Discussion on Public Scripts Categories

General
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First actual post, don’t know whether this should go into General or Site Feedback, so I’m labeling it as this.

This is my continuation of this topic that I brought up: Forced 2FA - #121 by DIMMADD

Firstly, I think I was misunderstood. What I’m advocating for, especially since MFA is now required, is that the scripting categories are able to be viewed when logged out. Keep in mind that when you are logged out, you can’t comment or make a post as I’ve just tried that in an incognito tab.
I was told by site leader Vlad to go look at previous posts as for why that isn’t the case and that the threads are out there with no direction or reasoning other then go find them (which is harsh but tension was high). So I did.

I ended up finding this thread:

This thread talks about an earlier site (I didn’t know existed since I’m relatively new) and how having it be open was causing a lot of bot posts. Right now, that isn’t an issue because as I’ve said above, you need an account to be able to post.
There was also the sentiment that the Scripts pages being publicly viewable would raise doxxing and privacy concerns. While I agree with that sentiment, after 5 years, that general consensus could’ve changed. In addition, I believe the community was a lot smaller and less known then it is now.
The mod known as defucilis has brought up some great points on both sides. One point I see that I didn’t think about, is copyright infringement. I don’t know much about these nsfw sites back in 2021 and before that (mainly because my memory is shit), but rule34.xxx and most if not everything else related is all free to view. Whether they can be indexed by search engines or not I don’t know. What I do know is that they exist and not much (as far as I know) is done about it. Secondly on this topic, posting a link to the video on these sites shouldn’t cause and copyright issues that I know about.
User burtreynolds on post 29 brings up a fantastic point that I agree with, “There would however always be the option to open the community when and if a new challenger appears on the horizon, but maybe opening the community now would prevent that from even happening”. If the people here want longevity, maybe opening up the scripts categories now is a good idea with MFA being forced and that pushing people away.
One thing I just realized with the copyright infringement stuff is that people who care about that could just create an account and sue that way, assuming I’m understanding how that works correctly. Yes having them hidden does provide an additional barrier to go through, but for someone that cares enough, it doesn’t matter.
Liquid here says exactly my sentiments with this, “The whole “people should put up with creating an account ” argument is weird to me to be honest, I absolutely HATE when a site forces me to create an account just to see or download something”. The only reason why I had an account before today was scripts for my SR1. I am a lurker through and through with almost everything in my life.
A lot of people were advocating for having everything be public (meaning able to be seen without logging in), but to download stuff you had to be logged in. Normally I would’ve agreed with this, but with MFA being forced, I no longer do. Everything should be public.

Exactly what I feel as well.

Other then that one discussion thread I haven’t seen any others.

A middle ground would be to have just the Free Scripts category be open to non account users.

Since I can’t edit the poll without deleting it, the “Free Scripts shouldn’t be public” does include paid as well.

  • Free Scripts should be public
  • Free Scripts shouldn’t be public
  • Both Free and Paid should be public
  • I don’t care
0 voters
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Make a poll: Creating and managing polls - Using Discourse - Discourse Meta

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Thanks, I didn’t realize I could start one.

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Should probably add a none of the above option, as in ‘I don’t care’ cause there will be people who do not mind or care either way.

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I want to point out a few additional points:

  1. Right now, after registering, some tags are muted. Such tags as loli or shota are a legal problem in many countries around the world to the point where having a picture cached on your HDD can come to haunt you. Having this out in the open could a) make visiting a problem for users of those countries and b) have the site be filtered altogether. So we shouldn’t have content with these tags be public, especially in times where there’s more and more legislative crackdown.

  2. We often include links to file hosting services in the thread. Having these out in the open could make the forum a more fruitful ground for DMCA hawks and get us into the crosshairs.

  3. We are already struggling with user engagement on the site and feedback for scripters looking to get better or just keeping scripters motivated. The guys organizing community events have been trying to battle this with a lot of effort. But this measure would only exacerbate the problem, since even less people would bother to interact in any way, when they aren’t logged in and won’t even do the smallest courtesy of liking what someone spent time and energy on.

And although I’m all for the FOSS philosophy, thinking about having something in this field be so open does make me feel a bit uneasy. Not sure about how other scripters see this.

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  1. I’m going to have a far out there take, but it’s rooted in definitions. Loli and shota aren’t anything bad, they are descriptions for how someone looks. In addition, if someone can’t distinguish IRL from animation, that is on that person. I understand laws and legislation is a concern but, as you’ve pointed out, those tags are muted. I don’t know what that means or how it works, but could that be applied to non-account users? If so, then that’s a non-issue.

  2. Remember that DMCA hawks could just go through the process of creating an account and do that same thing. Yes it’s less friction, but I see DMCA hawks as people who will do anything to get stuff taken down. Plus, as I’ve pointed out, providing links to websites shouldn’t hurt anything because those websites are also public.

  3. I feel like the MFA, and maybe even walled garden that is needing an account, is already too much for user engagement, this measure will just allow lurkers the privacy that they want.

Keep in mind, privacy is not the same as security. They are often together but they are not the same. It already is pretty open as anyone can view it, they just need to sign up. I’m sure there are ways of preventing internet scraping as much as possible.

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  1. Doesn’t matter if the law says it’s CSAM. I’m pointing out that under no circumstances or solution should those tags be visible.
  2. I’m not talking about streaming sites, but file hosting. Those links aren’t public until they’re posted publicly.
  3. The issue with MFA as you’re describing it, would be overall traffic, if people don’t bother signing up. Only time will tell how that changes, if at all. I’m talking about engagement of people who do have access to the scripts.

I am well aware of the difference. Still the gut-feeling remains and I don’t think it has to do with scraping but the type of exposure. That’s only my initial gut-feeling though and I’ll gladly await some time as well as other people’s views on this.

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One more thing on this specifically. If this is an issue with users not logged in, then it’s also an issue for people who are logged in. The big kicker here is that by forcing people to log in (especially with MFA being mandatory) their privacy of this website and the potential illegal content is more easily discoverable. If you didn’t need an account to view the scripts for that stuff, you wouldn’t need to keep track of you email/password/MFA device/program for this website.

Point b is null and void because VPN’s exist, but I understand the sentiment.

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  1. If the posts with those tags aren’t readily visible now and if those tags persist when opening the category to non-accounts, then I don’t see the issue.
  2. I can understand that viewpoint, but I feel like my point still stands. If DMCA people want to limit something, needing an account probably won’t stop them. What could happen to help limit it is no links to file hosting services on new posts.
  3. I’m lurking in the ES discord and Vlad has said that within 10 1/2 hours of this rolling out that 25 users have deleted their accounts. They do say traffic has increased but I don’t know what that means, it could be because of the MFA or random. They’ve said that traffic is random with no patterns, so I’m chalking it up to randomness.

As I’m sure you read above, initially this didn’t have a poll because 1) I didn’t think I could set one up, but more importantly 2) this is meant as a discussion. Thank you for taking the time to discuss.

Ultimately for me, I don’t care too much if this fails because I’ll just delete my account and rely on my own script repository that I’m creating. No I’m not sharing any of the scripts I have done because I don’t want to, I have different views then a lot of scripters here, and privacy concerns due to metadata in files. I’m actually uncertain how much you can learn from that (haven’t looked into it), but it doesn’t really matter how much you can learn as that point isn’t the main reason.

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There’s already another thread of people complaining that free scripts are dying because it’s not rewarding enough, this would only make it worse by letting users download without an account as they wouldn’t even be able to like or give feedback.
I don’t see who this would serve.

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Just throwing this out there.

Again, not to ruffle feathers, but just to state the obvious from a business perspective:

If I, or most any other person, ran this forum, you’d all pay a bare minimum $2.99 - 9.99/month for a membership, depending on the tier. Content creators would be locked into using my Sales Site, owing me 15% of whatever they sold.

Sorry if this is too Real, but I’m a crazy successful business owner and this site not only offers FREE content, but a chance to share and start your own e-commerce shop, which is also FREE of charge. All of this has easily quantifiable Value and you should be thankful it’s all offered free of charge.

Just saying. We have it MADE on this site, and a bit of appreciation should be in order, rather than nit-picking at some of the Ridiculously Mild “rules” or perceived restrictions. If you look at it from the 10,000 ft view, you’d see there’s a tremendous amount of value logging in as a member, and as stated, it’s all free, free, free. It actually hurts my MBA brain thinking about it.

So asking if this site should offer MORE things for free ,and specifically to non-members is absurd. It takes just a few seconds to sign up and this community is 100% worth interacting with.

The rules are simple and anyone with a brain can figure out that the value of this site far exceeds any perceived limitations or inconvenience.

I challenge anyone to make such a site and then offer it ALL up for free, while spending hours of your own time keeping it from crashing, getting hacked, or answering every single complaint that comes along with more civility than most people claim to have.

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Thanks for the good laugh!

Maybe you should realize that no one would put up scripts for free if this was a paid platform, making it way less valuable. In any case that’s pretty irrelevant to the discussion.

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If admins reject any disagreement with forced 2FA - making scripts visible for unlogged user is another solution, if you can download scripts without logging in - 2fa can’t bother you anymore)
I’lll take it!

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I retired very young, but we all measure success in our own way, so have at it I guess.

I’m a supporter and I’m a contributor, so that obviously isn’t true. People like me are not as rare as you think.

In business, you find methods to incentivize and motivate people to create and build your product. There are multiple, proven strategies that inspire creators to willfully provide their time and content, both for pay and for free. It would take far less effort than you think to make this site very profitable while still maintaining a healthy level of free content.

But not to derail this discussion any further, since I get your point on relevance, the thought of giving things away for free, to people who are unable to interact with this community, makes zero sense to me. That doesn’t foster healthy interaction or growth for the community.

There is value in being a member here and that should be encouraged. That’s all I’m saying.

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Controversial Tags
We have always been playing with fire regarding loli/shota and other controversial tags. It may not be outright ‘illegal’ but its lying to yourself if you don’t recognize how other people might see it. Shit’s sketchy and we know its towing the line on things and it may one day be an issue.

Adult content is currently going through. UK has incest simulation ban that will get creators arrested(RIP Ivywilde’s content probably), some states can’t access certain sites without age verification. Personally, I can’t access pornhub at all without a vpn.

F95 outright banned loli cause its a loaded issue and didn’t want to deal with it, but eroscript members came out and discussed the issue and fought for less censorship.
Personally, its not my cup of tea, but I was okay with less censorship here cause I was under the impression that we were at least safe from google searches because of the account requirement. Would maybe have to reopen this can of worms if we open up and those threads can’t be hidden.

RE:DMCA hawks.
You should still lock your doors even if someone can break the lock or a window. Doctors still say you should use condoms even if its ‘safe’.

Engagement
Requiring no account makes it go from theoretical reduced engagement from barriers of entry(just account and account+MFA) to no engagement. If people don’t need to have an account then they dont have the option to comment; We’d just have a viewcount and the download number next to the script goes up, neither of which would count towards engagement. Even before MFA, you needed an account and most users still didn’t participate.

For instance, a site like Pornhub didn’t require an account and has a lot of visitors but they barely have a user base, but they probably don’t care because they make money off ads, premium subs and partnerships. They don’t need a community, they have money.

We don’t really have that.

This is a hobby forum that only exists because people wanted to make scripts for strokers and some scripters make money off of that.

Eroscripts doesn’t make money off clicks. We don’t have a bunch of intrusive ads/popups like other adult sites. We don’t have a premium subscription. I think we had banners at the top of the screen for a few partnerships. At minimum, they earn from patrons but everyone can use the site regardless.

Eroscripts needs people posting scripts, answering questions, and commenting.

Metrics
Losing 25 users doesn’t mean anything without further information. 25 out of what? 25 out of 50 is a big loss, 25 out of 2000 less so. Were they active users or passive lurkers? 25 lurkers doesn’t actually affect any meaningful numbers given they count towards no engagement. But if it was 25 scripters, we’d have a big problem.

What would actually be good information is how many users we have, and then how many of those would be considered active participants and how many of those people left.

We did have an issue previously that caused many scripters to speak up on it because it affected functionality of the website. If the current issues were the same level of concern, I figure more of them would’ve spoken up about it.

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Does this happen frequently?

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:joy: