Zen Master: Blog

Personally, I think you've missed the point. The people behind SOL aren't saying that you can't or even shouldn't write about younger people having sex. They've never said that.

What they have said was that you can't post such stories on their website. That's not a subject for argument. It's their website. They can make whatever rules they want. They can prohibit stories that mention Toyota vehicles if they want. You can still write car stories, but if you mention Toyotas you have to post them elsewhere. Follow their rules or go elsewhere.

In this case, they have posted in various places that they have a rule, they have explained that rule, and they have even given their reason for that rule. Whether you or I or anyone else believes that their reason makes sense or is true or relevant does not matter. Personally, I think that the rule is silly, but this is their house. All that matters is that this is their website and they have posted rules for its use. Follow the rules and use the website, or don't.

When you complain about the rules on someone else's website being wrong or unfair, you are a religious bigot insisting that others follow YOUR values. If you came to my house and started telling me that I'm using the living room wrong, I'd throw you out on the curb.

Have you considered starting your own free web-publishing website that has whatever rules you want? If you do a good enough job, eventually you will have people come and complain about your rules.

Me, I'm happy here on SOL but I have a well-received story on ASSTR that can't come here because it revolves around a woman, now of age, who became a sex-slave when much younger. It doesn't matter how the subject is treated. It isn't allowed on SOL.

Follow their rules or go elsewhere. It's not a hard decision. Tell the webmaster, if you want. Maybe you can convince him he's wrong. Whining to the readers that you don't like the rules does not increase my respect for you.

-ZM

Did you know that you have comments turned off on your blog? What's the point of having a blog if no one can reply? That's very much like saying "Y'all should listen to what I want to say but I have no desire to hear your reply".

Um, have you considered having someone else look over your work before you post it? SOL calls that person an 'editor' but since you retain full control he or she is really a 'proofreader'. SOL maintains a long list of people who have volunteered to do that for other authors.

-ZM

One of the other authors here just mentioned that Wes Boyd has left this vale of tears. The only reason that "Busted Axle Road" isn't on my favorites list is that I never finished reading it so I don't know how it turns out. I couldn't. I was laughing too hard.

-ZM

One of my author buddies asked me to turn comments on. Sure, no problem, but how? It took me a while to find it. It's on the "stats" page for an individual story.
There does not appear to be a global setting for all stories. Which means that I have to open up the stats page for each and every story, to turn comments on for that particular story. Thankfully, I only have 16 stories posted here. This does not scale well, ya know? What is Aubie56 sposta do if he wants comments? He has hundreds of stories here!
Oh, and I heard somewhere that comments do NOT go to the author. They just sit there on the story's page until someone else reads them. I'm not gonna go check every story I ever wrote every day, to see if someone added a comment. Of course, that may not be true. Maybe they are sent to the author somehow. We'll see.

-ZM

I see more and more comments about ASSTR.org being down. That site, like this one, is funded by donations, and I'm pretty sure that the donations aren't sufficient to pay a full-time webmaster to keep an eye on it at all times. It has been down a lot in the last year. The maintainer has pointed out on several occasions that expenses are piling up and it is not possible to immediately pay for repairs, the site will be back up when repairs can be paid for.
The current issue appears to be that they have configured their web server to _only_ use HTTPS, to refuse to fall back to HTTP if there is a problem, and on the 14th their HTTPS security certificate expired. Until they get an updated certificate or they allow HTTP connections, the site is down even if the server is fine.
Folks, I don't think that the certificate is free. Without donations, that site may never come back. Similarly, SOL isn't free to run, either. Just sayin'.