Awesome to see it back.

Hey all.
Glad to see the forum up again.
Thank you nikita/Belriose for your ongoing efforts in restoring the forum.

If there is interest finishing The Facility as an RP, I will resume as GM
Or I could finish by posting an ending in story form.

I would like the see the final of The Facility, Phil

And add a congratulation to Nkita (Belriose) to refloat the page.

To be honest, there are no clear guidelines for what counts as "obscene" or "offensive". A lot of hosts use the same vague terminology. I imagine they mean civil and human rights violations, with things like nazism, terrorism, animal abuse, racism, slavery, hate crimes and the like.

So in the end with things that are vague and ambiguous, you have to nitpick and hope for the best. The host is Amazon, so they're based in the US where sex and nudity is taboo but violence and gore is celebrated. On the other hand, they've gone international, and in Europe, it's the opposite in regards to sex and violence. So there isn't even a regional set of standards to go by.

As for the forums, I'll clarify them.

Sounds like all necessary precautions has been taken when creating the new forum.

I agree that it seems a bit weird that it should be legal to write about horrible killings and torture, but illegal to write about sex. To some degree I can understand it, since committing murder is far less likely than performing some unacceptable sexual acts. Most people above a certain age has a sexual drive, but not many feel the need to kill. But this forum is about transformations, and any attempts to do this in real life is more difficult than kill and torture anyone. It's completely impossible to repeat any of the stuff that is happening in this kind of fiction. The setting could involve non-consensual situations without actual sex, for instance kidnapping a girl and strapping her to a table or something, which is something you often see in crime fiction. So I'm not sure of that could be considered inappropriate or not. Personally I have no need to see cruelty involved, but there are stories where it's one of the ingredients.

It's difficult enough to define sex in real life, not even Bill Clinton is sure what is sexual acts or not. And in fiction it can be even more difficult. While there are sexual elements present, can a transformation or fusion be called sex?  No matter the answer, I can't imagine it's much of a problem to speak about, and not exactly what Amazon have in mind when it comes to the rules. They are probably more concerned about graphic description about raping innocent victims and that sort of literature.

I didn't know that was the reason. Guess one has to be a little careful when choosing avatars for the profile as well then.

I actually disagree. I don't think the takedown had anything to do with copyrighted material. I think it simply had to do with the fact that the forum had adult material. Someone other than me actually created the original forum in the first place, and that person was extremely inexperienced and didn't give any attention to detail. He in all likelihood just chose the first free forum host that he saw without looking at the Terms of Use. 

It was only after I volunteered to step in as admin that the forum became what it did. I knew that the adult nature of the forum went against the Terms of Use but as the years passed I figured that the Terms of Use weren't really enforced, and since I had put so much work into it, I wasn't going to jump hosts any time soon.

The forum got really popular toward the end of its life, especially after I binge-posted 50+ stories in July and August. We averaged a few hundred visits a day. I think it was that popularity that eventually caught the attention of a prude, who figured that such a den of iniquity had to be reported to the authorities.

In any case, I now feel that the takedown was inevitable and a long time coming. It's also provided the opportunity to redo and reorganize things, as I'm sure you've seen. It's a welcome fresh start.

I will send a warning first.

hello I have come back, used to be optionalextra back in the day and I left for a time

Welcome lexfet1982!

Well, I am glad to see the forum back.  It's more my nature to lurk around forums, but I will try to be more active in the current incarnation.

I haven't necessarily been leeching off the community, though.  I've contributed a little here and there under different names, writing TF/TG things, sometimes anonymously.  Will do most of my writing under this name for the foreseeable future, but previously wrote on the BE Addventure under HP, solarpower and IC. A straight-up TG story under Inglorious Custerd.  I wrote in the Mutant Land BEA thread anonymously for the most part, as well as episodes long forgotten here and there.

So please, don't hold it against me for being too lurkish.

No, I did not take it that way at all.  I apologized for lurking, because I know that lurking is not what keeps a forum going.

  I see. In the past, I was pretty disappointed in the fact that I was the only poster for ultra long stretches of time. Sometimes I thought that it was moreso "Flicker's Sharing Forum" than anything else. In 4 years, of the 100+ stories in the Transformation Stories section, only 20 of those were posted by someone other than me, and most of those really didn't belong there in the first place (basic TG, etc.).

  I realize that my maintaining of this site has helped bring many more into this niche fetish and inspire others' work, and while that does bring a certain amount of satisfaction, I still have to occasionally ask myself whether I'm just making a fool of myself when few else seem to share the same enthusiasm that I do. If even a tenth of users posted something as little as twice a year, there would be much more content.

Thank you!

I had some help from qalexandrian, and there are some minor glitches left. But i work on them

And a big thank you to Flicker for me, who did most of the content-work!! I don't even wanna know how many hours he spent on that!!!! <3