Hi!
Something I’ve always found frustrating is looking up stories with certain tags and not being able to sort by the most popular/highly rated/ most amount of comments/most favourites.
Filters like that would be incredibly useful to find the highest quality stories from over the years in particular areas the reader is interested in. Thoughts?
It was a conscious decision not to offer sorting by rating anywhere on the site. The “Top Stories” lists are also not sorted, and the only exception is the results of a story contest, where the top 5 are listed at the top.
For me, sorting by rating always seems a bit unfair.
Opinions?
That’s a very valid point, and even as I was writing this request I had an inkling that it might be a principled choice rather than a forgotten feature.
I think for me as a user, the issue I have is that I feel like I’ve gone through everything. Ive been reading from this site since I realised I was gay, way back when I was 14 (24 now), and I used to keep my favourite stories on a notes app in my phone (I was too afraid to make my own account!).
Sometimes it feels like I’ve been through everything I like, and I’m just patiently (more accurately impatiently) waiting for the next great story to come along, checking every 6 hours. I think I use this site everyday. But the thing is, I know I’ve missed some great stuff out there.
So to try and find new material that might be older, I use authors I love and check who their favourite stories are, or I find their most loyal fans and then check their favourite stories or most highly rated stories etc.
It’s all such a hassle just to try and find some good quality hidden gens that work for my tastes, and even then it’s not that accurate because I’m banking on their tastes being very very aligned to mine.
I never use the top rated tab - because to me it’s honestly useless. For it to be useful you’d have to be into everything offered on this site, the works.
For me personally though, I don’t like it when older men (Like dads) are hypnotised as the victim, I don’t like furry stories, I don’t like latex stories, and I really don’t like severe transformation stories (old to young, young to old, hunk to twink, twink to hunk etc.). I’m partial to dick shrinking, I have to really be in the mood for it.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is perhaps you’re right, ratings being sorted would be a brutal way of doing things, and most definitely would reduce newer great stories from being exposed compared to old classics.
So maybe a good compromise is the option to sort searched by stories with the most favourites in proportion - that is, stories not just ranked by how many users have favourited them, but formulate that against the age of the story. An old classic with 5000 favourites might appear below a day old story that already has 500 favourites!
Thoughts?
Well, if I may give a suggestion:
Select the categories you like the most. Block the tags you don’t like, in your case probably “rubber” and “daddy”.
And then go to the “Top Rated” tab and scroll through that list. It’s random and will show a new selection every time you open the site.
You should see the stories you’ve already read (marked with that blue or green checkmark). And I always find new stories I’ve missed and which I might like.
I also go through the “Random” list sometimes. I find that sometimes there are great stories hidden there that just didn’t get enough high ratings, for whatever reason.
The ratings CAN be misleading, and restraining oneself to only read high-rated stories could make you miss that one great story that really gets you off!
That’s true - but my concern with blocking tags is that sometimes I’m very much happy to read them if the story itself is a great concept. I just kind of just gloss over the topics that don’t get off lmao.
Maybe I’m being too whiny, I supposed I just don’t want anything off the table and I want to judge for myself.
The issue with categories is they’re not as specific as tags. My tastes really do vary quite strongly depending on what I feel like. For example, tonight I’m into oblivious jock exhibitionism, and would love to find some new hidden gems on jocks being naked and hard and not even realising that the day before they were the opposite (like the Mechanism - need a chapter 2 on that! - or the brand new “it’s just a Trend Bro”).
But some days I want BNWO white jocks being subjugated by hypnotic BBC. I don’t believe categories lets me do that.
So yeah TL:DR categories isn’t as customisable as tags and blocking tags means possibly blocking great stories on accident.
But then, searching for tags won’t help either, because you’ll also miss a whole lot of stories that way… 
Then you have to look through the top or random list, just without any filters (like I usually do), and let yourself get inspired. I always find something I haven’t read (or not for a long time), which fits my mood and gives me a great time!
But searching through tags doesn’t block content - it just makes sure the stuff I want to make sure is definitely part of the story is in there.
‘Jock’, ‘exhibitionism’ and ‘oblivious’ can still return stories that involve say, older dads being hypnotised as the victim. I don’t prefer those stories but if the premise is good enough I can go glassy eyed at the parts where that’s relevant and fill in the blanks to what caters towards me - or hell I’ll enjoy a daddy story if it’s that good!
The difference is that daddy story should definitely include jocks, exhibitionism and oblivious. It’s basically the opposite of the “blocked tags” tool - it’s the “ensure tags” tool.
With the random/top-rated lists, it’s exactly the opposite. It’s random.