forums Introducing The Scriptorium

[OmniCabbage]

So what happened to everyone from abdlstoryforum?

Well, a group of us came together with a few other like-minded individuals and made a new place that’s quite a bit different from the previous story board.

1. More transparency. The leadership team have decided to be more open about forum operations, from things such as finances to rule changes.
2. Quality staff. The old place had issues with allowing forum mods to do their job. Mods are fully empowered to do their job. Meaning it doesn’t matter if you're the owner’s sister; if you violate the site rules you will be dealt with accordingly.
3. Stories. One of the biggest things that was seriously wrong with the old place was stories involving underage characters doing certain "acts". On the new site, any stories involving underage characters must first be placed in the appropriate section and reviewed by staff. IF a story with underage characters is posted without the consent of site administration it’s automatic ban. Lastly, underage characters cannot be used in a sexual situation at all and this rule is not up for discussion!

More things will be added later in this post, but we wanted to make it short and keep it simple. If there are further questions, I would ask you to post them directly in this thread.

Visit us today: The Scriptorium

[Gummybear]

To support the site, I will be putting all my previous stories there, as well as giving it a head start on any future stories (before posting them here).  If I can get out of the writing slump I'm currently in, that is.

[Toet]

I'm doing the same with the story of 'Jasper'.
I'm posting it over there at the moment, and when I get to the point where it's on the same level as here, I'll post the next chapter on that site before I post it here. (After creating an account, you'll be able to see the 'works in progress' subforum.

[ValentinesStuff]

On 3/6/2024 at 4:30 PM, OmniCabbage said:

Stories. One of the biggest things that was seriously wrong with the old place was stories involving underage characters doing certain "acts". On the new site, any stories involving underage characters must first be placed in the appropriate section and reviewed by staff. IF a story with underage characters is posted without the consent of site administration it’s automatic ban. Lastly, underage characters cannot be used in a sexual situation at all and this rule is not up for discussion!

 

So after reading this I am curious about how you plan on handling certain situations in stories. These examples are based on actual stories I've read elsewhere.

 

• "Legal adults." Characters that are stated to be 18+, but through description, action, and speech are best described as preteen. One such story had twin boys get up and ask their mommy if they watch cartoons. Which they do sitting cross legged on the floor in their one piece PJs. Later one of the boys is forced into performing sex acts with an adult caregiver.
• A little trickier here as the character is an adult, but is dressed and acting as a preteen. This character performed a sex act on an older adult that believed the character to be a preteen.
• An age reduced character involved in sex acts. A woman was age reduced to about 10, while keeping her adult mind, had "consensual" sex with an adult. This was actually published in 1985 by a well known scifi author.
• Consensual or not sex acts between similar aged minors. Lots of those stories around.

There are probably other cases also, those were just off the top of my head.

[Gummybear]

Bear in mind that I'm not a mod on the site (and I think we should all thank whatever higher powers we believe in for that), but I was part of the discussion when the rules were drawn up.  I'm not one hundred percent certain, so you might want to wait for an official ruling, but I believe we defined "adult" as both physically and mentally adult, and "underage" as not meeting one or both of these criteria.  So to reply to your four examples, my guess would be :

1. Probably yes (provided the boys in the example don't have any developmental issues and they are only behaving childishly).  As to whether the "adult caregiver" is a close relative or not... Well, that's a different kettle of fish.
2. Maybe (It would probably depend on how the younger character goes about pretending to be a preteen.  After all, I can't think of too many eighteen-year-olds that make believable twelve-year-olds, let alone even younger.)
3. I'd guess almost certainly a hard no.  And the fact that you yourself put "consentual" in quotation marks should tell you that you knew the answer to this one.  Also, saying that a well-known author wrote a story like that doesn't make it better.  A lot of things have been done before without that making them OK.
4. Definitely no.  Physically and mentally adult means just what it says.

Now, like I said, I'm not a mod, but since it's been almost a week since you posted your questions, I figured you should get some kind of answer, even if it is technically unofficial.  I'm sure that if I got anything wrong, the mods will post a corrected ruling.

[ValentinesStuff]

@Gummybear Thanks.

 

[Brown Owl]

So As the Admin of the Scriptorium i can say Definitively that GummyBear is right. But i would note with your question Number #4.. Even submitting such a story is a Nuke from Orbit level offense.  It may be legal to write first amendment and all that jazz, But i don't want any *hint* of the problems that shut down the old board. As far as the rules are concerned there is *no sex* at all between any characters under the age of 18. 

[ValentinesStuff]

@Brown Owl Thanks.

 

Your site, your rules.

I personally find the first two to be the worst cases as the author is writing about pedophilia, but cheating to get around any strictures. The third case is weird because both characters were fully aware of the situation and the ARed character still had their adult mind. The fourth case, though legal, certainly doesn't belong on an adult erotica site.

[The All]

I'm glad some kind of successor was formed in the absence of the old site. I hope the new one gains some traction and is able to establish a flourishing user base. I approve of the new rules, and hope their enforcement will help mitigate potential issues down the line. On the old site, as well as others, I learned long ago to be wary of any story where a character's age isn't easily discernible after too many instances where a character is only revealed to be a minor two or three chapters in, leaving me feeling more than a shade 'unclean.'

[Brown Owl]

Well the management of the old site always had problems.. Going back a long while. I as well as others of the staff on the old site, tried to advise Danni, Claudia, Penny. and whatever other characters showed up, that some of the stories were not kosher.

But were always told we weren't going to do a blanket purge on certain problematical users.. And 80-90% of the problematic stuff was coming from less then half a dozen users. In fact i was told to manually go through and delete, manually most of these stories...

But that i better have a justification for each one i deleted... I only stuck around as long as i did because i was promised payment in form of  digimon plushies that i never received

Water under the bridge at this point, but the new staff is positively paranoid about these issues. You're one and done on the Scriptorium. I don't care if you bring in a lot of traffic, i don't care if you're popular, i don't care if you've been my friend for 20 years.

I didn't even allow search engines to index for the first 3 months

[The All]

Yeah, I don't know too much about the inner workings of the old site, but it seemed like the behind-the-scenes management was all over the place, but seemed to fumble at every instance where direct preventative action was needed. Like, with some of the shadier things that evidently got posted, you'd think it would be better if the moderation team took a 'better safe than sorry' approach, where they risked alienating a few potentially problematic users rather than put the whole site in a precarious position.

[~Brian~]

On 4/11/2024 at 8:53 PM, Brown Owl said:

Well the management of the old site always had problems.. Going back a long while. I as well as others of the staff on the old site, tried to advise Danni, Claudia, Penny. and whatever other characters showed up, that some of the stories were not kosher.

@Brown Owl

I don't know to much about the old site, or what happened.  (Other than what was posted). I understand that management was a little crazy on the old site, and that mods had the power to use to delete/lock threads that they thought were "not kosher" but they did NOT use their power to do that, because they would get grief for doing it. 

A Mod/Admin SHOULD be able to, and DOES have the ability to do that - There are many times where you would have to moderate threads:  Failure to do that because someone tells you that "You'd better have justification for each one you deleted" is ridiculous:  If there are users that you have to speak to or deal with, you CAN do it, and you DO have the justification for doing so.

Being the owner of 5 domains and my own server, and having to do work as an admin, I KNOW that having the power to manipulate users, files, directories, web content and system maintenance,is a BIG Responsability!  I only use the power of root when and IF I need to do work as the superuser:  other than those times when my terminal reads: "root@cardinal:/#". My user account 'brian@cardinal~$" is used, and 'sudo' prefixes most of the commands that need root permissions. (I also learned to be CAREFUL with permissions, because once from my Tallahassee Free-Net terminal shell I did "chmod 000"
which LOCKED me out of my directory, and the admin had to set my directory "chmod 755 /home/bsbaker.")

I have learned much since that mistake a LONG time ago:  You use your power when you need it, and you only use enough of a deterrent to correct errant behavior:  for example:  we would ban a user from an IRC channel for a few minutes to a max of 24 hours, then allow them back, and each time they did bad things, we would up the punishment, and the ULTIMATE punishment that we would use would be a /KILL <user> [REASON] If they continue you would KILL LINE the user@host or user@IP.  The ban of the IRC user would be dependent on the admins or the server IRC Operators:  whoever bans someone decides the length of the ban, and whether it would be removed, and the admins or the user that did the ban would be responsible for UNDOING it:  we RESPECTED that, because Opers had a reason for the ban.  If a user was doing things that would be a detriment to the system or the users, we could DELETE the users account, and that would be an Admin decision, and it was only used in the most dire of situations, where someone had something in their home directory that they shouldn't, or if they ran C scripts like flash.c (that, when run, would flash the screen of the whole IRC server, OR when someone was connected to TFN as a user which meant NO ONE could see anything, and it messed up the screen of everyone on the server.

On 4/11/2024 at 8:53 PM, Brown Owl said:

But were always told we weren't going to do a blanket purge on certain problematical users.. And 80-90% of the problematic stuff was coming from less then half a dozen users. In fact i was told to manually go through and delete, manually most of these stories...

I would have banned the idiots that were causing the problems, and delete the stories that are of questionable nature, because that is the right thing to do.  If you are only dealing with "'Half a Dozen Users'" THEY should be the ones that get the ban hammer.  From 1995-2007, I was an IRC Operator, and I remember one dude that was breaking the rules:  It was BLATANT and WILLFUL misconduct.  I had a decision to make, and I resisted the temptation to do it, and I had people messaging me asking me WHY I hadn't done what I should have done:  I was told I would have support for my Kline, and I did.  I executed my FIRST and ONLY K-line against the user.  and guess what?:

I had to JUSTIFY my kline to the admin team, and I did, but:  The admin REVERSED my kline, and  told me that I "had to apologize to the user I klined".  I KNEW I was in the right:  I almost got CANNED as a staffer because of it, and that was NOT fair, as many opers have K-Lined users without a penalty......  Soon after that, the admin told me I was RIGHT, and he apologized to ME for HIS accusing me of misconduct by banning a troublemaker. 

I bring this to your attention because:  I had made mistakes on TFN, and I was able to have them help me when I needed it, and most times, they don't delete you for mistakes you make:  Being 'Paranoid' about stories that are inappropriate for the site, or ones that may not be posted with permission is something you have to be CAREFUL of, but I question something, and it bothers me a little:

When you have a "One and Done/Nuke someone Policy" for ANYBODY that makes even MINOR mistake on scriptorium:  The reason you use a penalty is because the person is doing something that the admin feels is inappropriate, and I respect that, but I wonder if the right thing to do would be to issue a WARNING first, and THEN if they do it AGAIN you may want to throw the hammer?  I made a mistake once in chat, I didn't ask permission to PM someone:  @spoonchickenthrew the hammer for 15 MINUTES:  I talked to @DailyDi and then we straightened out the problem:  They did NOT "NUKE me" for that mistake, and I would NOT do anything here that would be a violation of the rules:  I would ASK the admins first, that is the way I roll:  If PM'ing someone the FIRST time they are  violating the rules is a "Nuke level offense, as you say, I would have been BANNED FOREVER from this site, and I would also be Nuked at scriptorium!  @spoonchickenbeing an admin, HE COULD have banned me from DD, but he DID NOT do it, even through I messed up

  For the Record:  I read the rules over there, and I respect them, and I wouldn't:

a) post anything that was NOT mine, or that I did NOT have permission to post.

b). post anything that has ANYONE in the story that is NOT an ADULT (18+), or anything that has anything to do with MINORS, or anything that would NOT be appropriate for posting:  I KNOW better than that!

c) INTENTIONALLY break any of the rules of the Scriptorium - I LIKE to read stories, and I've written one myself, and LOVE to read stories:  The problem is, that many sites that you could do that at are NO LONGER active, and as far as I know, scriptorium was created so that the INTENT of the site could be maintained, and the Mods/Admins have been empowered to 'do their jobs' and that is cool, but i would hate to be a guy that got nuked because I misunderstood something:  THAT is why I ask FIRST:  That way, no one has to GUESS whether something is allowed or is NOT.

d) Do anything that would be inappropriate: such as Name calling, flaming, shaming or putting someone down, or use racial slurs or references that would put a particular class of individuals:  That is WRONG, and unacceptable!

However:  While I  RESPECT the rules of your server and I **do understand** WHY some rules are there, I question whether some of these "rules" may cause an individual to question whether or not they want to be a member of your site.  When you want to attract people to be a part of the community you don't set it up so that when reading the rules, you feel as if you are gonna get the equivalent of getting BURNED by a FLAME THROWER or SHOT with a Glock 9 handgun if you screw up - meaning they get nuked, and that is that!  The atmosphere that you set up, and the way you guys and gals do what you do is important:  If someone breaks the rules like posting something that is not theirs, or if they post stories that don't belong, or they do a story that has sexual overtones, and you don't want that, I would ban them AFTER giving a warning, pointing them to the rule that they broke:  Sometimes a "nuke forever" sanction is NOT appropriate, and i would be the first one to "ask you what the heck I did to get banned" if I was banned due to a misunderstanding.  In my example, I almost got banned and deleted because of doing MY JOB, and I would fight TOOTH and NAIL and do ANYTHING I could to clear my NAME and get unbanned or restored to the system:  That is the way I am!

On 4/11/2024 at 8:53 PM, Brown Owl said:

Water under the bridge at this point, but the new staff is positively paranoid about these issues. You're one and done on the Scriptorium. I don't care if you bring in a lot of traffic, i don't care if you're popular, i don't care if you've been my friend for 20 years.

I didn't even allow search engines to index for the first 3 months

Being an admin, I am aware that your staff is paranoid about something happening when someone breaks the rules - I GET that, and I would be the first one to do what I HAD to do to keep the place free of content that is inappropriate, or that would cause the law enforcement authorities to have to visit you and deal with something that puts the scriptorium or its staff or mission in jeopardy!  I have friends I've known since I was SIX years old, and while some of them are no longer with us, they have my respect, and they know my character and my beliefs and I've made mistakes online, and some I have regretted:  I would NEVER hurt any site - I own 5 domains and a server, and I know that you have to make decisions that are easy ones sometimes, and hard ones other times, and that you want to protect the server and the staff of your site as much as possible.

My philosophy is that: Any site I am a member of is like being in someones "electronic house" whether it be on TFN, or Geeks to Go, or Besttechie, or DD, or any other site:  You are allowed to be there at the will and discretion of the mods/admins:  I would ASK first, about ANYTHING I am not sure of, because, like you, you said you and your staff are "paranoid" about getting into trouble, so you set up the rules the best you can.  Its your house, your rules - and I respect and understand that, BUT:

If you are all "paranoid" about things happening on your site, I understand that:  Quite Frankly sir, I am paranoid that if I join the scriptorium, and make **ANY** mistakes at all, I get NUKED with no recourse:  The way the rules come across to me is "I screw up, I DIE, even for the smallest transgression!" 

That does NOT sound welcoming or Fair for someone who makes a mistake - I've been banned before, and it is no fun!  System Security and Board Security are ONE thing, use of your banning tools when someone makes a minor mistake, instead of talking to that individual and finding out WHAT happened from their perspective is one thing I would do:  What if someone did something, like say "Mod X did this to me" and you BAN them for the infraction, according to your rules, THEN you find out that someone LIED to you, and "Mod X" did NOT do anything..... would you then keep that mod banned if you relied on someone that told you a lie, or made "Mod X" look like he did something when he in actuallity did NOT do it - would look bad if someone somebody didn't like was NUKED because someone lied and made someone look bad.....

I beg you to adopt a philosophy that says you will NOT nuke anyone for a MINOR infraction:  Guys like me, well, I WANT to follow the rules and do the right things, but what happens if I make a mistake?  My sense is that the rules make it sound like I am "nuked with no recourse". Is that fair or right?  No, but even we admins make mistakes

At this time, I will NOT join Scriptorium:  The mere idea that I could "mess up somehow and be "nuked" is troubling, especially if it is a minor infraction:  Major infractions should be those that you make clear Like messing with the boards, LYING to staff, posting inappropriate content, etc.  If someone can assure me that I can USE the site as intended without fear of being banned, I would join willingly:  sometimes people make mistakes, and I am one that has, and i am sure that you have!  We all have, and we should be able to use discretion when someone violates the rules:  NOT    just ban them outright:  Save that for the WORST offenders.  You are the ADMIN:  YOU have the ability to NOT use certain powers, and you have the ability to USE certain powers: I didn't LIKE to ban ANYONE, but, if I felt that it was warranted,  I would ban Like @spoonchickendid to me when I made a mistake and messaged without permission - He used discretion, and did NOT ban me outright, but HE CAN do that!  The point is that he didn't, and for that, i am grateful!

Respectfully,

Brian 

 

 

[Brown Owl]

Just to clairify one thing.. The one strike policy applies to stories involving minors. You won't get nuked for other rules.

[ValentinesStuff]

@Brown Owl

You might want to include this link https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/index.html#gl_p0122 in your rules section. Germany has some interesting and restrictive laws. 

[~Brian~]

9 hours ago, Brown Owl said:

Just to clairify one thing.. The one strike policy applies to stories involving minors. You won't get nuked for other rules.

@Brown Owl

Thank You for the clarification!!  I can almost guarantee that I would NOT do that: In fact, you would probably get a message from me if i felt something was NOT right

Brian 

 

[~Brian~]

6 hours ago, ValentinesStuff said:

@Brown Owl

You might want to include this link https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/index.html#gl_p0122 in your rules section. Germany has some interesting and restrictive laws. 

@ValentinesStuff

YIKES!!  If @Brown Owlhas to do that, I would hope he would be able to link only the parts he would have to, that deal with ISP's and laws that pertain to online services   Having to include all that if not needed, would be as silly as me asking a question of Vermont Medicaid, and they link to the Medicaid Manual for Vermont, which is technical, and overly wordy and I told them that when they sent me there, as I am not a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, or other medical professional, and those people are USUALLY the ones who write and edit that stuff

Brian

[ValentinesStuff]

2 hours ago, ~Brian~ said:

@ValentinesStuff

YIKES!!  If @Brown Owlhas to do that, I would hope he would be able to link only the parts he would have to, that deal with ISP's and laws that pertain to online services   Having to include all that if not needed, would be as silly as me asking a question of Vermont Medicaid, and they link to the Medicaid Manual for Vermont, which is technical, and overly wordy and I told them that when they sent me there, as I am not a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, or other medical professional, and those people are USUALLY the ones who write and edit that stuff

Brian

I'm not sure if you can link to specific sections over long term. My saved link goes to a different section now. Plus one part 11(3) can't be linked to, it defines "content," which includes written, audio, and visual media. Divisions 13 and 14 are also important. 

 

While I obviously haven't examined every countries laws, Germany has some fairly restrictive ones. Canada too, just opening a webpage that violates Canadian law could get you prosecuted in Canada even if the site is hosted e!sewhere and legal there.

[Babybuddydiaper18]

Hi mommy