alt.sex.stories is a Usenet newsgroup for erotic stories.
Alt.sex.stories was created on May 7, 1992 by Tim Pierce as an alternative to pre-existing alt erotica newsgroups.[1]
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.
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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.
Alt.sex.stories is notable for assisting in the launch of several notable authors of erotica such as Elf Sternberg and Mary Anne Mohanraj.[2] [3]
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.