alt.sex.stories is a Usenet

Usenet

Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 newsgroup

Newsgroup

A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...

 for erotic stories

Pornography

Pornography or porn is the explicit portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purposes of sexual arousal and erotic satisfaction.Pornography may use any of a variety of media, ranging from books, magazines, postcards, photos, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video,...

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Alt.sex.stories was created on May 7, 1992 by Tim Pierce as an alternative to pre-existing alt erotica newsgroups.

The group was initially unmoderated, a feature that was not shared by some of the other Usenet or altnet newsgroups. This feature allowed for greater user freedom.

alt.sex.stories.moderated

In early 1997 a moderated version of alt.sex.stories was created due to an increasing number of posts by “various pay services, scam artists, and bots”. This moderated newsgroup (ASSM) has always operated by cross-posting all approved stories to alt.sex.stories, and is not simply a filtered version of the unmoderated group, rather, all stories posted to ASSM were specifically submitted there.

Currently the day-to-day operations and general direction of ASSM is overseen by the Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository (ASSTR), which coordinates a group of volunteers to moderate the newsgroup using a web-based voting system. ASSTR also hosts an archive of the newsgroup. ASSM is one of the few remaining active groups in the alt.sex.*hierarchy.

Due to competition from web-based erotica sites and communities, the volume of stories posted to ASSM (and thus to alt.sex.stories) had dropped considerably by 2006, although the group is still actively moderated.

Notable authors

Alt.sex.stories is notable for assisting in the launch of several notable authors of erotica such as Elf Sternberg and Mary Anne Mohanraj.

Story codes

Because of the large volume of stories posted to these groups users found it difficult to find stories to suit their kink and avoid stories with themes they do not find appealing. To help with this a set of codes to describe the story content was developed, such as M for Male and F for female. Writers were encouraged to include these story codes in the title of their stories. To assist this a story code FAQ for writers was occasionally posted to the news group, describing the consensus on how to use these codes. This was also archived at ASSTR. A Story Code FAQ for readers, describing how the story codes had been used in practice was also posted and archived at ASSTR. Story codes based on these are used on many other archives which include erotic stories, extended in various ways to suit the requirements of each group.

External links

• copy of the newgroup message that created alt.sex.stories
• Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository -- free, non-profit collection of over 450,000 works of erotic literature, home to over 4000 authors, and host of the Alt.Sex.Stories.Moderated archive
• The Top XXX Cliches of alt.sex.stories -- humorous compilation (also free) of cliched writing on alt.sex.stories
• Google groups: alt.sex.stories
• Sex Stories on the Internet: The First Twenty or so Years -- essay by "H. Jekyll"