Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!cambridge-news.cygnus.com!noc.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!laff From: laff@headop.cs.uiuc.edu (Joshua A. Laff) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories,alt.sex.stories.d Subject: FAQ: alt.sex.stories & alt.sex.stories.d Date: 15 Sep 1994 05:00:05 GMT Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 306 Message-ID: <358kcl$gr7@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: headop.cs.uiuc.edu Followeup-to: alt.sex.stories.d Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu alt.sex.stories:33368 alt.sex.stories.d:5638 Last update: 9/15/94 New material preceeded by a "+" This is posted on the 1st and 15th of each month. FAQ administered by Joshua A. Laff (laff@cs.uiuc.edu). 1) Introduction 2) What is acceptable to be posted to a.s.s? 3) What are some good things to keep in mind when posting stories? 4) Posting Stories in Parts. 5) What about other people making non-story postings to a.s.s? 6) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s.d? a.s.s is all I have left to post to... 7) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s? Is there a mailing list to have posts 8) Are there any archive sites reachable by FTP or e-mail? 9) Reposts: Requesting Them and Posting Them 10) Labeling Stories 11) Anonymous Posting 12) Kill Files A) NN (~/.nn/kill) 13) Thanks To 1) Introduction Welcome to the alt.sex.stories and alt.sex.stories.d FAQ. This will hopefully answer whatever questions you may have about these newsgroups. It is strongly recommended that new readers of these groups read this FAQ. Note, this FAQ is not the law. It is a set of guidelines intended to help you receive the least amount of flaming e-mail possible. I'm sure some people will disagree with these guidelines, but I'm also sure these are the guidelines *most* readers of a.s.s would like people to abide to. You should also note at this time that there is no way for me or anyone else to enforce these guidelines. It would be nice if everyone lived by the same set of rules, but they do not, and one should try and respect another's reasons for doing things differently, even if you don't agree with those reasons - that's what makes different people get along. There are certain guidelines that many will not follow, and for very good reasons. In those cases, I have tried to outline those reasons as best as possible. I am not attempting to be some self-righteous net-cop in administering this FAQ. In fact, there are parts of it *I* don't agree with, but the majority of the readers of a.s.s do seem to agree with it, and I do agree that what's in here will help everyone get along a little better. *That* is what I'm attempting to accomplish. And since a.s.s is one of the most popular newsgroups on the net, attracting one of the most diverse crowds of people, this group probably needs an FAQ as much as any other group. So, to sum up, I'm trying to be helpful. If you have any helpful comments about this FAQ, I'd be more than happy to hear them. A few notes on terms and other things used in this FAQ: a.s.s is an abreviation for alt.sex.stories. a.s.s.d is an abreviation for alt.sex.stories.d 2) What is acceptable to be posted to a.s.s? Stories and poems that contain some form of erotica in them. There are NO other limitations on what the stories can or can not contain, despite what others may complain they don't like to see. Any subject matter pertaining to stories/poems that is not itself a story/poem should be posted to a.s.s.d. This includes comments, requests, archive information, or any other subjects similar in nature. Techincally even this document should not be posted to a.s.s. (However, *something* needs to be in a.s.s to let people know better...) Subject matter that does not pertain to stories/poems should not be posted to either newsgroup. This includes but is not limited to test messages, flaming people that like to read about sex, discussions about various sexual preferences, personals, advertisements, the infamous 'Make Money Fast', etc... To assist in assuring that comments are posted to a.s.s.d and NOT a.s.s, it is suggested that posters include the line: Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d in the headers of their post (most newsreaders will allow this easily). This way, if someone submits a public response, assuming their news software is not broken, it will automatically go to a.s.s.d. For an example, see the headers of this article. Another alternative is to use: Followup-To: poster This will direct followups to be sent via e-mail to the person who posted the original article. This is very useful for authors looking for feedback but do not wish to look through a.s.s.d for it. 3) What are some good things to keep in mind when posting stories? a) Line length. The vast majority of terminal setups are set to 80 characters per line. Therefore, it is a good idea to keep line length to less than 80 characters. It is usually a good idea to keep them about 75 so that followups/responses do not have their lines wrap around. b) Formatting. If you did not type your story on a UNIX system in straight ASCII format (i.e. you downloaded your story from a word processor or something similar), you should remove any special formatting codes once you have the story on a UNIX system. Most readers of a.s.s are using a UNIX system to read the stories, and formatting codes just get in the way, since the UNIX system will try and read them as text and not perform formatting. c) Spacing. Double spaced stories are usually rather difficult to read on a computer terminal. Therefore, you should single space stories. Also, text that is justified to completely fill from the left to the right margin (resulting in extra spaces between words) is *very* difficult to read on the computer. Please attempt to reduce all multiple spaces to single spaces. 4) Posting Stories in Parts. Posting stories in parts seems straightforward enough, and it usually is, but there are a few things to keep in mind when reposting stories in parts: a) Put the part number in the Subject line (such as 1/4, 2/4...) b) Send the posts to the posting software in order. You may even want to include a short 2 minute or so delay between each part posted. This will help get the stories distributed, and therefore listed, in their proper order, making it easier for people to read. c) Typically, segments should be limited to no more than 1000 lines (including headers, etc). Some BBS newsreaders can not process posts larger than this. Segments should also not be less than 200 lines. Some people get bothered processing posts smaller than this. d) Do not post segments as followups of a previous segment. Many people put followups in their kill files, and your segments will not be seen by them (see the section on kill files for more details). 5) What about other people making non-story postings to a.s.s? It's going to happen. Whether it's someone who doesn't know any better, doesn't care, or is trying to incite an arguement, it will happen. To quote a good response on this: If someone posts one stupid message, HE looks like an idiot. If six people reply to the message, THEY become the idiots. -Shelby (haq@delphi.com) In other words, don't follow up to a.s.s complaining about a non-story post. People don't want to read that any more than they want to read the original post. Here are some more proper responses: a) Ignore it (this is an especially good option if the post is a flame such as "All are/should " b) Followup in a.s.s.d. c) Send the poster a reply politely explaining why his/her post is inappropriate. Do NOT flood the poster's mailbox. This can cause unneccessary problems for the administrators of the the poster's machine, and they will be more likely to come after YOU for flooding the mailbox than for the original poster posting something to the wrong group. 6) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s.d? a.s.s is all I have left to post to... You should ask your site administrator to update your site's local list of newsgroups, and to add a.s.s.d to the list. This is enough of a low-volume newsgroup that most administrators will add it without a problem. If the volume *is* a problem, then it is likely the administrator can't afford to keep a.s.s, either. But a polite request to add the group should find a positive response, especially if you explain you are trying to be curteous to the readers of a.s.s. 7) What if my site doesn't get a.s.s? Is there a mailing list to have posts sent to me via e-mail? No, or at least none that anyone in their right mind would publish. A.s.s is an *extremely* high volume newsgroup, and to mail stories out to a mailing list would be a serious drain on any system. 8) Are there any archive sites reachable by FTP or e-mail? FTP: No, or at least none that anyone in their right mind would publish. The typical history of ftp sites for a.s.s goes something like this: i. site gets announced. ii. within minutes, hundreds of people attempt to connect to the ftp site and issue an mget * iii. the system becomes severly overloaded iv. the ftp site closes within a day E-MAIL: Yes. These are typically easier to regulate to avoid system slaughter. Some archivits choose to make their address public, some do not. You should check a.s.s.d for announcements concerning the latest available e-mail archive sites and full details of them. Briefly, here are the services that desired to be mentioned here: o Dave's A.S.S. Archive Server ============================ To access the server, send e-mail with the following headers: From: You To: dhuberma@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu Subj: LIST <------make sure you use all CAPS Any questions, comments, or concerns should be sent to 'dhuberma@indiana.edu'. There is no charge for using the service, nor does the administrator profit in any way from the service. 9) Reposts: Requesting Them and Posting Them (this also includes requesting people send stories via e-mail) If you are looking for a particular story, it is generally best to first check old posts in a.s.s. to see if the story is there. Next, you should check one of the archive sites for them. If neither of these turn up successfully, you should post your repost request to a.s.s.d. This proceedure minimizes the liklihood that the story you are requesting was just posted a week ago. Unless an author has specifically stated (s)he doesn't mind them, you should not send repost requests to an author. Most authors would be plagued with such requests if they accomodated all of them. This also applies to those people who are reposting other people's stories. In this case, most people will simply ignore the requests. Just remember - you're not the only one who wants stories sent to you. There are hundreds more. How would you feel if all of them asked *you* for a particular story..? If you are going to repost stories that you have written, you should generally wait a couple of months before reposting them (i.e., don't repost them every week). If you are reposting stories from an archive, you shouldn't post too many stories at a time. A good guideline is around 5-10/day (this guideline is based on the response I got from reposting my old archive - people will complain about this number no matter what it is :). 10) Labeling Stories With one newsgroup for various sexual preferences, there will often be some subject matter that readers would not like to read. For this reason, many users request that certain keywords are put in the 'Subject' line to identify the basics of what occurs in the story. Many authors are willing to do this, many are not. There are several reasons (quite valid, IMHO) for not labeling stories: o Those authors that do not label their stories feel the stories should be read for their literary value, and that literary value should not be limited to what kind of sex occurs in the story. o Some stories occasionally contain plot twists, such as in "The Crying Game", where foreknowledge of what's to come can spoil a surprise. o Some people prefer not to know what's going to happen when reading a story. o Stories posted from an archive may not the information available (as a former archiver, I know how hard it can be to try and label 3000 stories). Regardless of the reason, readers should respect a poster's reasons for not including keywords for a story. Following are the keywords that are most commonly used. Sometimes there are variations of these, but most of them are usually easy to figure out: animal: bestiality and animals bond,b/d: bondage (physical restraint) dom: domination (primarily psychological) ff: female-female contact furry: sentient non-human characters (e.g. "Journal Entries") gothic: vampires and other Gothic subjects (e.g. "Night Music") group,mff,mmf,other combinations of m and/or f: group sex and threesomes heavy: "heavy" forms of bdsm incest: incestuous relationships mf: male-female contact mild: "mild" forms of bdsm mm: male-male contact nc: non-consensual situations pedo: pedophilia (pre-pubescent) (e.g. "Misty") poem: poetry rape: rape scenes and other violent non-consensual sexuality scat: scatology and coprophilia sf: speculative fiction: sci-fi, heavy fantasy, and the like sm: sadism and masochism teen: consensual sex involving teenagers and postpubescents trans: crossdressing and transgendered material water: watersports and urophilia 11) Anonymous Posting To get the information file for the anonymous posting service, send mail to 'help@anon.penet.fi'. This will answer all of your questions a lot better than I could do here. 12) Kill Files Kill files enable newsreaders to kill files matching certain subjects (or parts of subjects), or matching certain posters. Thus, you will not see these files when you go to read the newsgroup. The problem with kill files is that you risk killing actual stories, but a proper setup can minimzie the liklihood of this. You should read the man pages or help files for instructions on how to use kill files for your particular news reader. In general, you can filter out a good portion of the garbage by having your news reader kill all followups, and anything with "request" or "wanted" in it. Following is a list of various news readers, where the kill file is located, and how you can kill the above recommended entries. (Anyone who wants to convert these to other newsreaders and send them to me, feel free to do so). A) NN (~/.nn/kill) alt.sex.stories:!>s/:. alt.sex.stories:!s:wanted alt.sex.stories:!s:request 13) Thanks To Thanks to the following people for their input on this FAQ: Phil Phantom (Actually, you guys should thank him, since he's the person who convinced me to make up the FAQ) Karl Ewald Leigh Melton -- Joshua A. Laff, CRL Head Operator, University of Illinois (217) 333-7408 email to: laff@cs.uiuc.edu _______________________________________________________________________________ Disclaimer: If I were speaking for the UofI, I wouldn't be paying tuition.