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Without intentionally looking, simply tapping in the website name I happened upon a link which returned the site stats. Looking at the info it was for 3 years ago and showed daily page visits as 3.3k. Not huge, I suppose, but perfectly respectable for a niche site. There was a button which was labelled: update. Intrigued, I pressed it and after about 60 secs. up came today's stats., 299 daily page visits, or 10% of the numbers from 3 years ago. What happened? Why such a drastic reduction in site numbers in just 3 years? Presuming the stats. are correct and I can't see any reason to think they are not. Where have all the visitors, readers, gone?
I have, of course, noticed there are few authors posting, little activity on the forum. I don't believe this is the only site where activity, interest, is waning. Is it an inevitable decline? People don't read these gay themed, teenage romances, like they used to. Is there a way to reinvigorate the site, this one and those other similar. Should we try to reinvent these sites, give them some sort of make over? Without wanting to critisise this site, like the others, they have been around over 20 years and haven't changed much. You have to say they are dated, both the format and the look.
It's a very big task to revamp a site, especially if it's a hobby site which you don't get paid for. It's a little sad but without changed the future, in 3 years time, doesn't look too bright. What does anyone else think? Would you do something to help? Do you have any ideas? And as with those other similar sites, who will run this into the future or will it fold? I hope the library of stories isn't lost, a few of them at least are worth saving, but they won't be without some action.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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This site filled a need, a major one. Now that weare legal as human beings the site is less needed.
A re-vamp will not, in and of itself, crerate readership, The need to read has to be there. Otherwise one creates a revampedsite that retains the same readership.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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"timmy wrote on Sat, 11 November 2023 16:31"Now that we are legal as human beings the site is less needed.
--
What do you mean by, "now that we are legal?" Twenty years ago and more, homosexuality has been legal, gay themed stories have been around and published a lot longer than that. I don't understand the legal thing, this site and it's co-sites have never been pirates like commercial radio, the only on the edge site has been and still is Nifty, which dates back to 1993.
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"timmy wrote on Sat, 11 November 2023 16:31"The need to read has to be there. Otherwise one creates a revampedsite that retains the same readership.
--
I think the readers are out there because there are a lot of very big online story sites that seem to be thriving, just not gay ones! And when you look at the site it tries or tried to be all things to all (gay teen) people, with sexual info and advice, with how to be an author, not just stories. That sexual advice is probably best kept seperate somewhere else on another teen oriented sexual info site, not with a story site.
Focusing a gay story site on teen romance is also limiting and given the rapidly declining audience perhaps ought to be expanded?
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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I suppose we are dealing with cause and effect. In the UK homosexuality has been lawful since 1967. However, the making lawful of something and the effect of homosexual people feeling able to be reaosnably open about being homosexual are separated by many years. Even ten years ago there was significat reticence about declaring one's homosexuality, and that still persists.
Look at the USA where there is a movement towards driving us underground again. Look at Russia where it has happened. Legaility is a frail thing.
Even when legal, how many people have not told their white haired old mother in case she is upset. How many are out at work? When romance is show on TV, ignoring Netflix's manufactured mandatory gay love scenes, how often is gay romoance portrayed as healthy and normal?
I stand by "Now we are legal"
[Updated on: Sun, 12 November 2023 13:06]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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"James K wrote on Sun, 12 November 2023 08:59"Focusing a gay story site on teen romance is also limiting and given the rapidly declining audience perhaps ought to be expanded?
--
Were you able to choose, what would you have it expanded to include?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I'm largely with Timmy on this. There's no doubt, at least in most of the UK, that increasing legal facilitation of gay people has had a very pronounced effect. I'm old enough to remember the debates on decriminalisation in 1967, and then decreasing age of gay consent (from 21 to 18, and then to equality at 16), and recognition of relationships (Civil Partnership, and now same-sex marriage). The world has changed, as it always does.
There's much moaning here, especially in the larger cities, about the "abolition of gay culture", and the mass closure of formerly-gay pubs and clubs. Also feelings that many/most Pride events have been taken over by commercial interests, and the marchers are as likely to be straight allies as LGBTQIA+ folk. "Gay News" ceased publication many years ago, and "Gay Times" has tranformed into a digital aspirational lifesyle brand. Conversely, there's now increasing recognition of our history in "straight" contexts: references to gay men in concentration camps were almost unheard of forty and fifty years ago, but now Holocaust Memorial day stuff does often incorporate references to us and other previously-ignored groups, for example. On the whole, I welcome much of this - for the over four decades that I've been an out and occasionally activist gay man I've been integrationist rather than separatist.
So where does this leave IOMFATS? I do think that there's a smaller "market" for it, and access for the potential audience is made a lot more difficult by the way that commerical search engines are structured. And many Western teens now have peer support though things like WhatsApp. Those who really need the kind of validation that so many of the stories on this site provide may face many barriers of language, and of access to the net at all (shortage of equipment, national firewalls, and so on).
Sure, the site here will no doubt continue to evolve gently, as it always has. The forums were once lively with teens, and are now mainly occupied by older people. But I think there will always be a role for a site structured like this: somewhere that teens can feel supported by adults, and adults can re-visit their teen emotions. Of course there are plenty of other sites, sites where adults are trying to be "down with the kidz", sites with a lot more sex, sites with zappy gifs (ugh!), and so on ... though there are far few than there were. This site (and Timmy personally) has quite literally saved lives, and I would be devastated if I felt that the possibility of it continuing to do so were to be reduced in an attempt to broaden its popular appeal.
[Updated on: Sun, 12 November 2023 10:40]
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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"timmy wrote on Sun, 12 November 2023 09:56"
"James K wrote on Sun, 12 November 2023 08:59"Focusing a gay story site on teen romance is also limiting and given the rapidly declining audience perhaps ought to be expanded?
--
Were you able to choose, what would you have it expanded to include?
--
That's an easy question to answer: I would have the site include any story with a gay theme. I can understand that any change ought not to be too drastic, not to alienate existing members, readers, and to keep the spirit with which the site was founded, so including a broader range of stories might start with a change from gay male teenage romantic stories to gay teenage romantic stories and other gay themed stories.
Having said that, I doubt and I'm sorry to say this, that the site will gain more readers except perhaps by word of mouth. A simple Google search, even using gay teenage romance stories as a search term doesn't get this site listed anywhere. When I look down the list and ignore the top commercial sites, so some way down, I get the little sites like Arch Hunter who first appeared a few years ago on Gay Authors and has created his own site. I take this as an example because he is a young, was an unknown author, and has created an appealing site. You click on the front page and you want to open it and read more. The images are young, current, and represent teen gay romance today.
Take a look:
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Thank you.
I am aware that search engines have us in a category which limits listing in SERPs. I coudl have sworn I said so.
The change you desire will not happen. Readers wanting any story with a gay theme can visit Nifty.
[Updated on: Sun, 12 November 2023 14:36]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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joecasey
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Toe is in the water |
Location: American Midwest
Registered: December 2017
Messages: 41
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For me, the single most important thing to insure that this site--or any other similar site--continues is for readers to take the time to send a quick message to the author of any story they have enjoyed. I hope that this happens more often than I think it does. Nothing makes an author's day more than to get a message--even a short one--from somebody who has read their work. Putting work out there and hearing nothing but the echo of one's voice eventually leads to a "why am I bothering" result.
--
As an aside, one thing I have liked about this site is that it has--so far--resisted the temptation that other sites have fallen into by "game-ifying" their sites, with everyone scrabbling after badges and points. A cursory glance at the nine-hundred-pound gorilla of gay-publishing sites left me feeling a little intimidated, with its various lists and rankings; if I were a first-time author, I would find the whole thing a bit daunting. This site, I think, does a good job of putting everyone on an equal footing--whether first time newbie or long-established writer--and letting the work speak for itself.
--
One may find this site's slight bias towards stories centered on young teen males a bit limiting, but I and others have had success in publishing stories that go beyond that perceived limitation. Nifty, I suppose, has its uses, and there may well be some worthwhile stories on the site, but its "all things to everyone" (and probably unvetted) concept is perhaps too broad ... and I would hate to see this site become Nifty; there are some truly hair-raising stories on that site that should stay there.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Never going to have badges, points, readership counts, per chapter commentary.
That 900 pound gorilla is a commercal enterprose which monetises the work freely given by amateur authors (if we are consdering the same site). There was a time when it tried to intimidate in order to prevent an author's stories from being published.
I vet every story. Sometimes I make eccentric decisions. I also acknowledge every story and, if declining, tell the author why, and how they might make alterations which would allow publishing
[Updated on: Sun, 12 November 2023 18:24]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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"Were you able to choose, what would you have it expanded to include?The change you desire will not happen. Readers wanting any story with a gay theme can visit Nifty.I vet every story. Sometimes I make eccentric decisions."
I would be right if I hazard to guess, that the site is a one man band, that is unlikely to change in any way because you like it just how it is?
You hate, if that is not too strong a word, the commercial sites that make money from authors freely published works, most especially the dedicated gay story site Gay Authors.
Your eccentric decisions must be when you approve a submitted story that doesn't fit with the gay male teenage romance theme, am I right?
Is this a fair summary?
Personally I find nothing wrong or even different in your approach to that of the other small niche gay story sites like Castle Roland, AwesomeDude, etc.
Nifty on the other hand is a depository for everything and anything, not censored, but not ideal for serious writing. Would you really want your gay themed story listed alongside pornographic crap?
You did pose the question what might the site be expanded to include and ruled out every gay themed story, but you must have had something in mind, or were you just being curious? Might, for example, gay male romance stories become the site catch line so you would include stories other than those about teenagers. That doesn't seem too drastic a move and given that there aren't any teenagers here reading it might appeal to the older folks who are here, unless you think the readership profile for the site is stuck on teenagers and stories or fantasies about fictional relations that never happened, wishful imaginings and lost regrets.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Yes, just curious.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ThisRick
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Getting started |
Location: Western USA
Registered: October 2021
Messages: 17
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"James K wrote on Sat, 11 November 2023 12:55"
I hope the library of stories isn't lost, a few of them at least are worth saving, but they won't be without some action.
--
Yes, the archive of stories is worth saving (I believe all of them, people have different tastes and Timmy has done a good job in curating the collection in my view). I assume some thought has been given to preservation of the site. Being about the same age as the site owner, I am well aware that my time as an active participant in this world is ever more uncertain.
But there is another resource of this site - this forum. It has had little activity in quite a while, but sometimes I will randomly go back five or ten or more years and click on a posting and find an interesting and moving discussion. The forum is a picture of vunerable and supportive people in a time of change for for gay men. Many links are broken and the threading seems to have been scrambled a bit in the upgrades over the years but that adds to the feeling of antiquity.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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A full succession plan is in place.
I'm glad "a few [...] are worth saving" which is rather dismissive, isn't it, that quote. Rhetorical question, that. I hadn't even noticed it in the OP's first message.
Pretty obviously not all stories here are accomplished literary works.
- Some have a naïve charm,
- some are typo-ridden,
- some are first attempts at writing,
- more than one author's work has degraded as they progressed,
- some are incomplete,
- some are improbable,
- some are implausble,
- some are eccentric,
- some are excellent.
I am not going to put any into any category. Thank you for your compliment on the curation I have achieved. I have made errors, but I hope few. I select stories that paint a picture in my mind that I wish to see.
I'm sorry the forum has some weirdness. I can't mend those imperfections, the software used is obsolete, unmaintained by its developers for many years. If I dared to run the "rebuild forum imdex" task I susect it would screw it up totally. I fear it will have to do as it is. The cost/benefit of introducing new software and attempting back record conversion is zero.
[Updated on: Wed, 15 November 2023 15:32]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I'm late coming to this conversation, but think it's important and am glad it's happening. Tim: your openness and candor is to be commended! Additionally, your willingness to discuss the present realities and changing societal dynamics is equally important. There are also a number of demographic changes that have to be acknowledged and addressed here and on other gay-themed story sites.
To start, consider the matter of teen reading in the US. According to a recent Pew Research report, the shares of American 9- and 13- and 17 year-olds who say they read for fun on an almost daily basis have dropped from nearly a decade ago and are at the lowest levels since at least the mid-1980s. This is from a late 2019 and early 2020 survey. Among those age groups, the percentages who said in the 2019-20 school year that they "read for fun on [their] own time almost every day" were at their lowest points since the question was first asked in 1984.
There is a corresponding decline in the UK according to an article in The Guardian in 2020, that reported children at that time read less frequently than any previous generation and enjoyed reading less than young people did in the past, according to new research. The study the article was based on showed that in 2019 just 26% of under-18s spent some time each day reading. This is the lowest daily level recorded since the charity first surveyed children's reading habits in 2005.
It also found that fewer children enjoyed reading, and that this dwindled with age: nearly twice as many five to eight-year-olds as 14 to 16-year-olds said they took pleasure from reading. Overall, just 53% of children said they enjoyed reading "very much" or "quite a lot" the lowest level since 2013. The survey found a marked gender divide when it comes to reading for pleasure: less than half (47%) of boys were keen readers, compared with 60% of girls. A third of children surveyed reported being unable to find things to read that interested them.
None of that is encouraging, whether it's for an on-line story site or for a multinational publishing house!
Then look at reading competence. According to a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, math and reading scores in several countries fell to the lowest levels in two decades. Specifically, math, reading and science proficiency among teenagers has decreased in dozens of countries. One in four 15-year-olds is a low performer in all subjects and were not able to perform basic calculations or interpret uncomplicated text, the study found.
Those findings compound the dilemma for writers and publishers. Now turn to the stats on the largest and most robust emerging generation, the Gen Z's, where a recent Pew Research study found that nearly 95% of Gen Z teens ages 13 to 17 have smartphones, and close to half of Gen Z teens report being online almost constantly. What are they doing?
It would appear from the earlier data that they're not reading, and that's confirmed by what we know about the roles of social media and video sites like Tik Tok. For them it appears to be about being on-line and the near-constant ability to be connected.
I use some social media, but even with the self imposed limitations I have, I can attest to how addicting and time consuming it can be.
With all this said about some of the dynamics moving people, and especially teens, away from reading sites of any sort, there are some other demographic trends that have to be reckoned with.
Consider suicide. In 2021 nearly 47% of suicides occurred in adults between the ages of 35 and 64. However the CDC's Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey reports that 26.3% of LGBTQ youth attempted suicide in 2021 -- five times the rate of their heterosexual peers.
This data is corroborated by The Trevor Project and The Williams Institute at UCLA. Of note, the Williams Institute recently published a study showing that most suicide attempts (61%) among LGBQ people occurred within five years of realizing one's sexual minority identity. The mean age of suicidal thoughts, plans, and attempts seemed to track closely with age of first realization of LGBQ identity, which is 14, 16, and 18 for young, middle, and older LGBQ people.
The teen and young adult suicide data demonstrate both that we're a long way from broad societal acceptance (regardless of the legal reality) and that there is a huge need among these age groups. Whether that is from reading in general, or from teenage gay-themed story sites in particular, is yet to be determined.
However, as someone who came late to understanding and accepting my sexual identity, I will say that this site played a huge role in enabling it to happen and facilitating my own acceptance. I don't see that need going away for a significant percentage of the population. How addressing that need is most optimally done seems to be the question before us.
Bensiamin
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ThisRick
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Getting started |
Location: Western USA
Registered: October 2021
Messages: 17
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Great points, thanks for adding to the thread.On reading, both my 30-something daughter and son are avid readers, but I do know that not all their peers share that interest. One thing I've noticed is even when younger folk do read, they often only read short pieces of text. I assume this is due to the prevalence of social media that encourages or enforces short messages.
I've been discouraged to see the anxiety over being gay in millennials and GenX folk. I've seen fear of coming out to family or being visibly gay, being chronically depressed, even experiencing thoughts of self harm. Even in younger generations gays need support and affirmation. I've also seen older millennials and certainly GenX gay men who were severely traumatized by the AIDS crisis. Being a teen in the early 90s and realizing you were gay thinking that was not only an abomination to society but also a likely death sentence had to be hard to deal with.
I was introduced to online gay fiction rather late - by a GenX lover  - and while I enjoy a good story, it hasn't been part of my acceptance of being gay. Early social media (in the '90s it was much less fraught because it was not controlled by corporations intent on maximizing profit) did play a big role for me as I was still in a straight marriage and didn't feel free to connect too strongly with the gay community in person though I was out to my spouse.
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solsticeman
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Likes it here |
Registered: November 2012
Messages: 109
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It is said that homosexuality was legalised in 1967... I would disagree
As late as the 1980s the local police were still staking out public lavatories to trap men using gloryholes.
What is legal is a fiction in the mind of each policeman
In 1967 it simply became more difficult to prosecute
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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"solsticeman wrote on Sat, 30 December 2023 19:00"It is said that homosexuality was legalised in 1967... I would disagree
As late as the 1980s the local police were still staking out public lavatories to trap men using gloryholes.
What is legal is a fiction in the mind of each policeman
In 1967 it simply became more difficult to prosecute
--
After the UK Sexual Offences Act 1967 the police gained the power to entrap gay men who propositioned another man for sex, whatever the age. More people were prosecuted in this manner than ever before. The rationale was that the sex was being started in a public place (the request) and thus the this was unlawful.
Part of the problem was the rabid masculinity(!) of the boys in blue and their need to make arrests. The UK police were more corrupt than they are today, and pathologically 'afraid' of gay men.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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"timmy wrote on Tue, 14 November 2023 10:59"
I'm sorry the forum has some weirdness. I can't mend those imperfections, the software used is obsolete, unmaintained by its developers for many years. If I dared to run the "rebuild forum imdex" task I susect it would screw it up totally. I fear it will have to do as it is. The cost/benefit of introducing new software and attempting back record conversion is zero.
We are running into analogous problems at the AwesomeDude forum (https://forums.awesomedude.com). It's kind of a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the forum is actually hosted in the cloud by Invision, so we don't have to maintain the underlying software. The bad news is that Mike took the account credentials to his grave. He opened the Invision account years ago when the company's pricing was much more favorable, and we don't want to lose that. But there are aspects of the forum that aren't working properly, and it's not clear whether we can even open a service ticket on that account. (The primary issue is that the mechanism for registering new users is not working, in two respects: The confirmation email is not going out, and the CAPTCHA does not seem to matter -- we get massive numbers of spambots registering bogus accounts.) If we manually approve an account, the email stating that the account is approved does go out as it is supposed to, so email is properly configured. The routine for registration is just messed up. We have asked new registrants to email us so we can find them in the crowd of spambots and approve them manually.
This forum looks to my eye to be a lineal descendant of vBulletin. I'm glad you're able to keep it working. It seems like the choices available for forum software are not great these days. And migrating to a new platform is undoubtedly a complete nightmare. So I think both of us need to make the best of our current situations!
R
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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It is programmatically possible to mend just about anything, but the effort is disproprotionately great. Itrequires huge goodwill, and there is no actual reward atthe end of it
We have the major issue of not allowing spammers even to register. We're lucky. That element works still.
Your solution might be to install forum software on your own server, but there are no good forunsto choose from. Does crerating a sub-reddit appeal?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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We are looking at all options at this point. I think users are generally happy with the Invision platform. We, the admins, are not happy with the messed-up registration process, and we are also worried about losing the favorable pricing at some point.
I admininstered the phpBB forum for Gymnopedies for many years, before the site crashed and he disappeared. I'm not wild about that forum software either, but it has the virtue of being free and the further virtue of still being supported. But I sure don't want to have to migrate.
On the larger questions of Where have all the readers gone and Where have all the forum commenters gone, I have no clue.
R
[Updated on: Sun, 04 February 2024 21:17] |
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UPDATE: I'm pleased to say that after pushing all the buttons and pulling all the levers, we have finally stumbled upon a spam-discouraging challenge step that appears to be working. The spambots seem to sail past the CAPTCHA challenge, but they can't bamboozle the question=and=answer challenge we added. The question, "How many e's are there in Awesome?" seems to stump the spammers.
R
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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When they solve that, ask how many 'P's there are in Swimming Baths
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13751
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Or "F"s in Customer Service
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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