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Net Wolf and Eric Storm are the same person. It is merely a name change that the author felt was necessary for personal reasons. This alteration of his penname does not make any significant difference to the site.
You'll notice that the site rarely uses the term "author" or "story" to describe things. The reason for this is that we also support artists, with artwork and imagery. Rather than repeatedly using dual terminology (story / artwork, author / artist), we have chosen to replace those terms altogether.
An "item" is anything that has been posted to the site, whether it is a story, an image... or a recipe!
A "contributor", naturally enough, is someone who contributes an item.
First, understand that donations are used to help Eric's financial situation, and not to run the website. Though donations do pay for the site's hosting and domain registration, those costs are not so high that they take up much of the donations. On the other hand, Eric's living expenses, do.
Also, understand that a donation does not entitle you to anything at all. It is a gift to Eric, for which you are entitled to his gratitude, and nothing else.
However, because Eric does feel grateful for your donation, he will (probably) give you a thank-you gift. (SO LONG AS your donation is above the $6 minimum threshold. That amount was set so that PayPal doesn't eat up the entire donation with fees.) That gift is usually something called "special access time". That time - which is figured as 1 month for every $2 of your donation - will allow you to read Pre-Release Material that becomes available during your special access. (Please see the FAQ concerning Pre-Release Material, if you don't know what that is.)
Donors also receive priority consideration for feature requests on the site, and heavy donors may also be asked for suggestions related to stories.
There may be other benefits added to "special access time" in the future.
The ratings at The Pub were based - very loosely - on the ratings used at movie theaters. Here is how the system is laid out:
Please note that, due to space constraints, we have used the story version of these ratings in the help tooltips that appear around the site.
The genres at The Pub are as follows:
If you forget what a genre means, you can point at it where you see it on the site. A tooltip will pop up reminding you of the definition.
At The Pub, the item codes have the following definitions:
Like the genres and the rating, the item codes will display a tooltip if you point at them, in case you forget what one means.
For stories or images involving sex, the pairing codes use the following system:
All pairing codes consist of two letters, with the exception of the code "3+", which will be described in a minute. The letters of the codes have the following meanings:
The "3+" code indicates a sexual event with more than two people. The preferred method for listing such a thing is as follows: Assume that one adult male, one teen female and one adult female are all having sex. The codes that should be used are: fM, MF, fF, 3+. The author or artist may choose to eliminate one of these codes to indicate that, for instance, the teen female and adult female are not actually having sex with each other, but are merely each having sex with the male at the same time. This would eliminate the fF code.
Pairing codes do not have tooltips on the site.
For multi-chapter stories, or multi-image series, there is a four-part status code system here at the site.
Status codes do not have tooltips on the site.
First, let us say thank you for your interest in supporting the site by providing content.
In order to be able to post stories to this site, you have to be granted "Contributor-Level" access. To have your account granted this access, please contact the administration using The Contact Us Form.
This problem is almost always caused by your browser not accepting cookies, or your browser getting "stuck". Make sure that your browser accepts cookies.
You can also try clearing your cache. In IE, this is done under "Tools > Internet Options > Temporary Internet Files > Delete Files". In Firefox, it is found under "Tools > Clear Private Data".
Eric didn't take back control of EWP because, very simply, it's not his site to take control of anymore. The domain name, the site code, and the database all belong to someone else at this point.
Also, EWP was not exactly what Eric wanted, so the new site is an opportunity to create something closer to his vision for a site to share creative expression.
To learn more about why Eric left EWP at the end of October, 2006, go to the "About the Pub" page and follow the link there.
The short answer is, The Pub will never contain a numeric rating system. The reason for this is that they simply do not work.
As proof of this, one merely has to look at the ratings system on Stories Online. Not to rag on Lazeez: it's a great site. However, the ratings have inexorably crept toward 10 over the last several years, to the point where 9.5's are common, bland stories that are "worth reading, but not spectacular", and anything below a 9 is considered crap.
Instead, The Pub has instituted a recommendation system. When you read a story or look at artwork, you are asked to give your opinion of it. The system will then take your opinions of the items you've viewed, and make suggestions about other items you might like. We feel this is a far more useful system than a ratings system, and hope that you will find it beneficial.
Please note: though we will be asking for your opinions from the beginning, the system won't be able to actually give recommendations for a few months, until it has gathered enough opinions from users. Please give your opinion of everything you view, so the system can be brought online as quickly as possible, hopefully by the start of 2007.
Without getting into the mathematical or statistical technicalities, a median is a specific type of average.
In a "normal" average, you add up all the values, and then divide by the number of values you've got, and that gives you your "average". The problem with this is that it can give a false impression if one of your numbers is vastly different from the others. Take, for example, an average of the numbers 1, 50, 4, and 5. The average is 30... but that's not anywhere near ANY of those numbers, so it's misleading.
A median, on the other hand, takes the "middle value". So we first sort our list (we get 1, 4, 5, 50...), and then we take the middle number. In this particular case, we have an even number of items, so there is no "middle" number, and what we do is actually average the two middle numbers. (That is, do the normal average: add them together and divide by 2.) This gives us 4.5. To keep things clean on the site, we have rounded all of these values down, so we'd get 4. You see how much closer 4 is to the majority of the values (it in fact equals one of them...) than 30 was? This is the reason for using a median, rather than an average.
What we were hoping to do is give a better indication of how many people were reading a story or had viewed an image collection, and ignoring the "first unit spike" (that is, the fact that lots of people view the first unit of something, and then aren't interested, so don't continue...), and also to ignore the low download counts of newly-posted units. We hope you find the median count useful.
Pre-Release Material is defined as material that is not available to the public at this time, but will be at some point in the future.
As it relates to The Pub, what this is, is story material written by Eric Storm that is available only to a selected subset of the site's members.
In order to become part of this group, a site member must either make a minimum donation of $6 (which gets them all the same benefits as mentioned elsewhere in addition to getting access to the PRM (Pre-Release Material) section), make a significant contribution to the Forums (as decided by Eric), or find some other way to impress or otherwise please Eric.
The PRM section was initiated because it was seen that a small number of visitors were supporting the site and Eric, while a vast group reaped the full rewards of others' efforts. Thus, Eric decided to reward those who had helped out by giving them early access to his writing. They also are encouraged to give feedback of the stories in PRM, because, unlike stories released in the public area, stories in PRM can be altered if Eric thinks someone has made a good suggestion. This gives the PRM-eligible member some sway - should they choose to assert it - over how Eric's stories turn out.
It must be reiterated that this is not really a "pay" section of the site. There are people in the PRM group who have not made a monetary donation. Also, everything that appears in PRM will, eventually, be posted to the public section of the site, so it is not required that a member pay in order to see this material. If they do not wish to contribute to the site in such a way as to get PRM status, they merely have to wait until the PRM stories make it into the public section. The amount of time that takes is not something that will be discussed publicly, but it may be months.
PRM may occasionally contain work from other authors, if those authors specifically donate some work to be part of the PRM. It is a way for contributors to "donate" when they don't have any money.