Deeker's Message of the Week

No worries, this is NOT a farewell message. It is my sincere expression of thanks to all of the people who were so kind to show their support and appreciation for this web site in the wake of last Wednesday's meltdown when an a harshly critical email was sent to me by Y. Lee. The offending email appears below, unedited:

Dan,

This is very difficult to write.  We have had some disagreement before about
your web site but the emphasis is on that it is your site to run as you want.

In the past I have comment on the difficulty of reading blue on blue and you
poo-pooed the idea.  I have a means to get around it but others just ignore
your site as another badly designed one.  You snapped at me for pointing out
bad links like they were my fault so I stopped mentioning them.  I note that
you even killed your "report back links".

You have excluded readers without high speed connections by having pages over
200KB and many over 100KB.

I, personally, have stopped reading the surveys and sighting report because
they now run twenty or more screens of sparsely filled form of minutia.  It
might be great if I was a computer to see a fixed format but not for my human
eyes.  But, again, it's your site and your choice.

I am appalled, shocked and greatly offended by your rude "editing reports".
Either you accept or reject a story, correct typos or not, return it to the
summiteer for corrections but you do NOT any right to shame people publically
listing what you perceive as their writing short comings.  You are not a
teacher and they are not your students and even if you were, then it should
be done privately.   You own people an apology.

Y.

Shortly after I finished reading this stinking turd of a message I went into a blind rage. There was lots of swearing, and if I hadn't had some degree of control of my emotions, there would have likely been some physical damage, too. The greatest casualty of all was Y. Lee's vicious affront to my pride.

In a moment of despair and frustration, Y. Lee's latest batch of pointing out the shortcomings (in his view, to be taken with a grain of salt) of my site was the final straw. Because his messages were infrequent, I didn't see a need to killfile him, but his latest blow to my self-esteem touched a raw nerve, and for a moment it seemed like there was nothing more that I could do but to hold him solely responsible for ruining a good thing for me and thousands of other people by shutting down the web site.

Minutes after I posted "I quit!" messages in place of the key pages of the web site a crushing wave of depression immediately came over me. What was once a fun and fulfilling hobby was suddenly gone, and as I looked ahead and thought about what life without Deeker.com would be like, it made me feel like a big part of me was dying. It was a horrible feeling, enough to not only make me cry, but to cause my past thoughts of committing suicide to resurface. I didn't make any serious plans to kill myself as I had done in the past when I was in a miserable dating relationship, but just knowing the pain of such despair was scary enough when I could feel it coming on once again, seeing these demons trying to interfere with my well being.

My first message left no contact information, but then I thought I should at least put my email address on the page in case anyone wanted to talk about it. At that point I received several dozen emails from concerned visitors, all of them expressing their sorrows, but also their support and their encouragement to have me reconsider my decision to pull the plug on the web site. This was enough to help me to come to my senses and realize that the hurtful words of one should not carry more weight than the kind and supportive words of many more, so later that evening I had the site back to its regular state.

I would like to share some of the comments I received in the wake of nearly taking down the web site. I have not had a chance to write back to all of you, but rest assured, your emails are appreciated and you will each receive a personal reply from me. And now, the comments I'd like to share:

• Don't let one guy ruin your site. If he don't like it,don't give him the pleasure.
• Deeker, you can't let Wile E get to you like that. You are an inspiration to DL's everywhere. If you close the site, you just let him win, and you can't! Like you said, thousands of people rely on sites like yours to finally feel like they belong! Please put the site back up.
• I hope that guy gets what's coming to him. I for one, enjoy your site and appreciated the spelling and grammar corrections. I also hope you reconsider closing your site as it is the most popular story site there is. It was also the best organized.
• It seems to me this Wile E. needs crawl out from under the rock he's been living under and get with the fucking program. He seems like a real douche to put it lightly. I love his one comment "You have excluded readers without high speed connections by having pages over 200KB and many over 100KB." SERIOUSLY???!!! It's 2009 almost 2010 if you don't have high-speed internet you need to think about moving somewhere else. I surf Deeker's on my fucking Blackberry and can go from page to page and story to story without a problem, even watch streaming sports games and your computer can't even do that?!! And yes its true only 38% of RURAL america has access to high-speed internet, but if you live anywhere close to a relatively major city you have access. Point given, I live in eastbumfuck-middle-of-nowhere western Mass. but I still have high-speed internet. The host of the webpage shouldn't be held responsible for the size of content on the pages just because a few people still have shitty dialup. Do these same morons go to say hulu.com or youtube.com and complain to those websites because they have to wait hours to watch a video or for a page to load? And you know if those websites did get an email from one of these guys about it, they would tell them, just like any webmaster out there would, they would tell them to FUCK OFF. Keep your chin up, Deeker, there's still a lot of us out there that love the page and would hate for it to go down. Tell this guy to suck a fat one.
• Come on, man you can't close us down! Just because of some poeple who can't adapt to change. This is your website domain and your diaper world. You can't just shut us down. I visit here almost every day. I love this website. Please dont do this to us!!
• I read on your front page that someone sent you an email and that made you mad. And you decided to take the site offline. I'm glad you decided to put it back up. We must not let the haters win. I love your website and I would be sad to to see it gone.
• My name is Steven and I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you decided to keep your site up and running. Your site was one of the first AB/DL sites that I found on the web and it meant so much to me at a young age because I did not know anything about my diaper interest. Your site let me know that I was not some strange person. It really helped me to understand my diaper interest. The community that you have created here is something to be cherished. There is no other site quite like yours. I continue to come back because of all the hard work that you put into it. I hope that it is around for a long time to come so other young people can find out about their diaper interests as well.
• I'm happy that you've reconsidered and decided to restore your site. It's good to know that you've worked out a response to such criticism without depriving all of the visitors who appreciate what you're doing.
• I saw that yellow message on the entry page. Don't worry, man, I would feel the same way (and I speak for the entire Deeker community!). So don't let some fag try and ruin your pride just because he doesn't like your policies. Don't give in!
• Keep the site going. Love it, and don't read those nasty emails. Block them and then you don't need to worry about them :) .
• Just read your note about "a certain person" and all I can say is I'm sorry that person caused you problems and I personally enjoy your web site and have for many years and I'm glad that you decided NOT to take it down!!!!

  I'm sure that there are a lot of people like that person, But there are many more that truly enjoy what you do!!

  So, Keep up the good work, And I'll keep coming to your site!

• I have just gone into your site and read about the problems you have been having. I have been viewing your site now for a number of years. I know you have had many emails giving you support and I wanted to add myself to the list. It is an absolutely fantastic site and you have given me and many others many hours of enjoyment. Please close your ears to these nut cases, ignore them completely, they are not worth you getting upset for.

  I am so grateful you are deciding to continue and hope you do so for many years more. I am starting to do some writing. I have been wanting to write my story, how being a AB all started for me. I was 4 years old when I had my first experience, wanting to be kept in reins when going out. At 6, I was climbing into prams and strapping myself in, by 13 I was wearing plastic pants and nappies regularly and have been doing so all my life still at 59 years of age.

  Thank you for everything and God bless you.

• I just want to assure you that you have my complete support in whatever issues or problems you're having at the moment! Your site is one of the original diaper sites that I found and I found great comfort and joy in reading and seeing the content that it provides!

  I remember being a young teenager and at that point only ever having tried a GoodNite that my younger sister used for bedwetting and reading your stories and WISHING that I could be in a real diaper. It was your site and stories that gave me the courage to take my allowance and walk over a mile to the supermarket and get my first pack of Attends! The GOOD Attends too ... you know ... the thick ones with the blue tapes!!! ;-)

  Every time I go to your site and read a story about a boy wearing diapers or accidentally pooping his pants it brings a smile to my face because I can imagine it being me!

  In short, I'm sure you suffer many slings and arrows for hosting a site like Deeker.com but I just want to let you know that I ... and a lot of others REALLY appreciate it and would REALLY be sad and disappointed if it and you left us!

  We're here man! If you need to talk or vent or whatever!!! take care and thank-you!!!

• Wow that YLee guy SURE sounds like a jerk! Glad to know his trolling just barely failed. May I recommend blocking the next person who flames you like this?
• Below is my personal point by point rebuttal to the message on your page. My intent is not to bore, but to show support and provide another insight into the things this person dislikes about this site.
  • First of all, if something is blue on blue, whatever that means, I do not notice. Of course, I wouldn't notice if it was green on turquoise, but that's only because I can't see it. I have never had a problem using your site with a screen reader, and can say that it is one of the more accessible sites in the genre that I visit on a regular basis. It is simple and easy to navigate, and I find its design to be largely intuitive. Of course, it helps to know something about computers, but I don't think that is completely necessary to navigate it.
  • Second, I personally have had a few bad link problems, but never had any trouble from you when mentioned. If I remember correctly, I mentioned a broken link to a surveys Zip file to you a few years back, and you stated that it was fixed straight away, which it was. As for report back links, I don't know what those are, so can't form any rebuttal to that. If he means report BAD links, people can send you an Email, it's right on the page after all.
  • Third, I started reading your page back when I myself had dial-up service. Granted, it was a 115.2 KBPS modem, and it took long as hell for some pages to load, but that never was a problem. What I did back then, when I wanted to read surveys or any long file, is wait for everyone to be in bed so as not to tie up the lines, download the Zip files over night and they'd be waiting for me the next morning, at which point I could peruse them at my leisure. Though I don't enjoy most of the sightings myself, I do read them occasionally for a laugh, especially the adult pages. I also enjoy the minutia of surveys and reports, and read through them carefully. If there's something specific I want to know about each person, I use the find feature to search for what I want and keep hitting F3 to read recurrences of said string of text. It really isn't that hard. I find the design of most surveys and reports to be monotonous but useful for tabulation and statistical analysis, which is apparent when looking over previous QOTW responses.
  • Fourth and finally, I am appalled, shocked and greatly offended by the bad writing people submit to your site, expecting you, who have a life of your own, to edit and post it. If you had posted your "rude" commentary after one or two bad apples, I would agree that you were certainly overreacting, but this has obviously been a continuous and ongoing problem that you have repeatedly tried to address in a polite and tolerant manner. Eventually, even the finest nerves become frayed, but I don't think people see that. All they see is some guy they don't know spouting off about crappy writing, of which there is precious little on the site, and coming to conclusions without considering what you endure in the struggle for quality control. After all, if the employees of a company keep shipping out faulty products, they are bound to catch hell from higher up. You run this site as a service, and it is therefore the least people can do to submit decent material that doesn't require hours of editing to make it palatable. I do have one question though. What the hell is a "summiteer?" Oh, and how can you own someone an apology? I own a computer, but I can't own someone a computer.
  In short, to put it to you in a few words, I believe you are doing just fine. Quite frankly, I have seen a marked improvement in the quality, if not the quantity, of the material on your site. I really am sorry this guy put you off so badly, and can only say that I hope your actions serve as some form of statement that hits someone over the head. Sometimes it takes drastic action to get their attention. Anyway, I am here if there's anything I can do for you. Have a pleasant day, and please don't let these assholes get to you if you can help it.
• I'm sorry that Wile E is an ass. I'm sorry that he appears to lack the ability to communicate decently and respectfully. I wish we didn't have to deal with people like him in the world.

  That being said, I think you might be overreacting a bit. I've seen and interacted with Wile E in a lot of different places on the internet, and he is always an ass. He is conceited, arrogant, and self-righteous. He is the kind of person that we need to learn to ignore. You shouldn't accept him affecting you so strongly. Yes, his words and manner of delivering them hurt and are insulting, but neither are worth destroying nearly (or possibly more, I don't recall exactly) a decade of work.

  Your site, as you state on the present home page, means a lot to thousands of people. I am one of them. Your site was what taught me to accept a lot of different things about myself. Your site was a comfort when I was ten and didn't understand why I wanted to wear diapers, and it was a comfort again when I was fourteen and didn't know why I liked guys more than girls. Frankly, without your site, I don't know where I'd be psychologically be today. Even to this day, your site remains a familiar daily comfort, and I will be very sad if it goes away for good.

  You tell Wile E, "How does it feel to be single-handedly responsible for shutting down a site that thousands enjoyed and depended on?!" I want to ask you--what right does he have to that privilege? What about his asinine, self-righteous comments gives him the right to bring about the end of such an important resource for so many people? You have provided a great service for many, many years to a lot of people who have really needed it. Don't stop now because of one asshole who doesn't know how to properly voice his concerns or opinions.

  Please, please don't let Wile E's comments get to you this much. They hurt, yes, but I think you really need to ignore them and write him off as an arrogant ass. Please, for the sake of a thousand readers and especially hundreds of young teens who are trying to understand their incomprehensible desires, create a filter in your email client to block Wile E's incoming emails, ignore his attempts to harass you, and bring your site back.

  Deeker, though I've never met you, and I doubt we ever will meet in person, I consider you to be my friend. Through your efforts, you have helped me through a lot of tough times in my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. The decision is up to you, but, please, I'm begging you, don't stop your important work over one insignificant complainer.

And now, I will present my rebuttal to Y Lee's comments:

• This is very difficult to write. We have had some disagreement before about your web site but the emphasis is on that it is your site to run as you want.

  Yes, it is, so just butt out, already!

• In the past (as opposed to, say, the future?!) I have comment(ed) on the difficulty of reading blue on blue and you poo-pooed the idea.

  Because you're about one of the only people to complain about it. If more people expressed concern or were having difficulties with reading the pages, then I would have acted upon this, but I don't make changes to the site just to please one person.

  In case you haven't noticed, I have changed the colors on some pages (including this one) so that they are "web friendly", which these days isn't really that much of a concern anyway, unlike in the dark ages of the web back when a lot of people were using 8-bit color displays.

  ...but others just ignore your site as another badly designed one.

  Perhaps some people do. My site isn't a professional web site, and while it could stand to use some improvement and some updating, most people seem to like things the way they are. Again, you are amongst few to actually bitch and moan about such matters. If enough people care enough to tell me that something needs to be fixed, then I can justify the time and the effort to look into it.

  I have a means to get around it...

  Well, lah-ti-fucking-dah! Good for you! So does everybody else with a decent browser if they so choose to override the colors I use on my web site with colors of their own. It must make you feel so smart that you know how to make use of this feature. Really, I am not the least bit impressed.

  You snapped at me for pointing out bad links like they were my fault so I stopped mentioning them.

  Let's take a look back on this one, shall we?

  • 09/08/09 reply: Thank you for your list of suggested additions to the list. I will include them with next week's updates, though I will talk it over with **** and see what he thinks of them first.
  • 05/23/09 reply: Thanks for the heads-up. I think it's fixed now. Go ahead and try it out. The problem seemed to originate from the Excel file I used to build these new tables and had the subdirectory names misplaced.
  • 05/22/09 reply: The links look fine to me. I�ll comb through the whole thing to see if the problems are sporadic or seemingly random or if there is a pattern.
  • 09/03/07 reply: By the time I got around to looking into this it was time to update the site anyway. I don't know, sometimes I get discouraged after awhile when I get too many bad-link and other error reports like this and decide, "hell with it."

    [...]

    Sorry if I am slow to respond or if I do not respond to some emails. Like I said, getting too many reports of errors really de-motivates me from wanting to do anything with the site and since such emails are often what you send, well... I'm probably not making any sense. Just try to bear with me in dealing with such situations.

  • 10/02/06 reply: The links looked good to me. Point me to the one you are referring to, as I assumed you meant 0010.
  • 09/25/06 reply: Thanks for letting me know about the date on the MOTW file. Of course by the time I corrected this I had posted the following week's MOTW. I've also fixed the missing zip file links that you reported.
  • 09/04/06 reply: Try it now. Serves me right for trying to do a rush job at 1:00 AM.
  • 09/04/06 reply: Can you advise me on how to get around this matter (aside from not using Word)? I was not even aware of any such issues when using Word to generate HTML formatted files (as opposed to the plain text files that use minimal HTML as you generally see on my site). So far nobody else has complained about having trouble with the HTML-enhanced files, most of which are generated from Word.
  • 09/01/06 reply: Thank you for your note. My ISP re-assigned my static IP, so I had to make a bunch of changes. Go ahead and try the page as it should be working now.
  • 08/26/06 reply: Thanks, this has been corrected, too.
  • 03/21/06 reply: Thanks for alerting me to the missing files. I don't know how or why they didn't make it to the server when they were processed. I had to recreate them from the source data, so they are now on the site.

  I could go back another year, but I think the above excerpts are a sufficient sampling of the correspondence that I have exchanged in response to your emails. If anything, it seems that I have mostly shown you appreciation for pointing out broken links. Before you accuse me of being selective and only including replies that support my argument, let me assure you that I went through all of my email archives (back to 2006) and did not find one instance where my response towards your pointing out bad links and other problems was in any way hostile or unappreciated. Hell, I even admitted to my own carelessness in one instance where I attributed my lack of sleep to the problems.

  Your accusation of me "snapping" at you has absolutely no merit. Case closed.

• I note that you even killed your "report back(d) links".

  I closed this because it was being abused by spammers. I really need to get a captcha set up for this sort of thing.

• You have excluded readers without high speed connections by having pages over 200KB and many over 100KB.

  Back when the World Trade Center towers were still standing and the Y2K bug was on everybody's minds as much as the current hysteria over the year 2012 is now, this might have been more of a concern since for most people one's only hope of overcoming the speed limitations of dialup was to surf the web from one's workplace. Welcome to 2009. Look around and you'll see that things have changed since then.

  Having done some research, it shows that as of April 2009, 63% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, a 15% increases from a year earlier. Granted, this does still leave a sizeable portion of Americans still using dialup, and with the faltering economy, this has driven some former broadband users to revert to dialup. Overseas, the ratio of dial-up users may be higher, too. Still, a 100K page or even a 200K page doesn't take a super long time to download. At a conservative rate of 3 kilobytes per second, a 200K file can be downloaded in about a minute or so. In consideration for those who do have slow connections, this is why I post the file sizes! Isn't that nice of me? If that isn't good enough, then dialup users can download the zip files while they get their diapers changed and then come back to it and read everything offline at their leisure. I don't have to do this, but I do, because I know it's a convenience for everyone, regardless of what connection speed they have.

  Dialup users may have to wait longer for a page to load, but anyone who regularly uses dialup is used to that and learns to live with its speed limitations, and if they want the file badly enough, they'll still get it. To say that I am excluding such users is a bit of a stretch.

  That said, I can't always coddle and accommodate those with slow connections, as many other web sites don't. Do you think Youtube, Flickr, Webshots, Google Maps, and other graphically intensive web sites have dialup users in mind when they design their web sites?

• I, personally, have stopped reading the surveys and sighting report(s) because they now run twenty or more screens of sparsely filled form(s) of minutia. It might be great if I was a computer to see a fixed format but not for my human eyes. But, again, it's your site and your choice.

  And by the same token, it's your choice not to read these sections because you don't like the layout. Perhaps you will be pleased to know that you are not the only one who has suggested (however implicit your particular suggestion may be) that the layout be improved on the sightings and the surveys. Perhaps some improvements can be made in these areas.

• I am appalled, shocked and greatly offended by your rude "editing reports".

  Cry me a fucking river! Christ! I don't give two shits that you feel this way about my so-called rude editing reports.

  When I announced that I would be including such reports in the 11/01/09 MOTW, I explicitly stated the following:

  These remarks are not intended to criticize writers and will not be written in such a manner as to insult the writer's abilities or to brutally point out the writer's flaws, but rather, such comments are intended to help both active and prospective writers to understand what I look for and what kinds of problems I most often deal with. This system will allow me to address these specific areas as they occur.

  If I were to, say, tell a writer that his writing sucks walrus scrotums or that he should go back to the first grade and learn to write better (as I am often tempted to do but refrain from doing so out of diplomacy), then one might have valid grounds on which to deem my remarks rude (and you don't). My remarks are direct and to the point, but that doesn't make them rude. I'm not going to sugar coat my remarks to soften the "blow".

  As one of my kind friends and supporters so duly noted, my addressing these problems repeatedly has only been met with marginal success at best, and people keep sending me stories that look like they were written by a drunken chimpanzee. I can't force people who set out to write a story to first take the time to read my lists of writing rants or my articles on how to write a good diaper story. Such lists, if people read them, can only address problems in a broad, general sense. My inclusion of editing remarks allows me to point out specifically what I had to change in hopes that this person and other writers will know what kinds of problems I deal with and will hopefully be considerate enough to not commit in their own writings.

  I love reading well-written stories. I like to read them for the same reasons as everyone else here does. However, when I have to devote so much of my time to fixing what the original submitter should not have written in the first place, this greatly diminishes my own enjoyment of the story, and I can't just read it as is and be content with it as I find such glaring errors to be distracting. It's like watching an old VHS tape. If the sound keeps dropping out or if the video is off tracking or full of lines or other picture noise, I can't enjoy the movie as the defects take me out of it. The same thing happens when trying to read a crappily written story. When seeing the same mistakes and other examples of bad writing habits over and over, it takes the enjoyment out of reviewing stories for posting on the site to the point that I had considered suspending story submissions altogether. The problem is too significant and widespread to just sweep under the rug.

  I have tried my hardest to be nice about it, really, I have. I don't like pissing people off, but at the same time I have to let people know what I endure and hope that they will be considerate of my feelings and my time when dealing with common writing errors that anyone with a decent education (at least some amount of high school) should know not to make.

  Do you really think that I want my web site to be full of stories like this? Read the following excerpts taken from rejected stories and try not to let your head explode:

  • Si works in a garage as a manager selling fuel and stuff every day when i am on an eve shift my bro cane pops in 2 c me he been pooping his pants a lot lately so he's been popping in 2 change insted of going home and getting in 2 troble.
  • one day i desided to were dipers but i can not so i yoused underwear. (This was actually submitted as a complete story, no kidding!)
  • She told Ben to lay on the floor i didnt no what was going on but i just watched. When he layed down on the floor mum pulled down his pants right down to his ankles. When she opened Ben bag and pulled out baby powered and a diaper she then sprinkled baby powered all over Bens bum and dick then pulled the diaper up between his legs and taped it she then told me that im next so i layed down on the floor and she did the same to me when we were done.
  • one day when i was about 12 my grams adopted daughter margaret and i wear watching myth busters at there house .and it was a water torture episode and the crew was asked to wear diapers to refrain from wetting there pants.and i was fasenated by this. margaret then siad do you think the old hand in the bucket of water trick really works?
  • i was get up that day wish i had some diapers on me .when i tuen on my putter i saw megan fox look back at me i wish she was my mummy i said to myself. no 1 was home so i slip on a diaper after i had a shower looking at her i started to pee in then and them i could fell my self getting hard so i started to rub my front of the diaper i ekplode in them it felt so great i took them off and shower angain as i was getting out the shower i slip hitting my head on the tub.
  • Reece was in his bedroom naked. He was watching televisision and had just got out of the bath. Reece was a 12 year old boy who was often in his house alone.When he is alone he always wears his neighbours diapers. He gets them on the sly when she isnt looking and his neighbours son isnt there. He had just got a diaper out and was getting ready to play with himself and put a diaper on. Then he heard his friend walk in. He quickly pulled a towel around him. Dont come in he shouted, he quickly hid the diaper under his bed and got some boxers and shorts on. He then invited callum in to his room. Callum was small and blond. They started playing fifa on the xbox, then soon the batterys went in callums xbox pad. He said there were some batterys under the bed. Callum looked under and suprisingly he found a diaper. Whats this he said. OH reece said staring mycheviously. Haha you were diapers callum laughed. Reece explained to him the truth and told him not to tell anyone. Callum wasnt as understanding and said if reece did everything he said for the day he wouldnt tell anybody atall.Reece agreed.
  • my story is true it did hapen to memy nane is floyd i was at home geting redy for work at the tro landmore shop inolkahomacity one morring wen i got a call it was my suprviser he told me to come in to work in the aftr nune so ti sed ok that wen it all stared wenthe boms wet off piles of rubl falled on me stilbems wen sherchnruscal fond me i herd thay say thars a nather bom but it was water and gas and wiers sparking to gether wen i go to hospital dr haled me right to surgy to put me in a cast i lost my bladrer use nure roaded me over to fast and me head got cot in siedrals of hosptalbed

• Either you accept or reject a story...

  Which I do...

• ...Correct typos or not...

  I do this, too, and I don't mind correcting a few typos here and there. The level of editing I must do goes far beyond mere typographical errors, though.

• ...return it to the summiteer for corrections...

  If on the very rare chance that the submitter is also an international delegate attending a meeting, perhaps.

  A lot of people don't provide their email address when submitting a story, and I don't expect them to. Because I want to accept stories from people of all ages (including preteens), I don't want to require them to provide a valid email address. I value and respect people's privacy (unless they're being a jackass, in which case any and all privacy concerns towards that person are forfeited).

• but you do NOT (have) any right to shame people publically listing what you perceive as their writing shortcomings.

  Perhaps if I were merely a visitor to this website and if I were telling these people how to write their stories, then yes, it would be inappropriate for me to do so. The fact that this is MY web site gives me the right to regulate its contents, which includes enforcing standards for writing quality. I let a lot of things pass that a college professor would likely mark down. The kinds of problems I deal with are things that any moderately educated person should know better than to do.

  Since you do not run my web site, what right do YOU have to dictate how I should display its contents? Can you say HYPOCRITE?

  That said, perhaps I could post a weekly list of the problems found in the stories without attributing them to the specific stories in which they were found if others deem this approach to be too confrontational.

  As it is, like a rotting, moldy chunk of cheese, you stand alone on griping about this one, too.

• You are not a teacher...

  I never said I was.

• ...and they are not your students...

  Likewise, I don't ever recall making any statements indicative of such an arrangement.

• ...and even if you were, then it should be done privately.

  And if I were a teacher, then I would handle the matter privately, but as you so astutely pointed out, I am not a teacher, so I don't have to model my approach towards pointing out people's writing errors in such a manner that is consistent with the ethical standards that would be expected of a professional pedagogue.

• You owne people an apology.

  For what? If anything, they owe me an apology for submitting such substandard writing.

The Radcliffe Heights Babysitters V.

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