There’s been a boatload of miscommunication around this entire issue, including misunderstandings about whether we were talking about legality or morality, what factors played into things, why people were saying and doing what they were and whether or not they were actually even saying what we thought they were. I daresay that there was frustration and hurt feelings all around as a result.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but for myself, I didn’t even realize my own role in antagonizing things, or I would have spoken to you about it sooner and perhaps it would never have gotten to the point where I said what I did. Instead, the only way I could interpret what I saw was that you were being petulant about people disagreeing with you. I know others interpreted things the same way I did, while others were more neutral or understanding.
It is absolutely your site to do with as you please, no question, but at the same time, hosting a site like this for however many hundreds of authors also implies a certain responsibility (particularly to your Patreon subscribers). To all appearances, you simply tossed that responsibility out the window. I don’t think it’s unfair that people got a bit upset about that.
All I can really suggest is that you talk to people before taking drastic actions. Explain what’s going through your head and why. If I had known that there had been such a huge misunderstanding between us, I would’ve spoken to you sooner and a whole fuck-ton of this drama could have been avoided. (Not all of it, of course, as there was still the underlying issue to deal with.) As it was, I had absolutely no clue that I was part of the problem, and it took me quite some time to even begin to suspect that that was the case from your hints. That could well be my fault as much as anything, since social cues aren’t exactly my strong suit.
I, for one, am sorry that things have gotten to this point, and I sincerely apologize for my part in it.
He explained that he had already moved the furniture out to be given back to its owners before burning the house. And furniture is a bad analogy, it would be more like books, each of them a single copy of an author’s story. Each author has infinitely more copies of his own work. So not a big loss.
RobinHood70 explains well how you could have made it better and easier for us. But from my point of view, making things better and easier for us is what you’ve been doing since the creation of this site.
I don’t believe you have a responsibility to us, like having to keep the site open all the time or always be fair. And as for your responsibility to Patreon subscribers, it’s limited to keeping them happy enough to continue to pay. And if you fail to do that, you’re the one who suffers, so that’s your prerogative.
I’m happy that people were overwhelmingly supportive. But the temptation to look a gift horse in the mouth is always present in situations like this.
As an analogy to the way I see thing: A guy tells you that out of the goodness of his heart, he is going to give you a million dollars each month. You’re happy and you raise your lifestyle accordingly. But then, something nags you: the bank from which he transfers from has had a scandal. Nothing extreme, but you feel uncomfortable with it. So you tell him you want him to use another bank from now on to transfer you the money. He refuses and you try to shame him and guilt him into doing it. It pisses him off and says, “No transfers for a while.” No further communication. When he finally changes his mind and resumes the transfers, you tell him that it was irresponsible to do what he did, that you had a whole new lifestyle now and that it was threatened.
Some might say that was irresponsible, that you made plans expecting the money (taking it for granted), but I think the guy did enough already, and if the only thing you had to do was manage the lifestyle you got for free and try to empathize with the guy, I’d say you still had a fantastic deal.
I’m not criticizing anyone’s behavior, because I know it is easy to see it from the “what about me?” perspective. But in my book, our debt towards Martin is extremely high, and the least we can do in return is let him be a human being instead of a provider for a few days.
I was turning a phrase, you don’t need to take it so literally.
The point wasn’t that the stories might be irreplaceably destroyed. The point is that people other than Martin have a stake in this community-driven website, even if he is the sole owner. Flipping out and threatening to take it all away at the drop of a hat damages the trust within the community.
Let’s consider what that stake is. What did we invest so much in gss that we would lose? The time to write our stories isn’t lost, we keep those. The time to write a few comments and engage in the forums? I’d say compared to all the time Martin invests, that’s pretty small potatoes.
It’s up to anyone to consider: am I getting a good deal? Yes, I stay. No, I leave. That’s all.
I guess what I’m saying is: instead of criticizing someone’s enormous contribution to the community, pilling on him even more responsibilities you feel entitled to, you should worry more about your own contribution to the community. When you’ve done as much as he did, maybe your criticism will feel more valid.
Guys, I think I’ve made it quite clear in my big posting above, that much of what happened was caused by my own human weaknesses of pride, defiance and vanity.
No point in beating a dead horse. I overreacted out of an impulse, fell into the “what have I done? What am I going to do now?” trap and as a consequence into a bit of a depression.
Again, I’m only human and we do make mistakes. If we stand by it, I don’t see a problem with that. I don’t see that as a weakness either, even though many people would probably disagree.
@RobinHood70 also wrote that he didn’t intend to cause any harm and apologized for everything that he might have started inadvertently. That’s good enough for me.
As far as I’m concerned we can now file this as an unfortunate incident which did help to improve the site in the end and go on with our lives, ok?
Please don’t start restricting anons beyond usefulness because you’re annoyed with certain ones. I know there are a lot of a**es that hide behind the anonymity, but for every one of those, there are many normal people who just don’t want to go through the trouble of signing up for a new email just for the account, etc. At the end of the day, many users don’t want any trace of their interest in GSS–or any site with X-rated contentt–lingering, be it in a password manager, hidden in a secret email, or elsewhere.
You seem to believe that using an account would cause you to be tracked. But that’s simply not the case, at least not if you trust me that I’d never give away your email address.
But even then, if you don’t want to your usual email address to be associated with a “smut” site like GSS, you can find many services on the internet which allow you to create an anonymous email address. Then you’d be totally safe.
See this for example for a list of anon email providers:
You should choose one that allows you receive emails, of course.
Martin, I’m mostly a lurker around here. I do comment and rate stories, but for the most part I’ve been the recipient of the gifts you and the writers here have given. Thank you. I enjoy reading the stories and I appreciate that I’m not the only one with these wild ideas and urges.
For anyone who is concerned about other people that might have access to your phone or computer learning about your interests in GSS:
Would adding a login using FIDO2 help with that? Then you’d only need an inconspicuous little USB stick on the PC (and a short pin number which you should be able to remember easily) or your mobile phone to login to the site. Do you all think it’s worth to find a way to add this to the site?
I could say all kinds of things about how much of a hassle getting the USB token would be, and cost, and having it in one of the few USB slots on my computer, or having to use my phone every time I log in, but really what it boils down to is that people, myself included, are lazy.
I don’t use a yubikey or Google Authenticator for my online banking, and I’m much more worried about that than my use of GSS.
You’ve already pointed out multiple times that it’s easy enough to create an anonymous email. There’s not much you’re going to be able to do to help people too lazy to do that.
People really worried about their privacy are already browsing the site via Incognito mode in their browser and through a VPN. There are definitely some people doing that (especially if they are in countries with horrible laws against gay people) but there are not that many.
I’d suggest providing a back door way to get to the site for those people. Maybe a different web site address (via DNS), or an extra token on the URL to indicate that they are anonymous but they know what they are doing and accept whatever risk it entails. (Home - Gay Spiral Stories)
I meant some way for people who know to access the site in unfiltered/unsafe mode without requiring cookies. So some extra get parameter on the URL which they can add and then it will be unfiltered.
Alternatively, you could register a different website address and your code could detect if the site is being accessed via that URL and if so, make it unfiltered.
Either would work, but would be a hassle. Different website address would cost more money and be a hassle and might not solve the problem really. Extra get parameters on the URL would be easy enough, but you’d want to make sure all of the clickable links on the rendered HTML include the extra get parameter once someone has added it, otherwise they’d have to add it on every single page they go to and then hit refresh.
Hopefully some of that makes more sense.
Technical details aside, the problem with any of this is how do you advertise it? If you do advertise it, doesn’t it defeat the purpose? Not sure.
I like the idea of the extra get parameter. Keep it as an easter egg, not user friendly at all. I like the idea of having to write it each time. Don’t announce it publicly, but maybe mention it in the forums. The goal is to have a way to see safe mode stories by anons, but not make it easy at all, they need to hunt for it, or you can just mention it by e-mail if you’re questioned about it.
The point people have been making that they don’t want to have potentially problematic stories stored on their system.
If you make sure the caches are cleaned after each session (many browsers/plugins allow that) there won’t be any residual traces on your computer. You could even allow cookies be stored, as they are completely unspiciously, so all the settings would still work.
A backdoor entrance to circumvent the safe mode in itself wouldn’t turn off the cache though - the stories would still end up on the local computer in its cache. So I really don’t see the advantage. Maybe I’m missing something here?
That would not be for the 2% of anonymous users who are anxious about the content of their caches, nor would it be for the 88% of casual anonymous users just passing by who are not interested in the missing stories or would decide to register to see them. It would be for the 10% of anonymous users who say: “I’m a pro here, I wish to stay anonymous, but I know what I’m doing, I want to use this clumsy and hard to get method of seeing safe mode stories because I don’t care about my cache at all.”
The best way to see stories would be to make an account but if an anon goes through all the trouble of hunting for that method and be patient with the horrible UX of having to add a get parameter manually to each url he sends, than maybe allowing him to see the safe mode story is not that problematic.
Typical use case: anon user who doesn’t care to see most of the missing stories, stubbornly doesn’t want to create an account but really really wants to read that age regression story he read the title of, doesn’t care if that story gets in his cache.
