Not a question about the correlation, if any, between hits and readers, but why is the number of hits for the single story I have on ASSTR almost exactly the same week after week? Bots, presumably, but what else?
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Not a question about the correlation, if any, between hits and readers, but why is the number of hits for the single story I have on ASSTR almost exactly the same week after week? Bots, presumably, but what else?
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It has become a Zombie site.
There is zero maintenance and zero administration.
Automated systems allow new stories to be added to one collection, but nothing else can be done.
The search feature broke down and has not been fixed.
Someone is "there". They cash and acknowledge donations, but that's it. It is impossible to get any sort of response no matter how you try to contact them. I've tried. I've really tried.
My guess would be it's a software glitch that will never be fixed.
You should ask in https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/ASSTR_ASSM_Authors/info
I believe Thinking Horndog is some sort of admin and he is part of the Yahoo group.
If you do make contact with someone there, give them my email address. Tell them I contacted all 400+ names on the site's list of editors, and have a list of the 40 who are actually still there and willing to edit.
They are frustrated because authors contact them so rarely, and authors are frustrated because attempts to contact an editor very rarely receive a reply.
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I am going to mention the name Lazeez at this point. I'm not entirely comfortable discussing his competition here.
There is not much competition between SOL and ASSTR. At least in my opinion SOL has ASSTR beat by miles and miles. ASSTR specializes in stories SOL can't or won't post. I still look at ASSTR from time to time, there are a few authors/sites who prefer ASSTR that I can't find on SOL. But if I could only have one of them, clearly SOL is the choice.
I could only have one of them, clearly SOL is the choice.
My sentiments exactly. You can infer from the above how much time I wasted trying to improve ASSTR before finding my home on SoL.
I just felt an obligation to let Lazeez know this discussion was going on.
My guess is if he stated his policy about what me may discuss here it would be something like:
1. There is no blanket line at mentioning other sites
2. I would draw a line at aiding and abetting, or promoting other sites.
My gut feeling was my last post was getting close to #2. I wanted him to look at what we were doing.
There was a lot (for ASSTR) discussion about the ASSTR stats on their forum recently. The Stats completely broke down for a while. They finally got it back (demonstrating that, yes, Virginia, there IS someone home there), but if the numbers are the same, I'm guessing it broke again (maybe the fix screwed something else up?).
For a long time (about 2 months) only a handful of authors were getting any weekly stats (I was one of the lucky ones). Then everybody's stopped, before they got most of them straightened out. I'm not sure what the current problem is. I believe my numbers were slightly different the past two weeks, but then I only have a single mm story there, so the downloads counts are VERY low.
I wouldn't say ASSTR is just a minor player by any means. Last I checked I had like 400,000 total downloads on SOL, and 3.4 million on ASSTR. Since 2011 there are lots of stories I can't post on SOL, but that same basic pattern was true back in 2011 too. Latest new story? 4800 downloads in a week. And my numbers do vary considerably from week to week, so I don't see as the stats are broken.
The "Kristin Archives" has been on hiatus for a year or more as well, it says due to issues with Kristin herself.
I'm guessing that Bondi's numbers of those which were 'broken' but never fixed, rather than a 'new' problem this past week.
I'm guessing that Bondi's numbers of those which were 'broken' but never fixed, rather than a 'new' problem this past week.
The weekly reports disappeared I think at least a year ago and began appearing again a month or so back.
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The weekly reports disappeared I think at least a year ago and began appearing again a month or so back.
That was discussed in the Yahoo group I sent you the link to.
That was discussed in the Yahoo group I sent you the link to.
After their last failure I deleted my Yahoo! account and do not intend to rejoin, even to find out what happened to the ASSTR reporting machinery.
I appreciate the comments and suggestions but don't intend to pursue it.
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After their last failure I deleted my Yahoo! account and do not intend to rejoin, even to find out what happened to the ASSTR reporting machinery.
I appreciate the comments and suggestions but don't intend to pursue it.
I'm sure his point was that although ASSTR is limping along, it's hardly dead. It just takes forever to change (i.e. don't expect your figures to change if they're broke).
I have a lot of stories in ASSTR and I tend to edit, almost re-writing them for use in here or Lit Com. I have tried to contact them several times, initially to change my email addy but also for help in converting some of mine in there as PDF to .doc. No answer or help on anything. I don't post there now.
have a lot of stories in ASSTR and I tend to edit, almost re-writing them for use in here or Lit Com. I have tried to contact them several times, initially to change my email addy but also for help in converting some of mine in there as PDF to .doc. No answer or help on anything. I don't post there now.
I don't post there much anymore either. The last story I posted was a story about internal conflicts in gay culture (mainly because I figured it wouldn't get a fair reception here on SOL), but I no longer write the kinds of stories that do well on ASSTR (aka: much sex, but mostly kiddie porn).
P.S. I wasn't sure what your issue with your stories on ASSTR are. Do you mean you want to post .doc stories to ASSTR (instead of either text or html), or that you're trying to retrieve the stories on ASSTR to rework them. If it's the latter, you need to access your ftp account to access your older stories, if it's the former you can repost in any format, though I'd still recommend posting at html, as it's easier for readers to access and most of ASSTR's tools are geared towards html posts.
There are a couple of "Archives" there - I think their names are Nifty and LesLita - which account for 80%-90% of uploads. I have no interest in either but - without actually looking - got the impression that Nifty files were loaded repeatedly, this skewed the noise / signal ratio and rendered the "Recent Uploads" page unusable.
ASSTR's problems, as has been discussed repeatedly, is that when Canada and Australia passed their 'kiddie lit' laws (banning ANY stories featuring sex with anyone below specific ages, regardless of context), every kiddie-porn author ran to ASSTR, and they so overwhelmed the site's content, it scared away virtually ALL the site's mainstream authors (meaning a significant drop in both quality and variety).
Previously, ASSTR had slightly more of those types of stories than SOL, but there was still quite a variety of stories.
Since you mention two main contributors, let me add something else I've noted: the 'new updates' now consist largely of specific authors continually recycling the same chapters/stories over and over, rather than much actual 'new', fresh material.
It's pretty sad to see a decent alternative site fade into oblivion. It'll keep going, but it only attracts certain authors. For many, simply visiting is sufficient grounds for being jailed in their home countries (i.e. if the police discover part of a story, deleted for years, sitting on their hard drive).