Well, that's not good...

[przed]

I just got an email from someone about one of my Wild Wild West stories. And not in a good way.

The main reason I love writing Wild Wild West is that I get to indulge my love of historical research. I usually find something interesting that happened somewhere between 1860 and 1875, research it to death, throw Jim, Artie and sex into the mix and watch what happens.

Problem is, someone just found my WWW Civil War story when they were Googling the real event it's based on. I'm sure James West and Artemus Gordon having sex wasn't quite what they were expecting.

So now I'm not sure what to do. Search and replace the names of historical figures in all my WWW stories? Add pop-up disclaimers to all stories? Say fuck it and let the chips fall where they may? (I'm tired enough at the moment that the last alternative is looking the most attractive, but I'll problem look to come up with some way of covering my ass sometime in the future.)

Comments

[kelliem.livejournal.com]

Do you have a disclaimer at the top of the story? That's what I do with all my fic. It's the first thing people see in the file.

I had something similar happen once with someone googling on 'saccharine' which happened to be a word I'd used in a smutty story, but I figured since it said very plainly at the top of the page when it loaded that it was a smut story featuring men having sex, that if they went ahead and read it anyway, then they deserved whatever discomfort they got from reading it, because it was there and they ignored it.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I've got a disclaimer on the main page, but not the story. I think that's about to change. Or at least it will when I've got the energy add disclaimers to all my stories. Starting with the WWW ones.

[jennandanica.livejournal.com]

Is your fic on one site? If so, you can block search engines from offering up your fic:

http://www.internet-promoter.com/code-stop-spiders-indexing.htm

[przed.livejournal.com]

Frighteningly, I've had this on all my pages from the beginning. But Google eventually finds 'em anyway.

[jennandanica.livejournal.com]

Ack! I'll have to keep that in mind. Thanks.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected. I somehow seem to have left the meta tags off these stories. Off to correct that particular mistake now.

[sooguy.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I can see how that could be a problem. I sometimes get the weirdest google hits on my site based on odd combinations of words people are searching on.

Where are your stories hosted? Is it possible to put some sort of obvious disclaimer on the site? I know for google image searches there are different modes - Safe/Moderate/None. I don't recall if there are similar options in word searches, but if there are then I say let the chips fall where they may. Its up to people to filter out what they are looking for.

I know its distrubing to think that some student might be accidentally reading your material, but its bound to happen.

I remember my own father mentioning that www.whitehouse.com has nothing to do with Washington D.C. and the President. It's searcher beware.

Hope you find some solution that you can live with. I'd hate to think it might affect your writing or online publishing of stories.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I've got disclaimers on the main page, and the RPS page gets its own set of disclaimers, but I think I'm going to go with disclaimers on every story. Or I will when I get around to putting them up.

Sigh.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

add a meta tag to the story web page - we did this when our home address suddenly was googable in connection with our videos. it no longer shows up one month later.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I thought I'd done this already, but it turns out I'd only added the meta tags on the main pages. Big oversight, and one I'll be correcting now.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

Something similar happened with my stuff, but it wasn't unhappy. Apparently, someone had a site about St. Crispin's Day. When the guy
googled the term, my MFU stories came up.

The site owner found this amusing, (he remembered MFU) however, and actually put a mention and a link on his own site to them. I just happen to stumble across his site one day myself.

So the oddest things make connections, thanks to browsers.

[przed.livejournal.com]

Now, that's a cool thing to have happen. And why I don't want to totally cover all my tracks on the internet. But I do want to make it difficult enough to find my stuff that only the right people come across it.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

to make it difficult enough to find my stuff that only the right people come across it.

If only. But with the internet, that's probably not possible.

[przed.livejournal.com]

BTW, Don adores your "So was it good for you too" icon. (He was looking over my shoulder as I was checking my flist.)

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

Hiya Don! :)

[przed.livejournal.com]

Don says Hiya back.

[milady22.livejournal.com]

I would say : Fuck it (and start every story with a disclaimer).

[przed.livejournal.com]

Well, I meta tagged everything. I'm still mulling over the disclaimers. (I hate disclaimers, however necessary they are.)

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

I'm of a different take than most here -- I really believe you owe no one anything in this respect. There's nothing to make them read your story, and once they see that this is a work of fiction rather than research info they were looking for, it's their discretion to be outraged and keep reading. I find people like this to be utterly without merit, and I completely ignore them. I get a lot of hits from people looking for things that appear in my stories, and I write a lot in historical fandoms, and also drop a lot of pop culture names in my modern stuff. If someone stumbles on some pr0n and keeps reading, too bad for them. i refuse to make extra work for myself because there are idiots out there who will click on any link, even after looking at what the google cache line is, and then be upset about it.

I've had some interesting discussions with good people who've stumbled on stuff, including an elderly man who was looking for an old tV show info that showed up as words in one of my Mag 7 stories. He read all the stories and even told me that he thought I handled the romantic attractions believably. He was a total gentleman, and very good natured about it. That's why I think it's important for people to take responsibility for what they read -- some people can, so there's no excuse when morons can't.

[przed.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I think I'm mostly with you on this. I'm bridling at having to label stuff just to prevent someone from finding the wrong kinda stuff. And you're perfectly right that someone should really be able to tell that the stories aren't historical research materials, if that's what they were looking for.

Still, I did go through and add the meta tags to the stories in question, for the limited good that will do. And I may put notes of explanation on some of the more historically based stories. (And hey, that would give me an opportunity to show off the research, right?)

But in the end, people do need to take responsibility for their own actions, on the Internet or anywhere. Find something you don't like? Don't read it.