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I've been on the internet since we had a turbo button and Telnet was a neat way to play chess. Suffice it to say I've seen a lot of shit. A lot of the weirdest shit I've witnessed has come from BCTS, when I noticed that there was a huge demographic of people who like to inbox me horrible things whenever I made a narrative decision that resulted in a character becoming hurt. That being said, when my story disappeared I had to believe one of two things.
1. One of the mods became upset when they read a story that involved child soldiers and murder, so they quietly eliminated said story.
2. The website that is held together by bubblegum, toothpaste and broken dreams had a database error.
In regards to #2, I am in no way saying that the issues here are equal to TGST where the owner apparently unboxed a free API and forgot how it worked. In fact I'm certain the owner has been googling "Free forums that require no setup" for the past eight months.
So was it #1 or #2? Based on my own experience it could be either, but I'm just going to keep posting the story because like, it could be option three which involves grippy socks.
Comments
Don't know about the grippy socks
So lets make #3: A website that is financed by Erin's (and Piper's?) SS plus infrequent (irregular?) donations by too small a percentage of the readers. Or have the monthly appeal for money to keep the bills paid totally escaped your notice?
There are some that are regular donors to the site, contributing money and/or stories for sale, but sadly too small a number to keep things humming like a commercial website. And in my experience, even commercial websites are not immune to gremlins wreaking havoc on their operations.
As for "broken dreams", well thats up to us, isn't it? I would say that BCTS is the best LGBTQ+ storysite on the web. The site you were going to move to is a total nonentity to me, but I suspect they likely don't offer the length and breadth of services BCTS does. The less you offer the easier it is to keep running. And if you would go down a few topics you would find Erin fixed the problem here within an hour of being notified. The commercial/business websites I used when working for a living could take much longer than that to accept notice of a problem, much less actually getting things working.
The last incident I saw was just last week at a business running corporate software. When it went down they had to shutdown for about 18 hours before everything got running again. For somebody that only has a cellphone and a tablet right now I think Erin did a pretty good job.
BTW, my personal experience predates dialup BBSs, Usenet, and dumb terminials, so while I may not be all that computer-savy my computer user experience is pretty broad. Remember the Altair?
EOM
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
I don't know what went on before...
But as regular contributor to both the fiction and the costs, I feel qualified to have an opinion. Let's face it BCTS is far and away the best transgender story site on the web and we all owe Erin and the other helpers a tremendous thank you for keeping going both technically and financially. Erin wants it to stay free to read but the income doesn't pay the costs and it is only the generosity of people like Jill and a few others and the efforts of Erin and Piper that keep it going. So whatever spat went on remember it is only the dedication of a few people that mean you could come her today and browse for nothing, many don't even leave a comment of kudos, so what are you doing to help? I'd better stop now before I start getting angry.
Angharad
I agree entirely…….
And as someone who is far from an IT expert, but spends well and away too much time on a computer every day as part of my job, it always amazes me how many “fixes” and “upgrades” we go through - nearly weekly it seems. And every time it takes an extra 15 minutes to boot up my computer in the morning, not to mention all of the ancillary issues I have to deal with for the next few days until the “fix” settles in.
As for how long I have been using a computer, let’s just say when I started out I was learning to program in Cobal and Fortran, and it was all done on a time-shared mainframe. If you needed to work outside of the classroom, you had to schedule time on the mainframe - which quite often seemed to be at about 4:00AM, lol.
Yes, we deal with the occasional issue with being able to get on the site - but as this has become one of my favorite places to go for those few moments to unwind each day, or to chat with a friend, or just to browse and see who is doing what or feeling down that I might help, I have no complaints. Except that I wish I could contribute more, or somehow help out more - not just with the site, but with those who I have met here and come to care deeply about.
More often than not, I am reminded of just how lucky I am. Either by reading a wonderful story by a new author, or perhaps by an old friend, or by hearing of the difficulties someone else is dealing with. Were it not for a few very special people here, I would not be who I am today. I would more than likely be dead by my own hand.
Quite often, I am reminded that there, but by the grace of God, go I.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Hmm..
I started with taking a class on programming in Fortran IV on an IBM System 360 in 1968. We used 80-column punch cards, submitted our programs to a clerk at a window, and retrieved our results the following day (our programs were run overnight, during otherwise slow times).
The reference to a turbo button in the original post puzzled me until it did a Wikipedia search. My first home computer was a Z80 system running CP/M 2.2, followed by an 8086 system running MS-DOS 2. I later had an 80386, then an 80486, none of which had a turbo button. But then, I never played any games like Flight Simulator, which were tied to the system clock rate. I used to go online to CompuServe with a 2400 baud modem. Now I have 600 mbps fiber.
I agree that this site is remarkable, especially considering the lack of staff. I still often have problems with commercial sites which behave differently depending on which browser one is using, and reporting the issue does not necessarily mean that it will be fixed.
I am sometime astounded that users of this site attribute problems to ill intent. Perhaps some people prefer to go through life angry at the world.