Darkniciad

Just thought I'd add a place to post things about the Magic of the Wood series. Here's something that you might find interesting -- my list I keep to keep track of family members as the series goes on. DANIEL GREENE: 31 Steward, 49 Daughter, 74 Forever, 92 Secret, 98 Kindred, 100 Heart, 103 Beauty XANBRINA: 18 Daughter, 43 Forever, 61 Secret, 67 Kindred, 69 Heart, 72 Beauty XANKIA: 19 Forever, 37 Secret, 44 Kindred, 46 Heart, 49 Beauty DANIEL MILLER: 18 Secret, 24 Kindred, 26 Heart, 29 Beauty GLEN: 10 Secret, 16 Kindred, 18 Heart, 21 Beauty XANMARA: 13 Secret, 18 Kindred, 20 Heart, 23 Beauty XANTERRA: 2 Kindred, 4 Heart, 7 Beauty XANELLA: 2 Kindred, 4 Heart, 7 Beauty DALE: 1 Heart, 4 Beauty The numbers are ages at the time of the story. I'm probably going to start tracking the married-in family members the next time I update this. I wasn't doing it before, because I had everyone hooking up with people the same age *laugh* With Glen marrying a woman a few years older in Heart and Dara marrying a younger man in Beauty, that's changed. I need to remember how old they are as the series goes on. There have been 72 years since the first story ( more really, as I start "Steward" with Daniel as a young boy ) I know it's unrealistic that so little has changed in the world around them as generations come of age, but it's fantasy dagnabbit! *laugh* I'm not going to have them flying around in solar-powered Jetson cars. Technology is simply going to move slowly in this alternate world I've created. You also might notice a few names you don't recognize at the end of the list. Those are Dan and Brooke's kids. Terra and Ella are twins, with thier younger brother Dale. More likely than not, they're slated to be the stars of upcoming stories. Still trying to come up with an interesting way to hook up Xannera. Everything I've tried to write just doesn't have the right "oomph" to it. There's a fair to middling possibility that her story will end up being either a web short ( still working on launching that website feature ) or perhaps a secondary story tied to another new tale, released at about the same time. For example, maybe I'll tell Terra's story, and within it, there's another character who's peripheral to that story, but ends up hooking up with Xannera in a side tale that I'll release at about the same time. There's just not much of a way to build tension with a character like Xannera in the world I've created, which doesn't allow people to stumble upon them. The nymphs can keep people they don't want out, so anyone who can find them is wanted there. At that point, it's pretty much assured what's going to happen

Miss you at Peeks, Moon. *Hugs* right back, and wishing all the luck in the world to you in whatever you do.

Decided to start tracking the other sites where I post as well. Added sections to the ( now wrongly titled ) Lit Stats Home page. At SOL, I have 9,459k worth of stories posted, which is a little over a million seven figured at 180 words per K. SOL figures it at 200, but that seemed to way overestimate from my own, known totals. I suppose I could have just taken the known totals and recorded them, but I was feeling lazy. As of this first track, I'm holding a real average of 8.53 and a real median of 8.49 across all three pen names. This doesn't figure in the TPA votes, because that just felt like too much work. Laz is going to roll those into the real average ( that only authors can see ) soon anyway. It will throw off the second track in February, but after that, they'll all be working from the same base. The visible score -- the one SOL calculates with its strange formula -- is averaging at 7.13 with a median of 7.11. Considering what I see when paging through the new list every so often, I think I'm doing pretty well. Most stories seem to fall in the 6s, if they get enough votes for a score at all. Readership at SOL really seems to be tailing off from its highest point a few years ago. I'm averaging 166 votes per story with a median of 133. I have little doubt that this is going to drop as time moves on because of the readership drop I've been seeing there. The total number of votes across all three pen names is 16,910. Downloads is another place where SOL does some weird mathmatical magic. The downloads displayed in public on chapter stories are calculated by some weird formula that I can't fathom. It's not a sum of the total downloads, nor is it an average. I have no idea what it is, frankly. What I can tell you is that this formula is the reason long multi-chapter stories have even more of an advantage at SOL than they do at Lit. The formula dramatically increases the download numbers on multi-chapter stories versus one shots, which have direct download figures. So, I have two sets of numbers for downloads. The first uses the public figures, which I think are inflated on chapter stories. The second uses a median of the download numbers for the individual chapters of those stories, and the actual download totals for one-shots. Using public numbers, I'm averaging 2800 downloads per story with a median of 1915 across all three pen names. As with votes, I expect this number to drop as time moves on, unless SOL has a revival of readership. That comes up to a total of 285,559. Using my median calculation, I'm averaging 2187 downloads per story with a median of 1767. To me, that feels much more accurate to reality. This comes up to a total of 223,108. For those from other sites: SOL is a membership only site ( although free ) You have to have an account to read full stories or vote, which decreases the number of downloads and votes, but does dramatically increase the vote per download percentages. If you look at Lit and what I'll be posting from my third site in a minute, you'll see those percentages are under 1%. At SOL ( depending upon which view numbers I use ) I'm pulling in 5.92% or 7.58% votes per download. That's 1 in 13 or 1 in 17 readers actually voting, as compared to 1 in 165 or something similar on Lit. SOL doesn't have public comments, and I don't have enough story favorites to bother tracking. On the third site, I've only been posting there since early this year, and I'm only posting under my third name. My stories as Les and Dark just don't seem to be a good fit there ( overall. Some would work quite well, I believe ) and they don't have the ability to register multiple pen names anyway. There, I'm averaging 42 votes per story with a median of 37 and a total of 1285. Considering most stories don't seem to break 10 votes, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm averaging 7017 views per story with a median of 6585 and a total of 217,528. You can see the dramatic effect of open public viewing right here, as my one pen name has almost as many views as all three pen names have downloads at SOL, in less than a year. You can also see the dramatic decrease in votes per view, as it's about .65% It's a toss-up which is better, which is why I end up posting across multiple sites for maximum feedback. My average score is 4.78 with a median of 4.76. I haven't really had time to do any serious comparisions there, but it seems to be pretty good amongst the group of stories that breaks the 10-15 vote barrier. You almost never see anything below a 4 voted there -- or at least I don't. Scores are even more inflated than at Literotica. I believe this is due to the ability of authors to require a comment when voting ( I don't ), and that in the past ( if I'm reading correctly ) there was a universal policy of requiring a comment to vote a 3 or below. So, people are used to voting either 4 or 5, or not voting at all. I'm averaging about 7 comments per story, which seems pretty good, with a total of 223 comments to date. This site does track story favorites, and I have quite a few, but I decided not to track them this time out. What it boils down to is that I seem to perform a little above average no matter where I post my stories. I'm no Mark Twain, but people seem to enjoy my stuff. That's where I've always seen myself, and the numbers seem to confirm that.

Quarterly tracking time again. Link to the full stats is up in earlier posts. As of right now I have an average score of 4.68 with a median of 4.69. That's on 38,458 votes and 5,532,787 views with 1523 Public Comments and 812 Story Favorites. Currently, I have 1,781,459 words worth fo submissions to Lit, which doesn't include stories exclusive to other story websites or my own website. More stories creeping over the 100 vote barrier where they can potentially appear in the toplist. Thanks for the votes, as always! Hoping to wrap up Lowborn soon so I can add another 45k or so words to my total. Have a couple of other half finished multi-part stories that will crank the number up, too. Should pass the million eight barrier soon.

Here's a couple more fun models I've happened across in my travels: http://Alicemoon.peekshows.com http://LilyValley.peekshows.com

A quick shoutout to the site I used to visit all the time, where my Baileykins worked as a model and I'm still technically a chat admin. www.peekshows.com Free sign up, and plenty of free chats + free tokens on sign up, if I remember correctly. http://lisbella.peekshows.com Lisbella is the model that's got me popping back in. Gorgeous, and she actually chats with the room *gasp* Far too many models never figure that out. If you can catch her online, she's a fine example of the best Peeks has to offer. I'm DarkenOne there -- or, if by some chance I'm logged in as an admin ( haven't for years ) it will just be Darken. Just don't act like a jerk or beg for free peeks if you go *laugh* If I have to log in as an admin and kick your ass off chat, it will not go well Join in the conversation, make fun of the desperate beggars ( just don't get too evil. Let the model set the tone of the room ) and enjoy the scenery. If you do happen to come across another model who engages the room, let me know. Can't stand the boring ones who just sit there ( no matter what they're showing off ) or say nothing but "go pvt bb"

Tonight was the night I decided to run the quarterly track. As of right now I have an average score of 4.68 with a median of 4.70. That's on 36,896 votes and 5,256,639 views with 1473 Public Comments and 719 Story Favorites. Currently, I have 1,741,024 words worth of submissions to Lit. That doesn't count "Sister's Shadow" which is only posted on Storiesonline, or any of the numerous "Lost Work" and "Ancient Stories" posted here on the website. Soon, I hope it won't be including short stories posted exclusively to the website as well Link is up in earlier posts, if you want to see the individual breakdown. As usual, several stories as Dark creeping toward 100 votes where they have a chance to pop into the toplist. Several have since the last quarterly track. Many thanks to everyone who reads, votes, comments, or favorites one of my stories.

Here we are, less than 8 months since I added checks against the new database to the forum, blog, and my contact forms. As of today, those have officially reported 1000 instances of spammers. And that's really just a drop in the bucket. My contact forms don't report by default, they simply block. Only spam ( none so far ) that gets past the checks provides me with the information to manually report them. Ditto on the blog. There are hundreds of instances of blocked spam. The only ones I've reported are the ones that made it through the first lines of defense -- only to get caught by Askimet. Even if Askimet hadn't caught them, I don't let comments auto-approve until at least one comment has been approved, so they still wouldn't get through to the public. All this on a low-traffic website where little of the effort put forth by the multitude of spammers has borne the fruit of a single post that actually saw public display for a limited amount of time. I don't even want to think about the spam hammering a site with a lot of activity gets, when mine draws such an onslaught.

Some may have noticed that the contest tracks have vanished. The reason is that the effort required is just getting to be too much for the return. On a brighter note, I looked at the sci-fi&fantasy toplist for the first time in quite a while tonight, and a whole lot of stories are popping back in there. When they moved the minimum to 100, almost everything dropped off. Now, my stuff is getting up to that new bar and popping back in, which explains the recent rise in reads and favorites, despite not putting anything out recently as Dark. Hope to remedy that very soon with 9 chapters of Lowborn, and hopefully a new chapter of SOTM while Lowborn is posting.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ItsJustSomeRandomGuy If you've ever been into comics, or have just been enjoying all the comic book movies, I think you'll get a kick out of this guy. Been laughing my ass off all night. While I'm at it, check out Linkara on http://www.thatguywiththeglasses.com Actually, plenty of good people to check out there ( including Spoony, linked in another topic, and TGWTG himself ), but Linkara connects to the topic title, since he reviews comics.

Quarterly stat check is done ( link to the page in earlier posts ) The May track is where I do annual totals, and here they are. Across all three pen names I have added: 135,098 Words in new stories 18,206 New Votes 1,684,412 New Views 399 New PCs 517 New Story Favorites

If you enjoy these, odds are that you'll also enjoy the adventures of the Spoony One in his Counter Monkey series. Counter Monkey And: The Spoony Experiment for more Spoony Goodness. If you've ever played Final Fantasy 8 and haven't seen it, check out the Spoony Review of the game. Laugh Riot.

There's a couple of things I might add to the forum eventually. One is the Battle Mod I helped co-create, and the other is an arcade that runs flash games. I could actually install the battle mod now, as it's been updated for the current version of the forum. The thing is, the forum is about to undergo a version change that might break things *laugh* The arcade is still in Beta for the current version, so the upgrade may delay the development cycle even more. I could hold off on upgrading the forum, but coupled with the forum upgrade will be an upgrade of the CCS that runs the website, and I'm liking the looks of some of the features. So, I'll be upgrading and hoping the mods catch up. Both can be pretty addictive. If everything comes together, it'll be a reason to pop by even during the points where I'm not releasing new stories.

Oh, they're not getting through I'm hooked up to the database and blocking everything for a while now. This thread has become my "ha ha" journal as they futily pound away at multiple layers of protection. ( Check the comments in the ips marketplace for the mod. I think you might see a name you recognize there as well as several recommendations on the ips forum ) I actually throttled back on the blog, because the back-up plug-in there catches pretty much every spam comment anyway, so I only needed the database to block spammy registrations. I can use the back-up plug-in to catch the spam comments before they go up on the site, then report them with full data to the database. I even coded my own plug-ins for my contact forms and upcoming user-interactive features. Thinking about putting in a simple ( no guilds ) version of Battle that runs on IP.Content, but that's far in the future if it happens. I'm really surprised nobody has adapted for 3.x, considering how hookable it is. I haven't dug down deep into everything, as I'm being lazy and using mostly things others have coded, but it seems like coding up a version that requires zero file edits should be a breeze.

And now all of my contact forms are protected by the anti-spam database as well. All of the LST3K interactive functions will roll out with the anti-spam protection from day one. If any spam does happen to get through the contact forms, it will save all of the necessary information for me to report the spammer to the database. I'll do the same for the LST3K interactive pages. I could set them up to automatically report, but I honestly don't expect the spammers to mess with any of those features much. The blog and the forum are the primary targets, and they're hammering away relentlessly at those, no matter how many times they're blocked or banned. I'm just protecting everything on the off chance that I piss off one of the spammers enough to make 'em go looking for another way to get through and spam

Up to 127 blocked spammers between the blog and the forum. Still less than a month since I installed the hook. The problem scales, as well. On larger boards, the number of attempted spam registrations is even larger. There are people reporting as many as 40 attempts per day. If you have a forum or blog, it's time to get hooked up with a spammer database. The traditional methods won't stop the human agents, though you still need all the automated controls like Captcha in there to stop the bots and force them to use humans. Feel free to post or private message me if you want the link to the database I'm using. There are pre-made hooks/widgets/plug-ins for most of the major forum and blog platforms, and the coding to check it with nearly any registration process/contact form isn't too difficult. I'm not going to post it openly on the off chance the spammers are smart enough to check their own spam IPs against the database to figure out which ones will get through

Please do not reply to this topic to make a donation or audition! Start a new topic so it will remain hidden from public view! This thread is for questions about donating stories or auditioning. Once the LST3K section goes live on the website, it will answer most of the basic questions. This thread will remain to delve into stickier issues, though. If you have questions about donating, auditioning, or LST3K in general, post them here!

This section of the forum isn't going to have much to see. Every new topic requires moderation before it will appear. Any topics that are visible are open to replies from anyone, though. ( Provided I set it up right *laugh* ) The purpose of this forum is to provide an easy venue for people to donate stories for riffing as an LST3K or to audition to become a riffer. Because many donations and auditions are meant to be private, they'll never actually appear to the public. This is preparation for the forthcoming launch of the LST3K section of the website. If you'd like to make a donation now, simply start a new topic, and paste your story into the message box. Nobody will see it here unless I approve it. Normally, such donations won't be visible, but if you're a glutton for punishment, feel free to say that you'd like to see your donation made public here. I'll contact you if I see potential and start work on a riff of the story. If you'd like to audition to become a riffer, find an awful story somewhere and rip it a new one with witty commentary! Then paste it into the message box. Just like a donation, the topic won't appear automatically. If the story you're riffing is your own, or you can demonstrate permission to do so that I can verify, then you can request that the topic be made public and I'll be happy to do so. You don't have to have permission from the original author for an audition, though. Only my eyes will see auditions, so nobody is going to be offended by you tearing the story apart. Auditions without established permission will never be visible to the public, and will only be used to decide whether I'd like to have you on board helping me tear apart awful stories.

I see a name that I think I recognize in the new registrations, so I thought I'd mention this. If you're having any problems validating your account, feel free to contact my through my contact form ( link on the main page ) or through Lit/SOL. I can manually validate you, if you're having issues doing it the normal way. Just let me know. Accounts that aren't validated are automatically pruned after a certain period of time, so if you don't validate, your account will vanish and you'll have to sign up again.

Blocked 52 spammers trying to register since the 22nd of last month. How insane is that? Graph of the spam attack.

New quarterly track is up. The big news is nearly 10,000 votes in the last 3 months Link is in the first post of the thread if you want to check it out, or check out my tracks of Literotica's themed contests. I'm currently tracking the Valentine's contest, which will go up on the page as soon as the contest is over.

Almost February, when the next quarterly track is due. But, the actual purpose of this post is to test Rich Text. Well, whadda ya know. It works. That will make one of the LST3K pages a hell of a lot easier to code *laugh*

I am so enjoying watching the spammers run into a brick wall *laugh* Had to go leave a glowing comment on the Hook that's making this possible. One of the best little bits of code I've ever come across. Incredibly effective. I have pages and pages of "error" logs from spammers failing to register and failing to access the site in any way - each and every day. There's one that's used at least seven different IPs and seven different variations of the same throwaway email address in just the last couple of days. If anybody has an invision board and a spam registration problem, send me a message and I'll point you straight to the hook. Installing it will be the best couple of minutes you ever spend.

Eight pages of failed spammer registrations, failed spammer logins, and attempts to access the site while I was at work today *laugh* I do believe the problem just might be solved.

The new layer of spam protection is working like a charm. It's stopped every spammer ( lots ) who have tried to register over the last several hours dead in their tracks. I've killed off all the IP wildcard bans, but retained all the email ones, because those domains are nothing but spam. I also killed off all the IP bans older than a certain date, because the new service is taking care of logging new bans, and even cleaning them up after a certain period of time. There's no information a spammer can gather without signing up ( I don't allow guests to do much ) and the service doesn't allow them to sign up, so I'm not all that worried about them being able to access the website, where they can sit frustrated because they can't steal emails, send spam through the forum, or post the crap on the boards. It will protect legitimate users from getting banned simply because they share a neighborhood with a spammer, too. Much less work for me, and still getting the job done. Woot!