Category Changes Happened

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Exactly.

And fortunately, other categories have readerships happy to accept infidelity. About 90% of my stories involve cheating,

Mine are always consensual, open, shared, willing.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I’d like to see a required, static list of sub categories. For example, under the old T/CD; Trans, crossdressing, futa, sissy, romance, etc. kinda like tags but not open text and required.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I’d like to see a required, static list of sub categories. For example, under the old T/CD; Trans, crossdressing, futa, sissy, romance, etc. kinda like tags but not open text and required.

I hated those two being together. Not the same thing at all. One is a fetish for clothes and can be a married couple role playing. The other is a full lifestyle change.

 

[iwatchus]

I’d like to see a required, static list of sub categories. For example, under the old T/CD; Trans, crossdressing, futa, sissy, romance, etc. kinda like tags but not open text and required.

Could you multi-select? (like tags vs categories)

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Another is that it might not work. The anti infidelity crowd might follow the stories to their new category and still down vote them. To some extent they do this already.

For me it's not about curtailing the BtBs (and some others). It's all about a very large category that could easily be split into two more concise categories, making it easier for readers to find what they want and for writers to place stuff where it can be found.

Had the category been split 15 or 20 years ago, I'm sure that it would have contained most of the trolls to one side or the other. By now I think that it's too late for split to have much immediate effect on the trolls (although it might dissipate things over the next 10 years or more), but it will still be very beneficial for sorting and finding stories, and that's the important part, so let's do it.

Any category that is so freaking large and is broad enough to contain reasonably distinct sub-elements to be split up, should be split up. If a category is routinely getting 12-15 or more submissions per day, we should actively look to see if there is a way to split it up effectively, because it's too big.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Could you multi-select? (like tags vs categories)

No. At this time, you can only select one category for a story to go in.

 

[iwatchus]

No. At this time, you can only select one category for a story to go in.

That was referring to Shelby's suggestion of mandatory sub-categories. Which are a proposal half way between tags and categories currently. As opposed to splitting categories ad infinitum

 

[ElectricBlue]

That was referring to Shelby's suggestion of mandatory sub-categories. Which are a proposal half way between tags and categories currently. As opposed to splitting categories ad infinitum

Ah, got you. I misread your suggestion as a query.

This category split took me by surprise, you don't often see changes like this. Which just goes to show the site is working away in the background, with a different set of priorities to those we all seem to think they should have.

The trans - cross-dressing split is a good one, it makes sense. I'm intrigued as to why I&T has flipped to put Taboo first, maybe to get back to the wider meaning of Taboo? Or as a first step towards completely separating Incest into its own standalone category, which I reckon is well overdue.

Once again, though, Bisexual gets left out, as it has for two decades. That should be easy, I imagine every such story would be tagged.

I continue to wonder if there's not some wider agenda, what with these changes and at the same time, the tightening of the visual content rules. It's as if the site is more tightly defining its boundaries, pulling its wagons in closer, to protect itself, maybe. That wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[Lotus_Kitty]

It's not me you need to convince.

When I came here decades ago as a reader, and then later when I became a writer, I took my concept of LW from Laurel's description: "Married extra-marital fun: swinging, sharing & more." So yes, according to the site, vixen/stag, swinger, and poly stories most assuredly DO fit in Loving Wives.

My impression is that a vocal group of readers never bothered with the "extramarital" part and instead focused on a very conservative definition of "loving," which authorizes nothing but a wife in a warm, close, companionate relationship with her husband. They read and comment accordingly.

I think that is the antithesis of where Laurel intended that category to go. I think her intention was infidelity. That the category has become a mess is, ultimately, the fault of the site owners. My contention is that if they split it into two different categories (one for the angry commenters who want "wives that love their husband," the other for those of us who want "wives with a lot of love to spread around"), there's no guarantee that those negative commenters will follow along and restrict themselves to their intended category... whether it's called "Unfaithful Wives" or "Wives Fucking People Who Aren't Their Husbands" or "Open Marriages" or anything else you choose.

For the sake of easier shorthand, another poster called such negative commenters "incels." Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but in following suit I apparently ruffled another member's feathers. So I'll hold off on further commentary, I think, lest I get more words put into my mouth than the many I've already given this topic.

My apologies, I meant to write Unfaithful Wives. I agree with your and Laurel’s definition of the Loving Wives category.

 

[Lotus_Kitty]

THAT is what LW is supposed to be!!!

That's why you see so many of those stories now in EC, E/V, Group and other places. I have one working though the cogs for EC.

I mistakenly wrote Loving when I meant unfaithful. I agree with you. I think if it were changed from Loving to Unfaithful, that wouldn’t be good.

 

[Lotus_Kitty]

But those are EXACTLY the kinds of stories for which the category originally was created, and there are still plenty of readers who choose that category looking for those stories.

The "anti-cuck" crowd are the interlopers, but they seem to have appropriated to themselves the authority to decide what belongs in the category and what doesn't.

I mistakenly wrote Loving when I meant Unfaithful. I like all those kinds of stories and don’t consider them infidelity nor unfaithfulness since it’s consensual. I’m against changing from Loving to Unfaithful for that reason.

 

[SimonDoom]

I mistakenly wrote Loving when I meant Unfaithful. I like all those kinds of stories and don’t consider them infidelity nor unfaithfulness since it’s consensual. I’m against changing from Loving to Unfaithful for that reason.

I agree with you. Some people use "cheating" to mean any extramarital sex. Some don't.

My preference would be to convert Loving Wives into Hot Wives and split the other stories into Cheating and Consequences. Hot Wives gets the point across without any seeming judgment about cheating or infidelity.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Then I have a case that is big on I; explicit, hard I that will cross into CD, once I figure out how.

 

[HordHolm]

I agree with you. Some people use "cheating" to mean any extramarital sex. Some don't.

My preference would be to convert Loving Wives into Hot Wives and split the other stories into Cheating and Consequences. Hot Wives gets the point across without any seeming judgment about cheating or infidelity.

Hot Wives would be a very apt conversion, particularly given the ubiquity of the term elsewhere. I'm not sure it would make a difference to the anti-infidelity fundamentalists, but it might be a start. Of course, we know any such change is extremely unlikely.

 

[LanaBehave]

In my idealized world with a perfect Laurel, any dubious category stories would have been placed by her best guess, but she would have messaged the author to ask if they would prefer the other choice. I have heard it mentioned on AH that she will occasionally reassign the category upon submission, but my expectation/understanding is that she would respect the author's choice for a borderline case.

Several authors in the old T/C category are active on this forum. I was just curious if any of them were contacted or any of them have a complaint about which category their stories got assigned to.

Most of my chapters (originally categorized in T/C) have been slotted in Transgender, but they really should be in Crossdresser now.

I did read the instructions on how to use the Story Edit process to get this fixed, but since some mislabeled stories have 'found their way home' according to some of the posts here, I'll wait a few days and see what happens before I go through all that.

I wasn't contacted in advance or after, but I wouldn't expect to be. Big site like this, with forums, stories, chat...well i'm sure it's a lot of admin work and I appreciate all that L&M do.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Most of my chapters (originally categorized in T/C) have been slotted in Transgender, but they really should be in Crossdresser now.

My thought would be GM.

 

[LanaBehave]

My thought would be GM.

I, I...okay.

I did use that category for the first chapter of one of mine, and I can understand if some might put a few of the other chapters there.

But between TG and CD....?

CD.

 

[filthytrancendence]

Hot Wives would be a very apt conversion, particularly given the ubiquity of the term elsewhere. I'm not sure it would make a difference to the anti-infidelity fundamentalists, but it might be a start. Of course, we know any such change is extremely unlikely.

Given how much more this has gone back and forth since I weighted in, I feel like somebody ought to articulate the problem with this approach. Really, there's 2.

Problem 1 - Hot wife-ing, while popular, is a small and specific sub-group under ethical non-monogamy. It's also needlessly gendered. This would be like naming the BDSM category 'Femdom'. Sure, that's part of it, but why are we picking that one hyper-specific subgroup? Loving Wives itself is a perfect example of why this is a bad idea. The language around ENM didn't exist in the way it does now when LW was named LW. This isn't a complaint about that. But there's a reason the language developed significantly in the intervening decades. It's a lot more broad and varied than it seemed like at the time. And gendering the label most certainly had some role in attracting the mouth-frothing misogyny you see there now. Non-monogamy is not a gendered thing. There's no reason at all for the word wife or husband to be in the name of whatever you want to call the category.

Problem 2- as illustrated by the above explanation, these 'genre' lines are ever-moving, subjective and somewhat arbitrary. Good, bad, or indifferent, categories are a pillar of this site's design. They're imperfect but also very hard to change. For better or worse, LW is a bit of a nuclear waste storage facility on Lit at the moment. Those of us that care about writing ENM stories can just put them other places. And LW can keep their particular brand of radioactive misogyny safely contained where it is. There's some utility in the fact that they mostly just stay there, and that benefit is worth the relatively minor cost of an already badly named category being funcationally unusable outside of the hyper-specific thing that generally gets posted there.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Question: what other categories require renaming/rebranding with first priority in mind being not risking any alienation of trans culture?

Furthermore, should Lesbian Sex be renamed to include girl-on-girl as to not alienate straight guys who like to read about two women?

 

[SimonDoom]

Given how much more this has gone back and forth since I weighted in, I feel like somebody ought to articulate the problem with this approach. Really, there's 2.

Problem 1 - Hot wife-ing, while popular, is a small and specific sub-group under ethical non-monogamy. It's also needlessly gendered. This would be like naming the BDSM category 'Femdom'. Sure, that's part of it, but why are we picking that one hyper-specific subgroup? Loving Wives itself is a perfect example of why this is a bad idea. The language around ENM didn't exist in the way it does now when LW was named LW. This isn't a complaint about that. But there's a reason the language developed significantly in the intervening decades. It's a lot more broad and varied than it seemed like at the time. And gendering the label most certainly had some role in attracting the mouth-frothing misogyny you see there now. Non-monogamy is not a gendered thing. There's no reason at all for the word wife or husband to be in the name of whatever you want to call the category.

The thing to keep in mind is that categories don't have to make sense analytically, ethically, or politically. They recognize established, significant reader bases. There is a huge reader base for hot wife erotica. My guess is there is a tiny reader base for hot husband erotica. Thus, the gendered nature of the category. My guess is Loterotica won't change it because readers are fine with the gendered category label. I think this is true about categorization generally.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

We should be thankful anything was done, honestly. Outside of parts of the site we as writers actually need, I think we're low on the totem pole. I've always agreed a bi/pan catagory would be nice... every other peer site has one.

The problem with LW isn't the catagory, or the site, it's the "people" that read it. Splitting it might not do much, those things will wander off to attack the other works of writers who think a wife should have the gall to fuck anybody other than her husband, or that things get resolved with her brakelines intact. Manu and Laurel can't fix "people".

As far as more catagories, I don't think that'll fix anything. Lit does have a lot of catagories as is. I think only SexStories has significantly more, and Lush has about the same amount. I think the only way to redo the tag system would be to not have open tags. Looking at the tags here, is like looking at the tags of some porn blogs, where the tags are all at the bottom of the page. They're any and everything, and several for the same thing. Simplify those, because eight ways to say sucking dick is just wild, and make them checkboxes instead, like how StoriesOnline and it's sister sites do it. Same could be done for a sub-catagory.

So, using LW for an example; one writes a LW story, selects LW, then a list of subs; Cheating, Swinger, Cuck, Happy Marriage, BtB. Then you have your slew of check tags for kinks, sex acts, etc.

I feel like it would be a lot of work, especially for an old site design and code. There may not be such support and for some things, may have never been. Adult-FanFiction was crippled for nearly two years because of a server attack.That's probably the main hurdle, and the site is as good as it gets.Even this forum site design is fairly old.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

LW could be 'fixed' with effective comment moderation.

When an author decides to remove an offensive comment, any associated vote should also removed and the author should have the option to block that commenter from commenting and voting on other stories. Even if they comment as anonymous, the system knows who they are.

Once X number of authors remove a comment from that commenter, they could be blocked from commenting at all for some period of time.

That wouldn't involve any category or story changes and would help restore the category to what it should be.

 

[AlexBailey]

(Reposting from another thread)

Non-binary category?


Genderqueer/fluid can present in any configuration or representation of gender. To each their own. “Cross dressing” doesn’t really cover it.

Transgender isn’t necessarily queer. Trans folks can be binary in identity or sexuality. “Trans” can cover a lot of things but it can also be an identity that is simply opposite of the gender at birth.

Queer can be outrageous in celebration or subtle in daily life. The outrageous side attracts attention that many trans people don’t want to be identified with it.


Categories are just the main tags that must be selected when you submit a story. Add as many tags as possible so readers can make use of the existing tag search system. It would be nice to be able to exclude tags you don’t want.

Please use tags!

 

[M_K_Babalon]

LW could be 'fixed' with effective comment moderation.

When an author decides to remove an offensive comment, any associated vote should also removed and the author should have the option to block that commenter from commenting and voting on other stories. Even if they comment as anonymous, the system knows who they are.

Once X number of authors remove a comment from that commenter, they could be blocked from commenting at all for some period of time.

That wouldn't involve any category or story changes and would help restore the category to what it should be.

Voting and commenting are two seperate things.That's like getting a haircut and your fingernails are trimmed by proxy. All we can do is turn off anon comments, most sites anon can't be reported, and I'm sure the system does know who they are, if they're logged in—which I always forget about.

 

[filthytrancendence]

Thus, the gendered nature of the category.

Alright, but that just ignores pretty much everything else I said about it.

LW is LW because that was an imperfect label for what became the ENM umbrella many years later. You're advocating for making the same mistake again, because a specific part of it is currently fairly popular.

And ultimately, I'm advocating for leaving it be. Its' imperfection has utility. Anything it would be changed to is going to be imperfect by some other metric, and there's no guarantee the utility it currently provides would be maintained, or if the radioactive waste therein would seep out elsewhere.