Is it just me or have SOL stories stopped using "and" and "the" in their stories? These appear to have been replaced by the use of "or" and "a". It makes it very difficult to read stories when you have to translate as you go.
Is it just me or have SOL stories stopped using "and" and "the" in their stories? These appear to have been replaced by the use of "or" and "a". It makes it very difficult to read stories when you have to translate as you go.
It is (pretty much) every story. Don't even have to download. Just open any story/chapter in a browser and search for " the " (that is space,the,space). Anything after "there is more text" has the replacements. Any "the" left are capital "T" (sentence start).
This seems to have started at or around the beginning of this year.
This is weird then. Max limit exceeded?
Just to clarify: it is the text after "there is more text", not the beginning of a chapter?
ETA I tried as 'visitor' and indeed it did not happen either. But could see only chapter 1. Probably a limit on email address?
Copy from where?
As mentione above only if one is identified as a 'bot' and only the text after "there is more text" is affected. For instance all 'the' get changed to 'a'. But since there are also valid 'a' a batch replace would not fix but maybe reduce? But again, not the whole chapter, just the 2nd half. Too much effort for the result!
A recent example was https://storiesonline.net/s/28952/dissonance
But you probably won't see the problem unless you are also 'botomized.
I had the same issue. After contacting Lazeez he told me that due to my reading behavior I had been identifiued as a bot by the site system. He agreed to set my status below the bot level.
Nevetheless he reminded me to change my reading behavior because he woudl do it only once and if I got above that level again I just would have to live with it.
Somewhat understandable but...
he reminded me to change my reading behavior because he woudl do it only once
I don't understand that. Once you prove that you're not a bot, your userid should be tagged as a flesh and blood person.
I don't understand that. Once you prove that you're not a bot, your userid should be tagged as a flesh and blood person.
The system tags a user as a bot if suspicious reading behavior is detected. So the user gets marked as a bot. Lazeez can reset that mark but there's no separate list of users that were marked or reset other than all users with or without that mark. The system just keeps checking reading behavior which can cause the same user to be marked again. There's no way to know if a user had the mark reset.
Once you prove that you're not a bot, your userid should be tagged as a flesh and blood person.
Other, non-literature, sites have done that to me :-(
AJ
Once you prove that you're not a bot, your userid should be tagged as a flesh and blood person.
Other, non-literature, sites have done that to me :-(
Why the sad face if they tagged you not being a bot? 🧌
I don't understand that. Once you prove that you're not a bot, your userid should be tagged as a flesh and blood person.
Behind every bot there is a human. If you contact me and prove you're a human and yet everything you do is through a bot, you're still a bot.
I'd be a bit upset - and curious as to what I was doing "wrong" - if that happened to me, but at least I'd know what the cause was. The necessity is obvious and I won't worry about it unless lightning strikes here.
In the meantime, e-x-t-e-r-m-i-n-a-t-e.
Sorry about that, don't know what came over me.
Why the sad face if they tagged you not being a bot?
But after agreeing I'm not a bot, Twitter suspended me twice more. The suspension message refers to Twitter's T&C but I can't see anything that I did wrong. Therefore I don't know what to do to avoid further suspensions.
AJbot
suspicious reading behavior
What is suspicious reading behavior? And why would someone use a bot on this site?
And why would someone use a bot on this site?
Scraping stories to post elsewhere, possibly for money.
Scraping stories to post elsewhere, possibly for money.
Ok I am still a little confused which I put down as knowing nothing about how bots work. But are you talking about downloading epubs? And why would you need a bot for that?
Ok I am still a little confused which I put down as knowing nothing about how bots work. But are you talking about downloading epubs? And why would you need a bot for that?
No, they were scraping plain text, likely making their own epubs. Lazeez mentioned bots causing server load issues by downloading lots of stories from SOL when he first implemented the read more button on free accounts and several other anti-bot measures.
As for why bots, because the volume was higher than any person could have managed manually.
No, they were scraping plain text, likely making their own epubs.
Wow I was a bot years ago because that was what I did back when I didn't have internet, let alone a membership. Each day I would go down to the library and hit "save as HTML" each page and later put them together as a epub. Granted they were only for my enjoyment. I find it hard to get through a day without reading something. If the story was really good, I found it hard to get to sleep because my mind keeps going over the story.
Each day I would go down to the library and hit "save as HTML" each page and later put them together as a epub.
Yea, but you were doing it manually.
Whoever caused the problems that caused Lazeez to implement anti-bot measures was doing hundreds of stories per day using multiple free accounts. Enough that the intent might have been a DDS type attack rather than stealing stories.
I found it hard to get to sleep because my mind keeps going over the story.
That happens to authors when they're writing a story.
If I don't keep getting out of bed to type it down, I forget it in the morning.
That happens to authors when they're writing a story.
If I don't keep getting out of bed to type it down, I forget it in the morning.
Keep a memo-recorder next to your bed so you don't have to get out in the middle of the night to type.