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I can't use firefox with storiesonline, I get a 'URL redirection limit error' when I try to login to the site with firefox, why?
When you run Firefox for the first time, it imports IE's cookies to make easier for you to move. Unfortunately, sometime, the importing operation is not done perfectly and some cookies get corrupted during the operation.
The problem is easy to fix:
In Firefox on MS Windows:
In Firefox on Mac OS X:
That should fix the problem. You'll have to log in, but it will work flawlessly after.
How do I open the Palm PDB files and Text files that end with .bz2?
The Palm PDB files and Text files that you can download from the site are compressed using a high efficiency compression algorithm called bzip2 (.bz2). Mac OS and Linux users can just double click the files. Windows users may need a utility to open the files. You can download a program to decompress bz2 files from here (command line interface tool) or here (program with a graphical user interface) or here (another decompressor with a graphical interface).
» Download bzip2 decompressor for Windows (Command Line tool)
» Download Stuffit Expander (Free general decompressor with a graphical interface)
» Download 7-zip (another decompressor with a graphical interface for Windows)
When I go to the new stories page or the recent updates page, I find no new stuff, it seems as if the page has not been update for a while, what gives?
Your browser is caching those pages and probably other pages on the site too aggressively. You need to set your browser to always fetch the page every time there is a new one.
If you're using IE 5 and 6 on Windows here is how to fix the problem:
go 'Tools -> Internet Options: Middle pane 'Temporary internet files'
Click the 'Settings...' Button
Make sure that the top radio button 'Every visit to the page' is selected.
Click OK
Click 'Delete Files...'
Click OK
Click OK
If you're using IE 7 on Windows here is how to fix the problem:
go 'Tools -> Internet Options: General Tab
Under 'Browsing history' Click the 'Settings' Button
Make sure that the top radio button 'Every visit to the page' is selected.
Click OK
Click 'Delete...'
In 'Temporary Internet Files', Click 'Delete files...'
Click 'Yes'
Click Close
Click OK
Also, make sure that your computer's day and time are accurate so that your browser knows when to expire pages from it's cache at the right time. Clicking the refresh/reload page button on your browser should help.
If all of the above does not help that could mean that your ISP is using a proxy server and that there's a problem with their configuration.
I clicked on a story and at the end of the file, there was no ending to the story, instead there was a note that it's an exclusive story, I hate that, especially that I had no warning and I wasted my time reading something that I don't want to pay for. How can I tell that a story is exclusive before clicking its name?
Premier area exclusive stories have a yellow background behind the story's number in the listing table.
Some stories have a yellow background behind the story number in the listings, why is that?
Some stories on the site are exclusive to the premier area. The yellow background means just that. If you click on those stories from the free area of the site, you'll get a preview of the story and to read the rest you'll need a premier membership. Reading previews of exclusive stories does not count in your daily download allocation, so you can read them without worrying about wasting a download.
I just logged in to the site and when I first clicked a link I got a message that I already have reached my limit for the day, why?
There are several different reasons that it would happen:
It hasn't been 24 hours after you have logged in the last time and the counter was not reset for you. In this case you have to wait until it is 24 hours after your previous log in.
You have a web-surfing accelerator active on your computer or your browser have that feature (usually called pre-fetching or offline browsing). In that case you must turn it off otherwise you'll always get that message.
Your browser did not log you in properly. If your browser's cache setting is too aggressive, it may not fetch the login page from the site. That means the site does not really know that you officially logged in. What you need to do is to change your browser's cache setting to check for new pages 'every time' with each visit to the page. Then clear your browser's temporary internet files. That should solve the problem for you.
I don't understand those little codes attached to each story listing, what do they mean?
Those codes tell you what the story is classifications area, basically what is the story about. For more information about what each code means exactly, check Story Codes there is all you need to know about the codes used on this site.
Sometimes I click a story name and I see the scoring mechanism show up at the bottom but no story shows up, why?
Many stories at the site are linked from other sites, they are marked as External Link since those stories are on a different server I have no control over them. So if that particular server is busy, the story will be delayed to show up and if that site is swamped it could refuse the connection and you end up with no story.
Some stories have no voting mechanism to allow me to vote, why?
Each reader is allowed one vote per story. If you have voted for the story previously then the voting mechanism won't show up again.
The score doesn't seem to be the average of all votes. How is it calculated? And how does scoring work in general?
It may seem like a score should be a straight forward affair with all the votes tallied and divided by their count to arrive at the score. Unfortunately, that would only work for a small number of stories and a small number of voters for a short period of time. After that, many elements start affecting how scoring happens.
Among other things, the psychological effect of other stories' scores tend to drive voting trends.
There are two ways for readers to vote for a story on the site here.
The first and default way to vote is the basic voting form at the end of each story. The form is comprised of one selector and the reader can select from 10 values in the form. Each selection is assigned a value between 1 and 10; 1 being lowest.
The second way to vote is the expanded voting form. This form is optional and the readers that choose to use this voting form have to select three separate values for each story: Technical Merit, Plot and Appeal. This way they can give different scores to different aspects of the story.
Those three values get combined to make up the TPA. The TPA looks something like this on the site: 8.7.4
The 'T' has a value of '8' and it is the truncated average of all the technical merit values received.
The 'P' has a value of 7 and it is the truncated average of all the Plot values received.
The 'A' has a value of 4 and it is the truncated average of all the Appeal values received.
Both, the basic voting form and the 'A' or appeal value of the TPA get combined to produce the Score. The Score is calculated in a way to make it relative to the median of all the average scores registered for all the stories posted during the same period of time for each story (a period of time is usually the same year so the count of stories compared is in the thousands). The formula that calculates the Score is a simple scaler that scales the average (mean) score (calculated by adding all the basic votes + all the 'A' votes from the TPA and divided by the number of basic votes + the number of TPA votes), relative to the median of all the mean scores by all the stories of the same time period. It sounds more complicated that it actually is. But the net result is a Score that hopefully reflects the collective opinion of all the readers who votes for the story.
To encourage readers to send feedback to authors, storiesonline provides an easy to use form at the end of every story and an email contact link in every author's page as well as a feedback link at the end of every blog entry.
In order to encourage those who are reluctant to disclose their email address to still send feedback, the mailing system provided allows for anonymous messages.
The system works very well and storiesonline, according to many authors, is the source of the most feedback received; which is very good for authors.
However, like every system, it is possible to abuse it. Hiding behind the afforded anonymity, some cowardly people abuse authors by sending them abusive messages through the anonymous system.
To deal with the problem, the mail system has been updated to allow authors to refuse all mail, or to refuse just anonymous email.
When an author chooses to refuse all email, the site won't show any mail forms or links.
When an author choose to refuse anonymous email only, then the forms on the site will have the reader's email inserted by default.
Since this is a risk of privacy for the reader, every reader is given the option of having a specialized contact email address in their account for such cases.
The main email address or the contact email address can be used in contact forms, however, either one have to be confirmed within 30 days when used. Premier members have to confirm their emails only once per subscription period.
Email address confirmation is done through a confirmation message sent to your email address and requires you to follow the instructions in it to have your email confirmed.
Messages sent to authors who refuse anonymous feedback from readers whose email addresses have not been confirmed are put on hold until the email address confirmation is received.
Of course, authors who refuse anonymous feedback are assured to receive less feedback.
If you are a reader that would like to send feedback to authors, but you don't want to use the email address that you used to subscribe to the site, then get another email address and add it to your account using the 'Email form settings' page. The page is always accessible through the 'My Account' page on the site.
The system needs to make sure that addresses used are still active after their first usage. So if you want to send messages to authors refusing anonymous feedback, your email address used must be confirmed at least within 30 days.
Some readers may find this practice highly annoying, but you have the option of ignoring the author. If you see your email address in the form, and you don't like that, the mail form preference allows you to hide all email forms that don't accept anonymous feedback.
Additional features of the mail feedback system is that you can have your email address automatically inserted into all mail forms to save you the effort of typing your own address into the forms that accept anonymous feedback, and also you can have the system send you a copy of the message that you send to authors.
The log in system on storiesonline works with something called browser cookies. A browser cookie is a bit of text that storiesonline's server sends to your browser and asks it to remember it. After that, with every page request that your browser makes to storiesonline's server, whether for a story or for story listing, your browser is supposed to send that cookie back to the server.
Storiesonline requires that you accept a cookie from the server to be able to access stories. Without your browser accepting the site's cookie and returning it properly with every request, you will only get the demo version of the site. And many preferences, like font size and stylesheet and text width are all handled through cookies.
Many things may interfere with the correct handling of the site's cookies on your system. Date and time settings on your computer have an effect. Your browser's cookie settings, and now with the advent of security problems on the Windows platform, even security software started messing with cookie handling.
All the above must be set properly for your computer to be able to access the site successfully.
First thing to do is to make sure that the clock and date on your computer are set correctly. Your browser will expire the site's cookie when it reaches the time that the cookie is set for by the server, if your date and time settings are way off, then your browser will expire the cookie prematurely.
Second, your browser's security level must be no higher than 'Medium'. A browser set to high security level will most likely block cookies unless specifically instructed to allow certain sites. Below you'll find instructions how to allow the site's cookie while keeping a high security setting.
Starting in 2002, some security software started interfering with cookies, like firewalls and internet security software. (ZoneAlarm and Norton Internet Security will strip cookies and referral information from web requests, and will effectively sabotage your access to the site.)
Check your firewall and your security software's settings to make sure that they allow proper cookie handling.
Once you've fixed the security settings in your browser and security software, make sure that you delete your temporary internet files before you try logging in again to the site to make sure that your browser requests pages properly instead of fetching them from its own cache.
If you're using some sort of proxy server to access the site, or some web acceleration software (like the one distributed by Earthlink and AOL), you need to disable them. Your browser needs to contact the site directly with no interference in order for things to work properly.
Here are step-by-step instructions for enabling or controlling cookies in recent versions of the two leading Internet browsers for Windows-based and Macintosh computers.
Usually, keeping the security and privacy settings at 'Medium' will make your browser handle the site's cookie properly. However, if you want to have custom settings:
Sometime when reading stories on storiesonline I get pop-ups. Is this supposed to happen? Also I notice some words are underlined and the links lead to info not connected to the story. Why does that happen? I thought storiesonline is supposed to be ad-free!
These things are not from storiesonline. Storiesonline does not advertise for anything on the site and would never, ever do these things. So, NO, these things are not supposed to happen when reading stories on the site.
That is done by some spyware/adware on your computer. It monitors your surfing habits and modifies the files incoming to your browser and display these things for you.
What you need to do is clean up your system. Ad-aware from Lavasoft and spybot search and destroy are two programs to help you with this problem.
You can get Adaware here:
You can get Spybot S&D here:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html
You may need both, one will find somethings that the other may not.
There are more spyware/adware programs available, but those two are the most popular.
Also, make sure that your Anti-virus software is up-to-date, some viruses are known to install spyware on your system.
Also, if you're using Internet Explorer to access the site please note that the department of homeland security has issued a strong advisory that people move away from Internet explorer because it's a big security risk. So if you could use a different browser to access the internet, you'd be much better off.
A great alternative browser is Firefox from the Mozilla organization, it's a free, secure, feature rich browser that works much better than IE and has much less security holes.
You can get Firefox here:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
Another browser is Opera. You can get it here:
Ultimately in personal online security and safety, it's best not to use windows to begin with. My first choice would be a Macintosh system. They have no viruses, no spyware and no other bullshit. But that requires the purchase of a new system. I'm a mac user and for the last 5 years I haven't had a single problem with any of my systems.
If you want to move away from windows but do not want to buy a new computer, there is the linux system, which can be (most likely) installed on your current computer. It does not run windows software, but if all you do is read email and surf the net, linux is great, it comes with all you'll need for that. Ubuntu is a linux distribution targeted towards people that want an easy to use Windows replacement. They even have a 'Live CD' for you to try it out. A live CD is a CD containing the system, from which you can boot without having to install the system and make a final commitment. This way you can try it with no strings attached. By no strings attached I mean that you don't have to reformat your drive and install linux. Linux is free, you don't have to buy anything.