I would like to suggest that the “Mind Control” rubric in the rating system be replaced with a different criterion to fit different stories that do not contain explicit mind control content in them.
Currently, the GKS site allows users to rate stories based on five main criteria, including “Mind Control”. While mind control and hypnosis are staple themes of the original GSS website and the GKS website, I believe stories that mainly feature different and unique kinks on the GKS site would benefit from changing the criterion to one that is more applicable to those aforementioned stories.
Perhaps this new criterion could be changed to “Kink Appeal” or something to that effect. I believe doing so would make the story ratings for stories featuring themes other than mind control would see their ratings become more balanced and accurate.
Thank you and much love to the people who maintain the erotica sites and the forum!
The Mind Control category is only available if a story is published on GaySpiral.
Each of the sites has its specific category, which is only available if a story is posted on that site:
GaySpiral: Mind Control (Brain)
GayCupid: Romance (Heart)
GayCollar: Bondage (Collar)
GayKinky: Kinkiness (Banana)
The other 4 categories (idea, writing, hotness, cum) are always there, the above are available dependent on which sites the story is posted on. If you post it on all 4 sites, you’ll get all 8 categories.
I see. To clarify, whatever site you use to publish your story will appear on GayKinky, right?
Does that mean, for example, if you choose only GaySpiral to publish your story, the story will have the Mind Control criterion as a rating, even on GayKinky?
I ask because the story I am reading is published on GayKinky but it has the Mind Control criterion despite there being no explicit mind control content.
@Sparrowhead Use these settings and you won’t have the mind control rating, and you will have the kinky rating. if your story has no mind control, it doesn’t belong on GaySpiral anyway.
I suppose this brings me to a wider question on if proofreaders or the vetting process for stories also check which site each story is posted on and if the vetting process informs the author on which sites they ought to post on for specific stories with specific content.
While the information above this reply would be very helpful for me if I were an author, it does not apply to me, at this moment as a reader, who perhaps cannot give an accurate rating for a non-Mind Control story that uses Mind Control as a criterion rather than Kinkiness.
Despite the existing options in place for authors to choose and pick which sites apply to their story, there seems to be an occurrence of authors choosing sites whose criterion do not match the content of their respective stories.
If that is the case and it is found to be true, then perhaps I would then suggest for proofreaders or the story vetting process to include a check on which story gets posted on which site in order for the ratings to be more accurate and balance. I make this point because I have read multiple non-mind control stories posted on GayKinky that still use Mind Control as a criterion for readers to rate.
Maybe the authors don’t understand the consequences of choosing which site to put their story on. Maybe instead of choosing the site, we could have checkboxes like:
Does your story have mind-control elements? [If so, puts it on Spiral]
Does your story have romance elements? [If so, puts it on Cupid]
Does your story have bondage elements? [If so, puts it on Collar]
If none of the above, it appears on Kinky as primary.
I agree on that. I always wanted it to work like this, but even when I was responsible for the approvals myself, I couldn’t really pull this off. The amount of work - read the story, consider if there’s anything that would break a rule, and then also check the site assignments and primary category AND the tags is usually too much considering the sheer amount of stories to be approved.
But yes, in a perfect world, the approver would be able to do all that and fix wrong site/category/tag assignments. But then, some authors might disagree with what the approver has changed…
That’s what the current dialog is meant to imply. The administration (i.e. @Nu-and-the-Nus) can change the texts that are shown in the dialog you made a shot of anytime (it’s configurable for each site). But the texts should be concise and clear, otherwise they won’t help at all.
BTW, to make it clear where the stories are listed:
GayKinky always lists ALL stories, no matter what site a story is assigned to (unless the user filters out categories manually).
The other sites are supposed to list only the stories that are targeted to the respective site as a primary or additional (secondary) site.
However, there is a switch called “Pure Mode” on all sites, if that is turned off, the site will basically show all stories again, just like Kinky:
And by default, the pure mode is disabled on Spiral. So, again by default, Spiral lists all stories (unless the user switches the Pure mode on or selects the sites manually in the category selector). The reason why Pure is disabled on Spiral is that still most users are only ever visiting Spiral out of habit, and they’d miss a lot of stories because of that.
If someone simply doesn’t want to see any non-mind control stories, he has to select the proper categories or turn on Pure on Spiral.
I have no issue with how it works. It apparently is not that clear to some people how choosing the sites chooses the ratings categories and I thought maybe instead of selecting a site, you just select which rating categories are appropriate and sites are automatically determined from that instead of the other way around. But it was just an idea.
Also remember that gay spiral covers more than hypnosis and mind control anyway, it also covers transformation and magic. And that authors might intend for the story to have hypnosis in later chapters.
I know that people have suggested the ability to toggle specific rating categories off and on.
Regardless of how one perceives the concern I raise, it seems the simplest solution in this case would be to leave it up to the authors on what rating categories they choose for their stories, especially if revamping the rating system would require more work on the manager’s end for little to no return on investment.
After all, I don’t know how the ratings affect the story, nor do I know how many authors give particular attention to the rating categories.
An additional problem is it all used to be GSS, and surely many users are used to thinking “whatever, it’s GSS.”
Like, rational, correct observations about how GKS/GSS/GCupS/GColS (etc) should be organised now, today, is not only up against the work needed to change things, but also the fact that it’s coming from a system that has legacy.
To someone joining GKS today, it’d be rational to put an abstract kink story under GKS: All Other Kinks, and ignore GSS complete (ergo, no mind control rating category). To a legacy user, it’d be rational to put it somewhere on GSS (perhaps under “powers and magic”) and expect people to ignore the mind control category when rating.
As I redo my catalogue I have been migrating slowly from GSS to GKS, but this is a personal choice and likely one that not many others would agree with or bother doing.
Transformation and magic is also covered by the mind control rating. It always has. The aspect of the rating is “influence that alters people, behavior and reality” not the means used to achieve that.
Even if you would convince me that this would be a better way (and yes, I’m not totally opposed to the idea, I just don’t think that this would mean a big improvement in how the authors use the option), it would take at least 3-6 days to implement. On top of that, I wouldn’t know how to create a good UI for this that doesn’t clash with the current system of selecting the publishing sites
In hindsight, I have to acknowledge that the idea of the 3 additional sites has been a failure (even though some people disagree with that), the work I put into this system was in no way justified by the amount of usage we see. But they are there now, and going back is even less an option now.
While I appreciate any kind of brainstorming as to what might be a good idea for the sites (as that indicates a genuine interest in the site and their future), you have to realize that there is currently no one actively working on the sites’ code. As I’ve already stated, I’m taking a longer break and don’t know if and when I’ll return to implement any bigger changes.
Yes, that’s exactly my point. We went a certain way and now we’re stuck with it.
Back then we wanted to broaden the spectrum of stories we feature, away from mind-control and transformation. Looking back I still think what we did was the only real option, as any other solution would have meant to lose GaySpiralStory the way most people love it.
I hoped to see more usage of the other sites and I’m disappointed that they never caught on. Even though we have a nice amount of authors publishing for all four sites, the majority of readers still only ever use GSS exclusively - which is ok, as by default all stories are listed on GSS anyway. But I always hoped that more people would migrate to GayKinky, as it’s the ‘official’ hub for all stories, while GSS was supposed to only feature mc/tf stories. I simply underestimated the persistence of habit.
