Voice of Reason

[punkrngd]

Hey everyone... I love this site, and i want to keep it as great as it is. The forums have given me hours of enjoyment getting to know all of you. Remember OD.com, it was THE site to go to for our lifestyle. But now its pretty much a site where guys begged to be teased and humiliated and women look for boys to have pay them for their services. I do not want to see that happen to milovana. Gentlemen, please respect the ladies that come to this site, dont go about posting that you want to be teased, or if a woman givers her info, dont go harassing her with a billion messages. I know this thread might cause some controversy, but that comes with the growing pains of having a larger site. We dont want to become OD.com

[Lindsey]

I think about the only thing controversial is the fact that you named the thread "voice of reason", which, in and of itself, has certain presumptuous implications. ;)

Personally, I get quite a large number of PM's on a regular basis, as i'm sure all the girls do. But, admittedly, I get off on the attention. I wouldn't be here if the case was otherwise. But, wherever you are, there are people that will find a way to exploit the desires of others, and I think that's really the problem in the situation you're describing.

I was never a part of the forum you mentioned, nor was I even aware of it. But I would never be able to fault guys for responding in exactly the way I prompt them to, as much as i'd fault girls that use their sexual desirability as a tool for monetary gain. I think it's disgusting and demeans the very nature of sexual attraction, let alone the act of whatever services are actually exchanged for money.

Thank you for your post, opinions, and insight. But, as I see it, with the current people that frequent the forum, we aren't in danger of what you're worried about.

-L

[cymerc]

I think it all comes down to being respectful (playful?) and courteous to the women here.....I presume that they surely are respectful to those who play with them!

[Salerio]

I'm going to side with punkrngd. Maybe he did choose the wrong title. Doesn't mean he doesn't have a point.

Milovana is a much, much different place than when I signed up. Back then, it was webteases, and nothing but. These days, it's at least as much about forum games and online hookups for many of the users.

No offense, people love that stuff. It's not what I personally come here for, but hey, this place by definition is very accomodating.

I know I *still* haven't published a tease, so I can't say much, I just worry that if this increasingly becomes OD.com, authors and their devotees are going to be swamped and eventually sidelined.

I think you can see this already in that most of the teases are being put out by a small set of authors. We don't have many casual authors, but rather a dedicated group who do amazing work and an amazing amount of it, recently MontSpam, kebabsev, jscamp, etc, but I would much prefer ten teases written by ten different authors than one author and ten teases.

Entirely possible the fears are groundless, but I've been on edge for some time about this sorta thing. My two cents.

[all2true]

I think an ocassional forum game is okay

But on the whole I agree
I defenitely don't want this to be a pay site
who's sole purpose is connecting doms and subs

I like the artisitc creativity of the teases

I did see a note somewhere that
there was thought about including pay-for-content

Perhaps this site will spin off a pay-site OD community ? ??

However,
I am going to stick with Milovana as it is.
I like like it is.

[Jaberwocky]

I too go with punkrngd for most part. Especially the part of begging and sending pm's, as there are a little bit more males on this site than females. I don't want the few ladies around here being driven away because it's getting a daytime job to read all the pm's they recieve.
(part of the reason I have not sent a pm to Lindsey, while I want to)

However, I do want to add that the 2257 law is what in my opinion had the biggest negative impact on the OD-site. Not only made it the webteases dissapear, but also the captioned images. I don't want to think about what will happen to this site if the webteases will disapear here as well!

[kesbabev]

Wow! Touchy subject. I would have to agree that OD.com has really taken a nosedive in quality on the whole. It seems that 2257 is much to blame, however, I would have to also say that the recent new members on the site haven't helped much either. It's becoming much more mainstream porn, and online hookups. That being said, I don't think anyone on this site wants to see the same thing happen. This seems to be a very lenient crowd, (Thanks, all!), and everyone seems to appreciate the work that the authors, moderators, and staff put in here.

That being said, back to the original topic of conversation. I guess, if a woman were to get unwanted attention, and she asked the user to stop, the logical course of action would be to turn it over to the moderators, or staff, and handle it from there. I'm sure they could ban a user, or filter the PM's, or something like that. As for the public posts, I would agree, they seem somewhat like personal advertisements. Perhaps a section in the boards for that type of activity might be warranted, so everyone gets what they want, so to speak. That way, people looking for live tease could go there, and the dommes on the site would have a place to play with willing victims. Whatever happens, as long as personal limits are honored, I don't see a problem anywhere.

My two (and a half) cents worth.

Kesbabev

[toybdsm]

So your saying be polite. Absolutely, that goes in all parts of life.

As to the "adds" or whatever. To each their own. They are few & so I would rather sift through them than see a section made for them. 1st, would a specified section do as good? 2nd, its possible that I would find something or someone through that anyway so leave it alone. Its a small price to pay for all that is here.

But mainly I have to say, I haven't seen any women here who need someone else to speak for them. They seem very capable of handling themselves. I am sure if they get too many responses they will address it. Could overkill run someone away? Sure. In fact it probably has. But Everyone seems able to stand up for themselves here. Even the subs have taken a stand when called for. Which is not easy.

Lets all just keep having fun. This is a great place! & as long as we keep doing what we're doing it will stay that way!

[Makarov]

To call yourself the voice of reason implies the idea that all those speaking around you are confused, as to say whatever conflict arose to push the the familiar crowd into disarray has blinded us, and you are our shining beacon. So, perhaps you were stepping off on the wrong foot.

As for orgasmdenial.com, that was a site that was run by a pay-domme. It's not that far fetched to discover that other pay-domme's would find a good home there.

In regards to Milovana, I think we'll be alright. Some people stay, some people leave, but I'm sure we'll be alright.

"But when you talk about destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
Don't you know it's gonna be all right
Don't you know it's gonna be all right"

[cymerc]

By the way, speaking of 2257, if you haven't heard or might have forgotten from last fall:

2257 Overturned in United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
http://www.freespeechcoalition.com/FSCV ... ?coid=1092

- and -

Court Does Right by Social Sex Sites
http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/ ... drive_1102

"The record-keeping requirements outlined in 18 U.S.C. 2257 violate the First Amendment, the court decided. The Connection Distributing Co., et al. v. Keisler reversed the lower court's judgment (.pdf) and determined that individuals posting sexually explicit photos of themselves to swinger websites are not subject to the same record-keeping requirements as commercial porn producers."

...and I also agree Milovana will be quite alright. Folks here seem polite, respectful, and our wonderful admins and mods are doing a great job keeping order here. Here's hoping this quality continues!

[kesbabev]

No, I hadn't heard about that. Thanks, Cymerc. Don't misunderstand, I really don't have concerns with whether Milovana will survive, or not. I worry more about Milovana taking on excess baggage, of the sort that people aren't looking for here. I hold this site, and it's regulars in high regard, and would really hate to see something so wonderful bogged down in personal ads, and things of that nature, when it's not what people are here for. Anyways, I'll shut up now.

Thanks again for dropping that bit of info on me though. Much appreciated!!

kes

[camipco]

More to the point, Cymerc, 2257 only applies to the USA, and this site isn't hosted in the USA.

In any case, I agree on the need for taste and respect for women on the site (something that is needed in general for women on the internet, this problem is hardly unique to our community.)

However, there's only so much we can do to encourage people to be well-behaved. Might I suggest some protections? If a user could limit their availability to be pm'd for example, or if users could earn karma which could then be used as a filter. For example, a domme might chose to see only pms and chat messages from users with positive karma. Karma could be gained by writing webteases or thoughtful posts. I'm guessing there's a strong correllation between participation in the community and respect shown for other members.

[Lhad]

I for one haven't typed much, so can't exactly be called a part of the community, just bringing out my narrow thoughts on the matter here.

As most people in this thread have already stated, being polite and considerate of the person you wish to adress' situation should be done always. The people reciving the most PMs here would probably be the ladies, and a wild shot in the dark is that those PMs mostly express a wish for some sort of exchange of control or power or the likes, handed over to the reciever.

Personally I don't know the exact ratio between male and female here, but a guess is there's at least, probably many more, 10 times as many more submissive males than there are females in total. If a female recieves anywhere from 10 to 100 PMs, still got no clue as to the real numbers, then odds are if you haven't taken the time to at least be polite about it, she probably won't feel very obliged to answer you at all, or at least not to be in a hurry about it.

Now, if some of the senders are as stubborn as some people one meet out in the world, then they'll send more PMs saying "Did you get my last PM? I really want you to dominate me" and all that kind of stuff, and getting enough of that kind of messages will obviously scare her away if she feels obliged to respond to all who does that.

So for all who sends PMs to the wonderful ladies here, please do consider how many people besides you that could have messaged her, and realise she cannot possibly get any personal on all the eventual PMs she has, and it is possible that she might not respond at all.

Hmm... don't know if this said what I wanted it to say, it got quite a bit longer than intended.

I guess it's from a deep fear that a few people, who are being a great part of this milovana.com-community will simply vanish due to an overflood of interest showed by the over-eager masses.

... which leads me to the great Churchill: "Never was so much owed by so many to so few."

[Jaberwocky]

Prehaps a nice thing to point out to for the ladies:
It is possible to create folders and rules in the message box to organize the incomming messages. (for those of you who haven't figured out already)

For instance, a lady can create a folder called "slaves".
Next she should do is create a rule that direct messages from a certain sender (a slave of her) to that folder. And add other rules to direct the messages from her other slaves to that folder as well.

Of course other folders can be made as well:
- Ladies (for messages from the other mistresses on this site)
- Males (for male non-slaves who don't sent unwanted messages)
- Junk (for male non-slaves who do sent unwanted messages)

Maybe a little work at the beginning, but prehaps this could be a nice way to keep oversight on the incomming messages.