Focus On Community: Issue #7

The Story Behind TK-411

Over time, as more and more folks have been discovering TK-411, I've received a number of notes from people.  Most of those notes have had two things in common...gratitude for the site (which is much appreciated) and a comment of one sort or another about how much work it must take to do this site.  A few have actually asked about specifics.  So, I thought perhaps it was time to share a bit with you about how this site came to be and just what it takes to make it all happen.  (This has the added benefit of allowing me to be lazy and direct people here instead of constantly repeating myself. lol) 

First, some history for those who care...  

Back in January of 1996, I got my first computer and got online.  It took me all of a few weeks to decide to do a search on our favorite topic of tickling.  I turned up a ton of results.  Well, maybe not a ton by today's standards.  But, back then, the 30 or so sites/groups I found seemed like a goldmine.  I spent a fair amount of time surfing the sites, reading stories, gabbing with folks in the old AOL tickling chat rooms, etc.  It was really cool.

Before long, I'd decided to write some stories of my own.  At the time, it was primarily a way to help desensitize myself to the fear that had come to be related to tickling as a result of it having been used against me in abuse situations.  So, the stories I wrote were innocent and fun-loving little tales that I could just goof around and feel safe with.  Since it seemed to be the thing to do at the time, I opened up a simple little site called the Tickle Chamber in order to share the stories I was writing.  That's all I intended for it to be at that point.  

Over time, I became more comfortable with discussing things and able to once again entertain the idea of having fun actually letting someone tickle me.  I made a few new friends for which I was also thankful.  It was becoming a positive for me.  We were all forming something of a community.  Whenever I was in one of the chat rooms or signed into one of the early e-mail groups, I would often hear people expressing surprise about this site or that, having not heard of them before.  So, by about 6 months into my site, I decided to start adding some links.  Initially, it was just one little page with anything I found tossed in along with a short description.  I think that first page had something like 40 links.

I was satisfied with things and getting busier with work and life in general.  So, I just let it sit there for a bit other than adding the occassional new story.  That is until I had more time to poke around while on vacation and noticed a steady increase of sites...around the year 2000.  Business was picking up.  I had a couple of options.  I could leave things as they were.  After all, I wasn't creating much of anything new to share.  But, I still kept hearing folks voice surprise and delight about the new sites that were popping up all over the place.  

I kept feeling a tugging to do something...to help make it easier for folks to find things.  Simply plugging in sites I happened to see mentioned wasn't going to cut it any more.  So, I started doing searches, keeping track of what I found where and posting it on the site so others could refer to it.  I had no idea how many (or how few) people knew about my own site.  But, I spread the word among those I knew, posted the link in the groups I'd joined and didn't much worry about it.  I figured, if even one person was helped by it,  that it was worth doing.

About this same time period, Drew & I met.  He'd come across the Tickle Chamber while surfing and decided to drop me a note.  We began corresponding, then chatting on AIM and then chatting on the phone.  Before long, he was coming up for visits on weekends.  Eventually, I moved to CT to be with him.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  Now, I really had something to be thankful for.  The community had not only aided in my healing process.  It had also brought me some wonderful new friends and the love of my life.  But, how to give back?

We tried creating more of our own material, including a handful of videos.  But, in the end, we decided that the site itself was our best way of contributing to the community.  So, it needed to be better.  I was no longer doing it just for my own enjoyment/amusement.  It didn't take long to decide that it was time to expand things.  So, I started doing fairly regular searches, watching for anything new to add to the links section.  I'd already begun adding stories to the library that weren't as readily available elsewhere.  So, it was pretty natural to expand upon that as well.  

The Tickle Chamber was fast becoming a true library/resource center.  I had all sorts of requests from people to add various things.  Most of the requests, I at least made an attempt to fulfill.  But, in the end, some things were just growing too quickly to keep up with.  Others were of a more limitted interest.  So, some of the newer sections got dropped in order to keep up on the main focus.  

Another thing that was beginning to grow during this period were the variety of get togethers taking place across the country.  People were actually meeting in groups to share their love of tickling.  But, there wasn't really a central location established specificly in order to keep track of what was happening where.  So, I decided it was time for a new site that would focus on that aspect of things.  Thus was born the Tickle Scene, a site geared towards meeting others...and being safe in doing so.  The Tickle Scene had listings of all the gatherings that we could get information about along with a variety of excellent articles about safe play, information on how to do your own gatherings, games that could be played, etc.  A few of us who were hosting gatherings even formed a little e-mail group to share info. with one another, further helping to build the community.

Things were just taking off when my mom's cancer got really bad.  That kinda put a damper on things.  It killed much of my ambition and took much of my time.  So, once again, things began to sit and collect dust, the updates became smaller, fewer and further between.  By the time she improved enough that I felt able to function again, things were sorely outdated and in need of something new.  During this same time period, the community was experiencing a good deal of growing pains.  So, we wanted to add some little side groups to help people get refocused.  

Rather than attempting to update things on two different sites, we opted to combine everything into one new site that we called the TK Community Think Tank.  For roughly the following two years, we did what we could to expand upon what we had to offer and helped get some side groups going to bring those of like mind together.  The Think Tank was just beginning to serve its purpose when my mom got bad again.  Add to that Drew's dad being diagnosed with cancer about the same time.  

This time, everything pretty much just got dropped.  We were running back and forth to one hospital or another in upstate NY and here in CT every time we turned around.  Even if we'd had the emotional energy to put into community, we simply had no time.  So, once again, things sat there and collected dust.  By the time things finally settled down, the Think Tank was inaccessible and totally out of date.  My own health wasn't the greatest either.  So, that often got (and continues to get) in the way of things.  Ugh!  

A new home for our new site...  

It was time to start over yet again.  This time, I was determined to get things back up-to-date and keep them there...no matter what life brought our way.  We needed a new name, a new focus and a new home.  I decided that it was time to get back to basics...back to the roots of what our original intent was in first expanding from that tiny little personal story site.  That intent was to provide a reliable resource for people in addition to our library.  So, we came up with the TK-411 name, which seems to best reflect that purpose.  

We now had our new name and renewed focus.  I started doing a bit of prep work, taking the old site files, reformatting them, getting new graphics and beginning to prepare some updates.  But, where to put it?  We still didn't have a home and didn't want to use one of the same old undependable free servers we'd tried using in the past.  Enter MTP Jeff.  He immediately agreed to host us.  So, we were ready to roll.  It was a slow start, life still being hectic.  So, it's taken a good deal of time to reformat things, get them on track for what we wanted to do, etc.  But, we now have a good site to offer.

TK-411 is now a true resource to the community.  There are roughly 1,800 sites in our links directories.  We have current information listed on events scheduled across the country...and even in Canada and the UK.  We're doing regular articles here in the Focus On Community section, profiling different aspects of the community.  We have a decent sized collection of games for folks to enjoy.  There's a yahoo group in which we're gradually archiving files from the many older dead groups and closed web sites before they get lost.  We have a special section and support group for those who, like me, have had to deal with past sexual abuse interfering with their enjoyment of tickling.  And, of course, we have a substantial library...filled with articles and an ever-growing listing of stories.

I'm very pleased with the progress.  I'm also rather impatient to get it finished and only have to worry about keeping track of new stuff.  It's become a full-time job to gather all the information and files to get us to where I want to be.  But, we're getting there.  I'm realisticly figuring it will take the next year to get things to where I want them...adding a couple of other things in while also keeping up with new stuff that presents itself along the way.

So, what does it take to get and keep this site going?  Primarily, it takes time.  Lots and lots of time!  I got to cheat a bit this time around.  I had the basic format and a portion of the initial information already saved from the old sites.  So, it gave me something of a head start on things.  But there was, and still is, a great deal of work to do to get it back up-to-date.  I'm lucky to have a web program that does some of the more basic coding work for me on the pages themselves.  But, what really takes time is gathering all that information to put on those pages.  Though it's not difficult work, it is very slow and tedious work.  Fortunately, I happen to like tedious things.  

For the morbidly curious...

As I mentioned at the beginning of this little article, there are some who've asked about specifics of what it takes.  So, if you're among those who actually want to know, I'll include the following boring details.  Anyone who doesn't care about that stuff, feel free to skip down to the next part. lol

The Links Directory was my first priority.  After all, if folks had the links, they could search the various sites for what they wanted on their own.  Once the old directory pages had been reformatted and uploaded, my first task was to eliminate any bad links.  That meant going through the old links, one by one and removing any that no longer worked. Then, I had to add in the many new and previously undiscovered sites that were out there.  It took me just over 7 weeks (averaging 6-8 hours a day) of exhaustive searching and information gathering to collect the roughly 1,800 sites and get them in here.  

Doing searches on google and other search engines was just the beginning.  I also went through every link of every links section of every site already on our directory and of every new site that I came across.  Once I found a site, I had to categorize it, save its link, surf through the site to gather specific information about it, figure out how to present all of that in a way that could be easily utilized and finally put together the actual pages in order to present it to people.  Now that it's "done", I simply have to watch for announcements about new sites and add them in as they come along.  I'll also be doing periodic searches in case there are any that aren't announced on the public forums, etc. 

The Library will be an even longer project to complete.  Not only are there thousands more stories than there were links to gather and format.  But, once the initial two listings (fiction & non-fiction) are done, I'll be creating a third listing by author with each author's complete story listing under their name.  This will aid those who wish to follow a certain author in finding all of their works listed in one place, even if their actual stories are scattered across the web.

What is the process of rebuilding the Library?  It's actually pretty much the same as with the Links Directories.  I first had to go through and eliminate any of the old links that were no longer working.  Again, I had to click through every link in the listing and remove those that were no longer available.  Once the two individual listings...one for true stories and the other for fictional ones...were cleared of bad links, it was time to add to them.  Thus began the process of gathering new stories.  Some sites had only a few, while others had pretty large collections. 

Because one of the bits of information I'd gathered for the Links Directories was which sites had stories, I already had a listing of the sites  on which to look for stories.  I first covered the smaller sites and those that are no longer open and gathered all of the stories from the many yahoo groups.  Now, I'm working my way through the sites with larger collections.  For each story, I'm providing the link to its current location, the title, author and ler/lee designations.  Each bit of information needs to be collected, typed in and formatted in the tables.  Thus the reason for the process taking a good deal of time.  You'll notice (as of this writing) that only some of the stories currently have the ler/lee designation listed.  This is because some have it posted with the title while others do not.  I'll skim the stories once they're all up here to gather the designations on the rest.

Another little project I'm working on in conjunction with this site is our TK-411 Rescue Archives yahoo group.  In putting together the Community page of the links section, I realized just how many of the old yahoo groups were no longer being actively used.  They were just sitting there, their tickling material often burried in a sea of spam and infected files.  While some of that material is available elsewhere, not all of it is.  Rather than chancing the community losing the material or people having to worry about picking up viruses while looking for it, I decided to gather them into one place.  I'm working on this now, at the same time as I'm working on the Library.  The process is simply to go from group to group, search out the files, save them to an external drive, scan them to be sure they're virus free and then upload them to the new group.    

What's in store for down the road?

The first priority is twofold...to get the Library finished and additional files saved to the Archive group.  I'll be working on that constantly for however long it takes until it's done.  In the meantime, I'll be checking in on all of the active forums/groups and doing searches on a regular basis to keep track of and provide updates on any new sites, events, etc.

Once I have everything listed in the Library and the By Author listing created, I'll be using the listings themselves as a tool to go back through and collect every story out there into our archive so that it isn't lost if a site closes.  The initial listing will take several more weeks.  Gathering everything into the archives here and formatting them for future posting will take several months.  Links to stories will remain to their current locations on other sites until/unless we find that the site has closed or the story is no longer there.  If we can no longer find it elsewhere, we'll pull it from our archive files and host it here so that it's not lost.

Speaking of things not getting lost, I have another project on my to do list for after the Library is completed.  That will be to gather as much as I can of the many old closed sites out there.  I'll be adding them to my own personal archives and eventually making them available to people upon request if they wish to take a look at one (or more) of the old closed sites.  I'm hoping to create an intro. page for each site as well, sharing things such as who ran it, its internet history, what it's purpose was, the type of material it had, etc.  We'll be resurrecting a few more of the old closed sites over time for folks to take a look at.  

I'll be coming up with future Focus On Community spots and other projects to do as well.  This will include eventually using all of the information gathered in previous projects to create a decent community history section...something I've been wanting to do for some time.  If you have ideas for things you'd like to see us do here, feel free to let me know.  All reasonable requests that can benefit the community as a whole will be considered.

So, that's the story of TK-411.  I hope this answers some of the many questions I get asked...and didn't bore those who simply don't care. lol  

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Happy tickling! ...

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