Thundercloud

I will see if clearing the browser cache can fix it.

It seems like when you edit old stories you after the server upgrade get a look at the raw html of your story. Being able to fix the html is actually a good feature...but without the whitespace it it is kind of hard on eye for longer stories. If we could get the option to switch between fixing the html and more user friendly edit mode it would be lovely.

Two other requests that would make it more attractive to do community service by writing reviews Besides dragonprints on stories I would like to have a counter that tells how many reviews an author has written on other peoples stories. The metric should be visible on the author profile but could possibly also result in a badge that is included with author name when the story is listed. I would like statistics on the author profile that tells how many words a certain user has written in reviews, average length of the review etc

I would argue it is pretty much the same as with review bombing. It is hard to understand why anyone would do this since the metric becomes worthless when you do such manipulation but reality seems to be like there are too many bad actors out there that want to do such for it to work. Not quite sure I understand your comment. My point about the arms race is not an argument against adding speed limit signs & speed bumps but more along the lines that trying to use technical safeguards to keep the rating system safe would require quite an increase in time devoted to coding AFF. I totally agree. It takes too much human resources to keep it running so I think it would be bad idea to try to run it by the staff or the community. I think there is much to win if better engagement is achieved. I considered if I should propose that the authors get the option to respond to actual reviews...but that comes with the risk that authors and readers start to use it as a forum and you suddenly has dozens of apparent reviews when in reality the author is chatting with a reader about what they should do on next Sunday. If the input field are restricted to be links to posts on the forum you lessen the risk to almost nothing but keepthe good aspects of the proposal. Codewise you need to add a field to the database, add the field in the GUI on two places and write a regular expression that safeguard people don’t try to link to other sites or write free text into the text box. The mythical coder is needed, but compared with much else that has been proposed this seems like a more minor job to me. I would argue that the problem is that the profile is not enough visible for it to really work. The badge would need to be visible on the story list itself so the readers can see what authors that honors the pledge to respond to reviews. In theory you can today put text there as an author but the limited number of letters means it does not work in practice. You don’t have enough numbers as it is and trying to explain the honor system will lessen the available space even more. As for enforcement issues...I think my proposed scheme require very little moderation. If you can only posts links to the forum it means the only way people could abuse it is to link to other stuff on the forum than reviews. If spam is posted it will be moderated and the link becoming dead. You lose the badge (so you must reset it from your author profile) if you don’t provide a link to the forum quickly enough and that can be done without the staff making a decision. Possibly a lazy author could posts links to random content on the forum to pretend they are responding to reviews...but what would be the gain? Doing such will quickly backfire and it not like it takes any more effort to write a reply to the review and post that link. The only real downside to the staff would be to provide technical assistance to readers that find it tough to find the link, but maybe that can be handled by the community.

SNIP

The problem with any rating system is that if a person can click the button then you can make an bot that does the same. There are a number of technical schemes to make it harder for the bot to post, but its an arms race that you will lose unless you constantly upgrade your defenses. I have seen a number of sites on the internet that stayed in the game for a few years until they became overrun by the bots. From another point of view a rating system can be abused even without bots since you can have more than one email. At the end of day there need to be human who says if a review was a genuine effort or just spam. Giving people badges for reviews would be nice...but it takes serious effort to run such. You have to keep doing it even on days when you much rather would prefer to do other stuff. Trying to think outside of the box...maybe the thing that is really missing is feedback on reviews. I try to do community service by from time to time reading stuff that I think I can tolerate and writing a review afterward. There are few authors who have a reply thread on the forum and these make it loads more fun to do a review than the authors that never respond. What if we had a badge that represent that you promise to give feedback/responses on any reviews you get? Authors who sign up for this get the badge posted by their story submissions that makes it clear the author has pledged to respond to reviews within a certain time scale. I think having the badge will drive traffic to the stories with badges. The author can mark a review and enter a link to the forum when they have answered to “prove” they are following the pledge. The AFF code makes sure the links posted only goes to the forum (or even the right part of the forum). If no link is posted to a response for a certain time the badge is removed automatically from the author profile until they reactive the pledge. Possibly there might eventually be cases of need for moderation if an author tries to pretend they follow the pledge even while they in reality don’t do it but I think this scheme is quite harder to abuse than many others and it would promote good behavior. Additionally there might be cases when people need technical assistance about how to post links...but this can be handled by other people than the actual admin of the site.

Chapter 10 has now been posted. If you review it the likelihood I review some of your story increases a lot...

Great you have back up you can use to fix the problem. As a fellow systemdeveloper...unless some of crew know they made the wrong SQL and are responsible for the problem I suggest this might be a good time to verify that you have a full set of backups that is independent from normal backups and preferably off line. If somebody tried to hack AFF, and caused the problem to happen through an exploit, there might we worse data loss that could happen. Additionally, no matter if this really was an failed attack I would suggest that using a supported version of PHP is really important. I don’t know what PHP version is used here, but many sites uses outdated PHP with many security holes. Checking OWASP Cheat sheet for PHP is also a really good idea because there are lots of things in PHP that available by default but not always needed. Getting rid things that are not needed increases the security a lot.

It seems that all author names has been replaced by 123123 in the database so you can’t longer search for author names or tell what author who wrote a particular story. Sounds like a database update that went horribly wrong...do you have backup you can read back to restore the missing information?

“Dark whispers from the Rainbow”

Ummm...waking up while still within inside would imply he stayed hard for the whole night and they slept without moving. This sounds more like parody material for a cartoon than anything that could happen in reality. If you want to make it look like they had sex I suggest they could be covered in the dried remains of cum or something similar. As for reaction it totally depends on what you want to happen later. Everything from “We never mention this again! We must have been drunk” to “Bloody rapist!” are possible. It is your characters so only you can tell the contents of their emotional backpack.

Some time back I heard that KKU had run into problem with his laptop. Until he gets it sorted there is risk he won’t be visiting here much.

The idea for the story came from a line of dialogue in JayDee’s hilarious story You (http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600107772&chapter=1) where a character complain about somebody treating her as an exposition fairy. JayDee’s story is a parody about AFF writing itself and IMHO well worth the time to read. Anyway, it made me start thinking about how fun it would be if having a fairy talking about sex toys instead. I am glad you found it funny, that was my intention. It is very much coming from a video game context. Invidia Red does in his review refer to Navi from the Zelda series. If you go looking for cosplay of Navi (and you don’t get stuck with Avatar examples) the likelihood is great the Navi cosplay will feature a text sign with some quote from the game. Tv tropes have a list of examples of exposition fairies in a number of computer games in case you want to educate yourself. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExpositionFairy Thank for the tip, I will look into the difference in the meaning for "lending" with "borrowing". It is easy to stumble into false friends when you write in a second language. BTW I am really glad you found just a few language issues. The work load of writing the story without a beta reader and the family suffering from sickness for a large part of the December was pretty much over the top. I am kind of surprised that I actually got it finished. *smiles* Maybe I should return to develop the setting more. An actual visit to the fairy court sounds like it could be fun to write.

It was a really good idea since somebody hacking the Nice List is an too obvious plot development. Twins in a threesome was likely the only way to raise the stakes for the elves scene. BTW...I think I might have missed a negation in my review. The thing I meant to say is that I am not into Anthro but found myself sad I could not see calendar.

You don’t seem to subscribe to less is more...anyway...if you ever get around to collect your string of stories into a full story arc I would not mind try reading it since the setting is cool. Until then I think I will focus on my own writing and exchanging reads with other authors.

Actually I think reading it is not enough...you need to remember it all also. ;- I have made the comment that your writing style is not really my thing, a big part of it is that I get an overdose ofthe guessing game. Having to reread an previous story to get hidden reasons why a certain character made a certain decision is fine...needing to cross reference with an earlier story to determine if something is really happening or if somebody is delusional and just rambling…not my thing.

I agree that something shiny might be a good idea. A trophy kind of imply that it is something the owner would not like to part with. Exotic horn believed to come from a unicorn?

Sounds like you liked it. Isn’t a shame that searching for erotic Navi cosplay gives you mostly Avatar hits instead of showing you scenes where Navi get what she deserves...

I would say that you should not worry too much. It is not like there is much difference between any two average popular porn movies out there. Building on the expectations about good porn tropes of the public and getting resonance from the emotional context of the scene is not always easy, but the readers imagination will fill the gaps and make them enjoy the scene if it is your normal quality of writing.

Okay...family has recovered from whatever it was (at least verified to not be Covid). This meant I could finally put some time to write and managed to wrap the my project for the Winter Holiday 2021. I thus present: The Exposition Fairy Story codes: M/F, Oral, Toys Summary: Peter is on a mission from the fairy king, but as solstice approaches, the weather worsens. Is it too much to ask for a night in the civilization to recover? The exposition fairy granted to Peter does strongly disagree. So is Peter in for a night of misery, or can he somehow find a way to make the fairy accept that he needs time to relax and recover?

Things have not progressed for me...or rather it went very well until the family was hit with the flu. I will see if I can manage to find to time finish the story or if I must save it for later.

Does this mean that you have a Winter Holiday that is one month long??? Myself I have just begun planning for what I possibly could write for the event.

Ratmen are an obvious alternative, but basically any race can match if you give the right culture. Pirate mermen that raid coastal areas and abduct slaves...