main site. That way, ‘multi-disciplinary’ stories would be posted on all relevant sites at the same time. In the same vein, you could in the long run add a white-list and black-list feature for users, where they can be notified when such-and-such category gets a new story while hiding all stories from undesired categories.
Basically “Hypnosis/Mind Control” becomes a meta tag, alongside things like “BDSM”, “Transformation”, etc. That way, ‘kinky’ stories are easily accessible from one main site and users can customize their experience by filtering out what they don’t want.
Personally, I quite like how this site isn’t that stringent on stories being solely about MC. I like a good transformation story as much as a good MC story, and the two often go hand in hand, and by trying to separate things, I’m not sure where you could draw the line as to what site a story should go on.
Just using MC and transformation as an example, I think you’d run the risk of having two lesser sites with regular grumbles (I think to say complaints may over exaggerate potential negative comments) about stories not belonging on a particular site.
I’s say as long as stories are categorized/tagged appropriately, people should know what a story contains before they’ve read it, and not have any grounds to grumble about it not being about a certain topic.
there is a whole Muscle story archive somewhere in the web that could be hosted by this software. Would that be of your interest? I think I could find it, I think I know someone who has it.
It used to be hosted on a website that disappeared, but before that they made it available to download.
@mw-scot: I understand your points. However, nothing is keeping a story from appearing on both sites. With some magic, I can even make it possible that the two sites share the same comments and ratings for the stories which appear on both sites.
@Mesi: I think you’ve got a good point. Like using the same database and same software, but just use the domainname, with which you enter the site, as the primary “theme” selector (what you call meta-category).
That would have some advantages, for sure. But it would also mean a lot of adaptions to the code in all kinds of places…
What if instead of separate domain names, its under one domain (kinkygaystories.com). And the various theme categories are different parts of the that site. That way, you don’t have to have multiple domains running nor figure how to have stories and comments be shared between sites. I assume that be easier on the coding side (I know nothing of coding).
A lot of existing sites do something similar with more ‘vanilla’ categories. Which, in those sites, take the place of tags.
As a fan of the old NCMC I liked being able to find a lot of different stories in one place. A lot of TF stories do involve mind control but a lot didn’t and I feel like some of those are still in the archive here. That said I totally understand having a different aim than the old site and people who want MC stories feeling frustrated by non related ones.
The current domain does seem generic enough as spiral doesn’t necessarily indicate MC/hypno (though I imagine it was meant to) so I wonder if you could keep it all in the domain and create top level categories with a combined view option as well? Basically different views on a single back end?
If we decide to make it a single site, I’d recommend (if possible) making subsections of the site available just by the URL. So, you could view the site as if it were strictly a hypnosis site just by adding /hypnosis or ?category=hypnosis to the end of the URL, or maybe even as part of the domain itself, like hypnosis.gayspiralstories.com, for example.
The difference between separate sections and separate domains is just the cost of the domain itself. They’re not THAT expensive anymore.
So, I’m actually in favor of separate domains, especially since GaySpiralStories is well defined and has a history. I don’t want to lose or disrespect that.
Why then are you asking our opinions, when it seems like 90% of users disagree with your plan, but you seem deadset on what you originally proposed? If you don’t actually care, then go ahead and do what you’re going to do anyway. This site has been going down hill ever since it went from being the ncmc to “gay spiral stories”, stupid new name, with stupid direction.
