Stories of Tie Up Games

Good evening,

as many of you may have already noticed, we have changed the ability to send out Private Messages to everybody because of an increase of bots and Roleplay/PM spammers filling up the inboxes of users. Thus, we as a team decided to put up a barrier before the private messages.

BUT BEHOLD: this does not mean that you aren't able to send out PMs anymore. It simply means that you have to pass a certain requirement before you can send out and receive messages.

To answer the question "And what is the requirement to send out/receive messages?", it is the following:

All you need to do is to have 10 posts posted on the forum, after that the ability to send out messages is unlocked for you. Please be aware that posts in the Role Play and the How would... subforum are not included in the count.

In addition to that, we added a new rank, the Intermediary Users. The requirement to reach the ranks is to have posted ten times on the forum.

This means that our rank system is now as following:

Newly registered users - for user who have posted between 0-1 time on the forum (excluding posts in the Role Play and the How would... subforum).
Registered users - for users which have posted between 2 and 9 times on the forum (excluding posts in the Role Play and the How would... subforum).
Intermediary Users - for users which have posted between 10 and 99 times on the forum (excluding posts in the Role Play and the How would... subforum). THIS RANK IS REQUIRED IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEND OUT PRIVATE MESSAGES!
Active Users - for users which have posted 100+ times on the forum (excluding posts in the Role Play and the How would... subforum).
Archiver - this is a honorary rank given from the site's team to users who are very active in the Story Archives subforum
Contest Winner - this rank is given to users who have won our story contests
Contest Judges - this rank is given to respectable users who aid the team in deciding the winners of our story contests
Honorary People - this is the highest honorary rank a user can reach here, members who have been astonishing in keeping the site alive and having contributed greatly to the site
Global moderators - the minions and henchmen/-woman of the admins
Administrators - the brains of the site, the ones keeping the gears running

How about Intermediary Users and above send messages to Newly Registered and Registered Users? Will they receive the message or otherwise?

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago How about Intermediary Users and above send messages to Newly Registered and Registered Users? Will they receive the message or otherwise?

No, both the writer and the recipient need to be in the Intermediary rank or above. For users in the Newly Registered and Registered ranks the message section is locked until they reach 10 posts.

[mention]BlackCape[/mention] Lurkers and new users don't get access to private messaging. Period.

Newly registered members being harassed with PM-RP requests right off the bat is not something that's acceptable.
We've been getting frequent complaints about this and we're putting an end to it.

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago How about Intermediary Users and above send messages to Newly Registered and Registered Users? Will they receive the message or otherwise?

They can still receive private messages, but they will not be able to read them until they make their first 10 posts.

chadmc90 wrote: ↑3 years ago

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago How about Intermediary Users and above send messages to Newly Registered and Registered Users? Will they receive the message or otherwise?

They can still receive private messages, but they will not be able to read them until they make their first 10 posts.

Ah, so it would simply block the new user from reading the message. Okay, that explains it. Its not surprising to see users being spammed messages, so this can do the trick.

When you say ‘first 10 posts’, does a reply count as a post?

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago

chadmc90 wrote: ↑3 years ago

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago How about Intermediary Users and above send messages to Newly Registered and Registered Users? Will they receive the message or otherwise?

They can still receive private messages, but they will not be able to read them until they make their first 10 posts.

Ah, so it would simply block the new user from reading the message. Okay, that explains it. Its not surprising to see users being spammed messages, so this can do the trick.

Actually, I just tested it myself and I cant even send messages to new users. The read permission is also tied to the receive permission, so anyone without read permissions will not be able to receive new PMs(which is the case until their 10th post).

And yes, a reply counts as a post

BlackCape wrote: ↑3 years ago Ah, so it would simply block the new user from reading the message. Okay, that explains it. Its not surprising to see users being spammed messages, so this can do the trick.

That's what we hope.

abcdefsmith3 wrote: ↑3 years ago When you say ‘first 10 posts’, does a reply count as a post?

Yes it does. Replying to a thread/story counts as a post.

Just a warning: spamming posts to get your first 10 will result in an immediate ban. No exceptions.

Thanks for the informative thread! As a recent member, I was super confused when I logged on this morning haha.

Forum certainly feels more alive now thanks to these changes. It seems to be a good call on the behalf of mods and admins great job you guys!

Hopefully this will encourage more people to stick around and contribute to the forum. Seems like activity has jumped quite a bit already.

captured_prize wrote: ↑3 years ago Seems like activity has jumped quite a bit already.

Yes, but the positive effects of what we've done will not be immediate.
What you're seeing now is a rush of long time lurkers and PM-only users flooding onto the non-story boards just to get those 10 posts they need so they can go back to lurking through private RPs.

We expected as much.


The good thing that will come out of this is that future members will be able to join and experience the forum without being harassed, RP-request spammed and in some cases flirted with right off the bat.

As I explained in one of my posts last week, the moderation team and myself set up multiple new accounts in the hopes of experiencing what new members were experiencing and complaining about. Suffice to say, all of our fake accounts were immediately PMed, RP-invited, and bombarded with messages, and not just by a few members, but by DOZENS of active users on the site.


This culture of jumping on new users without even allowing them to get a feel for the forum IS the main reason why F/F, M/F and F/M stories are lagging so far behind their M/M counterparts when it comes to comments and reviews.

New M/M users do not have the same issues. They don't get PM spammed.
But members who sign up and introduce themselves as fans of M/F, F/M and F/F immediately start being harassed and bombarded with RP invites and messages. Meanwhile we have excellent authors like [mention]RopeBunny[/mention] and [mention]TomYi[/mention] (and pretty much all of the related authors) struggling to get just a few comments and reviews. All of their potential new reviewers are too busy being buried left and right by flirtatious/personal PM questions and RP invites.

My fake F/M account received 16 PMs and RP-request messages in the first 12 hours of it's creation.
It took a while for us to figure out what to do about it. And this is what we've come up with.


New users are to be left alone so that they can actually get to the story forums and experience the board in peace for a few days/weeks. All of this is being done for the benefit of F/M, M/F and F/F authors.

I am confident that they will see an uptick in support in the coming weeks and months.


This latest flood of non-story related activity will die out once our hoards of lurkers regain access to their much sought after PM permissions.


What I'm writing is not targeting anyone in particular and is simply a generalization and an oversimplification of the matter.

To those who might feel insulted by this text: take a chill pill.
I've been on this board for a looong time, I know what I'm talking about

I think this is a good improvement! Awesome work, modteam.

Bondagefreak, just out of curiosity, did you pose as a male or female for your fake account? I expect the results (16 in 12 hours) to be significantly different if you pose as the other sex.

Beaumains wrote: ↑3 years ago I think this is a good improvement! Awesome work, modteam.

Bondagefreak, just out of curiosity, did you pose as a male or female for your fake account? I expect the results (16 in 12 hours) to be significantly different if you pose as the other sex.

I think he posed as a female, as they seem to be the primary target of the RP spammers.

Regardless of the gender, it is still disheartening to see users turned away from the board by these desperate, deprived idiots who are not considerate of others.

Must agree with [mention]chadmc90[/mention]

chadmc90 wrote: ↑3 years ago

Beaumains wrote: ↑3 years ago I think this is a good improvement! Awesome work, modteam.

Bondagefreak, just out of curiosity, did you pose as a male or female for your fake account? I expect the results (16 in 12 hours) to be significantly different if you pose as the other sex.

I think he posed as a female, as they seem to be the primary target of the RP spammers.

Regardless of the gender, it is still disheartening to see users turned away from the board by these desperate, deprived idiots who are not considerate of others.

Of course I agree with that. However, if bondagefreak posed as a man, I would have suspected the problem to be much worse.

I hate role plays that say pretend to be my Dad. I’m not a new user but I don’t like role plays. I let my stories do the speaking and real life experiences that I do not find here.

While I am not a member of the M/F, F/M, or F/F communities, I really hope that this will make new users feel less intimidated when joining the forum, and to also prevent general spam. While the new system is a bit harsh, I think it's ultimately necessary to improve the quality of life for new users.

Cheers to the moderation team for this new policy!

Thank you Admin team for the changes made. Can't say I had the experience being bombed here as a new user, but I have been involved in running several sites and know of the issues. Hope this solution works.

Thanks for the support, [mention]OrdinaryWorld[/mention] and [mention]slackywacky[/mention] .

I want to add my thanks, not only for doing this change, but just for the whole work, that goes into the site in general. Thanks for all the great work, everyone.

Definitely a necessary measure, though I can’t help but see it negatively effect the health of the forum/the number of users dramatically. I’ve seen loads of new people join the server with a genuine interest in simply chatting and role playing and such, I imagine having them follow this new strict guideline will simply drive them away. Surely there’s an easier way to verify a new user? Maybe through a form or even just the ‘introduce yourself’ page?

noggip wrote: ↑3 years ago Definitely a necessary measure, though I can’t help but see it negatively effect the health of the forum/the number of users dramatically. I’ve seen loads of new people join the server with a genuine interest in simply chatting and role playing and such, I imagine having them follow this new strict guideline will simply drive them away. Surely there’s an easier way to verify a new user? Maybe through a form or even just the ‘introduce yourself’ page?

Those users here to simply "chat and role play" were never our target audience to begin with. Our focus has and always will be to support the authors and readers of the stories here. We're going to do what is best for those that are here for the stories before any other group.

You can blame the RP spamming assholes who were not respectful of our boards rules and don't know when "no means no" for this rule. Be lucky it wasn't my initial suggestion to take away PMs entirely for regular users.