Hi all,

firstly, I was the admin of the WAM story archive. I was the creator of the original archive in the mid to late 90s, let it lapse in the early 00s and picked it up again in this current format a few years ago. Unfortunately, real life takes far too much time and I cannot actively moderate it.

As you are aware the proboards T&Cs do explicitly forbid erotic content (and there have been stories taken down in the past because of individual complaints). Unfortunately, either the entire site was reported or proboards just decided it had hit a limit.

I had in the past asked about moderators getting involved but they were all keen on publicising what the WSA was and I felt that was likely to speed up the day that the archive was shut so it never went any further.

Now, the good news is that I do have a backup of about 95% of the archive so resurrecting over one thousand stories is possible. However, I do not have the time to do this.

Therefore it requires 2 things - somebody with web space to allow them to be uploaded, either in their own domain or as a separate URL, and a volunteer to take over the role of site owner / admin.

Any thoughts?

Ah, the prophesied hero hath descended! 95% sounds like way more than anyone else has. Now that we know most of the content still exists, let me gather up the suggestions we have so far going forward:

UMD Stories: As first suggested by Darkmud Incursion, we can simply post the stories to this very site. Site owner Messmaster has already said that "we can mold UMD's Stories area over time with your suggestions", and "I can make it do pretty much anything, but just need to know what everyone wants".
Pros: No need to design/code a site or find an admin; Everyone with the power to delete or shut things down understands already; Already allows users to post stories (with pictures!) and comment; Some users have already been reposting their stories here
Cons: Needs a better search function; Currently no rating system, tags, and other features the WSA had before

Reddit: Also suggested by Darkmud Incursion, setting up a subreddit is relatively low-effort.
Pros: No need to design/code a site; Already allows many thriving porn communities, including a WAM subreddit; No rules about erotic content in the ToS; Forum-like setup for comments; Point system for ratings; Already has Advanced Search functionality
Cons: Images aren't handled the same, which may be a problem for some existing stories; Would need to find our own Moderators; While FAR less likely than with ProBoards, we could still technically be shut down at any time for no reason

CandyCustard: CandyCustard has offered to put stories up on their personal site, candycustard.com.
Pros: Site already exists; Comes with an admin
Cons: Stories need to be submitted by email and posted by CandyCustard personally; No comments, ratings, tags, etc.; All stories are currently listed on the same page

Literotica: Suggested by GungeIsFun, and by Slimelover22 on the Google Group, Literotica already has some WAM content on it, including some of the stories from the WSA posted by the same users.
Pros: No need to design/code a site or find moderators; By the very nature of the site, the chance of being singled out is virtually zero; Besides the minimum age of 18 that WSA already had, there are no real rules about graphic content; Comments, tags, search, and rating system included; Site will probably exist as long as the internet itself
Cons: Submissions are screened with a small delay, not for content, but things like length, spelling, and formatting; No pictures or links allowed; WAM stories would not be seperated from other erotic stories in any meaningful way; Archaic formatting

ECGunge: Suggested by me, ECGunge is an existing forum for WAM stories specifically.
Pros: No need to design/code a site or find an admin; Existing forum/comments setup like what WSA had; Many of us probably visited this site a lot a decade ago; Has a sizable amount of content already
Cons: New user registration is impossible until the admin updates the Recaptcha; Largely (though not completely) abandoned ages ago; Admin is often absent for long periods of time; Admin could potentially give up his crusade and shut down, though there's no particular reason to believe that's coming

Neocities: Suggested by Kiwimayotte in the Google Group, Neocities is basically a free, ad-less web host.
Pros: Free hosting; Claims to not monitor content and does not explicitly disallow any content unless required by law;
Cons: Requires actual web design; Need to find moderators; 1 GB storage maximum; Not a forum, and does not allow comments in any way; While unlikely, they can remove content that they decide violates their policies at their sole discretion; Soft on spam

Google Cloud: Suggested by Slimelover22 on the Google Group, we could simply upload files to a shared cloud storage.
Pros: Free and easy; Near-zero threat of shutdown
Cons: Need to find a mod to avoid spam and other problems; 5GB storage maximum (large, but potentially a problem eventually); bandwidth limit (high but not unreachable); Not a forum setup and no real way to comment or rate; Potential for file type problems that may require some stories to be downloaded before they can be read; May be hard to find for new users

GitLab: Also suggested by Slimelover22 on the Google Group, GitLab is typically used to collaborate on programming, but its Pages system could be used as a site.
Pros: Hands-off administration policy; No real limits on what we can do; Anyone can add content
Cons: Site would have to be designed and mods found; Requires some use of minimal programming tools and knowledge by ALL posters; May have to rely on people not deliberately messing up the site, which has happened before to the DustyBeard incarnation

Blogger: Suggested by Darkmud Incursion on the Google Group, Blogger is a free blog service operated by Google that allows adult content.
Pros: Easy set up; Allows legal adult content; Good editor; Sort by tags; Forum-like commenting
Cons: Needs moderators; Users must be approved by a moderator before they can post, which may turn off new potential writers; Again, small but non-zero chance of arbitrary shutdown

A few other possibilities off the top of my head, and the reasons they're not perfect:
DeviantArt: has plenty of WAM content, but has some other weird rules about erotic content that we may violate, and enforcement is random and often arbitrary.
Yahoo Groups: Home to a few scattered WAM and other fetish communities, but really... how long do any of us expect Yahoo to last? Everyone there is already thinking about where to flee to when it all comes crashing down.
Our own domain: A standalone website is probably optimal as far as getting to do whatever we want, but it requires someone to actually pay to keep it up, so they have to maintain an interest in managing the site indefinitely. Also, requires programming, moderators... everything.


In my opinion, the UMD Stories and Reddit options seem the most viable at the moment. That is, assuming nobody wants to create, moderate, and pay for a standalone website. I've created websites from scratch before, but as you might imagine from a college student, I have basically zero money to spare, so I can't do it.

It seems like all options will require somebody to manually upload all of the stories from custwardwam's backup, so we need volunteers for that; it'll take some elbow grease. Unfortunately, I'm finishing up college now and have very little free time, or else I'd be throwing my full weight at it. Alas, I can only contribute a little at the moment. For now, custardwam, how would you feel about just uploading all the files you have backed up somewhere like Mega or Google Drive and letting the rest of us hash out the rest? That way you can step back as far as you like, and we can hopefully crowdsource the huge task of getting everything up on our new platform, whatever it may be.

My two cents is to host it here on the UMD and add proper tags to everystory for proper search functionality.

Putting them all on UMD Stories seems the best option as I think it involves the least number of third parties.

It could be worth also adding all the stories from EC Gunge to the UMD Stories section because of the large amount of content there and how the site is largely abandoned.

It's such a shame that the WSA is gone - I genuinely feel this has overnight set the WAM fiction community back a number of years.

Messmaster - here are some suggestions off the top of my head for some features that would help make the stories section better.

- An index by author
- Ability to post inline images (not everyone used this but I know some stories that made use of them), having them all at the start isn't quite the same
- Ability to sort by highest rated.
- It was useful having a Submissions section for the newest stories and a master list for anything not in the top 10/20 newest.

Sadly I'm not sure we'll be able to tempt all of the authors back, the UMD has rightfully grown to be the hub for WAM on the internet, but I think the much larger community is perhaps less attractive to some than the smaller, interested-only-in-stories community that the WSA seemed to attract.

Considering that the Wam Story Archive was essentially a series of message boards, why not create a stories forum here on UMD? We can add tags to what type of story it is similar to the male/female/trans etc. (i.e. pies, humiliation, mf, ff, etc.). Thoughts?

So, @custardwam, would you mind uploading your archive as a ZIP or something? That way we can get started getting back online, and make sure we don't lose access to it. I have something of a pathological fear that some kind of hard drive failure or something could annihilate the archive right now...

I've been listening to you guys and slowly working on the stories section. There's much still to do and I'm looking for suggestions.

One thing I did was add the 5-star rating system. But the problem is that all the previously recorded loves of stories needed to be translated to star ratings. So I chose to turn each love into 5 stars by default. So now every story that ever had a love now has a 5-star rating. They will be averaged properly going forward, once we get some ratings submitted that are less than 5 stars.

Do you guys think I should just wipe the slate clean? Erase all the 5-star loves and start over with true story ratings?

MM

Wipe the slate clean, fresh start, simple and straightforward are good plus it means slightly less work for you.

I see new stories have been added... this one is a literacy masterpiece. https://umd.net/stories/test-mess-3

I concur on both accounts...

Thanks Messmaster and anyone else (Noise?) involved in getting the Stories section whipped into better shape.

I agree on just junking the ratings and starting again. One question - some of my stories are under the Blogs section (I think from before there used to be a distinction) - is there any way of getting those moved over?

A couple of quick bug reports:

- I note that despite PieWriter mentioning a new story it's not showing up in the Latest, nor them in the list of authors by Latest.
- Noise appears to have mastered the dark art of getting quotes into stories, but mongoose's "Test" story still seems to be lacking them (I remember this being a problem with my stories), should this now be fixed?

Should we start uploading our stories here yet or are there some issues you'd like to iron out first before we all post en masse?

Yeah..it's a real shame. There were some great gems on there. If the story section here has some that would be nice. I might upload some of mine up here. I know the furry ones weren't that popular but I'd still like to have them posted.

I'm not sure how much impact this issue with quotes will have right now, but others have already started uploading stuff. Maybe upload the first few and see if they come out right? As long as the story itself is displaying right, anything else can probably be changed later. And of course, hopefully custardwam will reappear soon and we can start putting back up his archive of most of the stories.


The intersection of multiple fetishes is always difficult, since your target audience is way smaller and you don't usually have a dedicated place for it. WAM stories are niche enough, so I can see why adding another fetish might make them less than popular. Still, this is the internet; even if what you write doesn't appeal to the majority of people on here, I'm sure there are some people who would be absolutely thrilled to find those kinds of stories. It's not my thing, sure, but it still seems like a good idea to post them. I remember encountering some WAM furry stories in the past from an "Iron-K", too, so I know you're not the only one.

Anyone know who did the Taylor stories on the wamstoryarchive? As those were epic !!

Is there any female celebrity stories in there as I can't seem to find anyway

I sure do miss SlapstickMatt's stores.

Custardwam, we eagerly await your return with your archive! Please save us!

Hi Guys.

I've just set up a new WAMLibrary to try and fill the gap caused by the loss of the Wam Story Archive.

Please come and join us at https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/wamlibrary/index.php

That is nice, but we should pick one place to keep everything together if possible.

Unfortunately their T&C page also bans what you're trying to do:


I still think the best bet is to help MessMaster create a suitable space here - it's more flexible and you won't get banned for being rude!

Henry

And that's the only reason Regis is still here.

Well, that and his perversions make the rest of us seem almost normal.

HenryWilcox. As I said in the previous thread. As a community Tapatalk host a number of erotic fiction groups without issue. Providing there is no images or paedophilic content there should be no problem

Of course I am happy for anyone to set up their own archives. UMD.net has been around for as long as I remember being into WAM, over 15 years. They do a great job, however they do not specialise in fiction nor do they currently have the resources or framework to manage such an archive.

If that changes BRILLIANT! The more places these stories are available the better. Same with anyone else who has any kind of wam fiction site. We're not competing.

The new site was designed with the old WamStoryArchive in mind because that was a form that whilst not perfect worked for most people. As the Library grows, it will change and adapt.

I am currently prioritising getting stories off old Yahoo groups as these are the ones (that in my eyes) are most at risk of being lost forever. I will of course also upload the more recent and/or well known stuff. If anyone has stories saved you can submit them directly onto the board if you follow my original link. Or if you would rather for whatever reason drop me a PM and I'll take any files by email

Just letting yall know that I've wiped all past loves from the stories like I said I would, so now we can start over with true star ratings. UMD will pick up on the ratings and other factors to show the Trending Stories section and to allow sorting stories and authors by rating.

So anyone who's already read stories on UMD, I'd appreciate it if you could go back and rate them when you get a chance. Then maybe this section will start looking like something.

https://umd.net/stories

Thanks,
Messmaster

Did anyone ever post the "backup" of all the stories that were on the old archive? I know someone in the thread mentioned they had a more or less complete backup???

Personally I'm not a fan of the highly-rated authors being the default homepage of the stories section. I much preferred it when it was alphabetical and everyone was on there. It was easier to find everyone then, plus, lets be honest, highly-rated is very subjective and easy to manipulate.

Do they host them without issue, or is it just a case that no-one has complained about them so they are under the radar? Tapatalk is ProBoards. First time I visited it and clicked one of the T&C links it actually took me to a ProBoards page, and ProBoards are the ones who axed the WSA over content.

Honestly, I think this should be on a different host. And please, make it so that people can read without having to sign up, so the whole site can be archived by proper Internet archives. All individual sites go down eventually. Proper archives are forever.

I'm just trying to find ways to start readers off there, and I'm all ears if anybody has different ideas for that Stories homepage. Having every author was a bit hard on the eyes and pushed trending stories down, so I limited them to a couple of dozen top-rated on the homepage. The authors actually now have their own full-listing page where you can sort them alphabetically, or by rating or last active.

https://umd.net/stories/show_all/authors/sortby/author/

Once people start rating stories, the author "ratings" will make more sense--they are calculated daily using the same functions that decide user of the day and trending this and that. So as always, it's community consensus, and any manipulators would be kicked off the site.

Also, we got tags now!
MM