Does one person really proof read all the stories?

[RejectReality]

Well, it is certain that there’s some sort of a list, RR. As an example, I did a successful series on a sugar-baby/sugar-daddy relationship. I found that the word ‘baby’ could not be entered in the Short Description. Now, there’s a reason tiny humans probably aren’t a good thing to invoke here, but that’s hardly the same thing. It was an automatic refusal on the part of the site to accept b-a-b-y (although, curiously, that term could be used in the text with no problem). It’s hard to escape the conclusion that some level of electronic screening is being used.

That's a simple "bad word" filter. It's been in place on keywords for as long as I've been here. Any string that contains "baby" or "rape" will not pass. ( which, unless they've improved it, will even block words like "grape" and "babylon" ) The description blocking it is new to me, but it's the same thing. Curious whether they've added it to title, because I know for certain the filter wasn't in place on that for years.

Nothing even remotely resembling some algorithm bot that rejects stories without human intervention, which is what people keep suggesting. There's no way they could roll something like that out and not have a situation exactly like what we're seeing with AI rejections. It would fail spectacularly in the beginning because no amount of forethought or beta testing can account for what people will throw at it once it's released into the wild.

We would have noticed.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

Of course not. Laurel has a team of trained Oompa-Loompas who do most of the reviews.

Based on your intimate knowledge and engagement on the AI threads, I'm not convinced that one of the Oompa-Loompas isn't named Emily.

 

[gunhilltrain]

An automated rejection system would be way more problematic and obvious if it was in place — especially at the moment of implementation. Whatever software is being used to determine if a story is AI is a good example of what I expect would happen if Laurel tried to let some algorithm take over vetting stories.

What's likely is something that highlights strings like "teen" for quick scanning while scrolling through the text, in conjunction with standard red squigglys for spelling and grammar.

It may be disconcerting to pull back and realize this, but our wonderful, "individualistic" stories are produced here as if on an assembly line, one after the other. Still, good luck back in the old days when everything had to be in print.

https://www.slashgear.com/img/galle...olved-in-building-cars/l-intro-1661613600.jpg

 

[StillStunned]

It may be disconcerting to pull back and realize this, but our wonderful, "individualistic" stories are produced here as if on an assembly line, one after the other.

A million monkeys, bashing away at a million keyboards. One day we'll reproduce the works of Shakespeare, or more likely "Trembleshaft".

 

[EmilyMiller]

Based on your intimate knowledge and engagement on the AI threads, I'm not convinced that one of the Oompa-Loompas isn't named Emily.

I’m small, but not that small!

Emily

 

[TarnishedPenny]

We would have noticed.

I take your point, EDIT but must the alleged pre-screening be anything much more complicated than an extensive list of words? Any story with certain words would be rejected, thus reducing the workload on human eyes. I’m no computer whiz, but some posts complaining of rejected stories seem to point to errors unlikely for a human. Just speculating.

 

[StillStunned]

I’m small, but not that small!

Emily

Also, it would probably be less rewarding to work for Lit than for Willy Wonka. I mean, if you're an Oompa-Loompa, and you get to choose, surely you'd rather have unlimited top-quality chocolate than unlimited dubious-quality sex stories?

 

[Voboy]

I've long pondered what Laurel's life must be like. I mean, I love reading the stories... when I want to. But if I had to do it, to the tune of 50 submissions a day, many of which are bad and some of which don't interest me?

I can't imagine.

There's no way she could be all that thorough. I'm fine with that, but that's just me.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Also, it would probably be less rewarding to work for Lit than for Willy Wonka. I mean, if you're an Oompa-Loompa, and you get to choose, surely you'd rather have unlimited top-quality chocolate than unlimited dubious-quality sex stories?

Chocolate

 

[RejectReality]

I take your point, EDIT but must the alleged pre-screening be anything much more complicated than an extensive list of words? Any story with certain words would be rejected, thus reducing the workload on human eyes. I’m no computer whiz, but some posts complaining of rejected stories seem to point to errors unlikely for a human. Just speculating.

That's why I'm saying it would fail spectacularly. The keyword example is perfect. At least years ago, when I looked into it, these were all disallowed keywords.

grape, parapet, drape, scraper, trapeze. Anything with the four letter string "rape" was a disallowed keyword. Bad enough for keywords. Imagine a story getting bounced for something like that.

Certainly, more effort would be put into an algorithm, but it's still going to fail. You can't account for the plethora of reasons a problematic word or string might be used in a perfectly legitimate manner. It's going to make frequent mistakes.

Now, if those words are simply highlighted, allowing Laurel to stop her scroll, look at them, see if there's a problem, and then move on, it makes sense.

It also makes sense that one woman who's reviewed god-knows-how-many stories for hours is going to make a mistake once in a while. All the "thirteen-year-old whisky" things are anecdotes. I think I remember someone actually saying they had a story rejected for that fifteen years ago or so, but now it just gets stated as if it's something that happens all the time. ( I'm fairly certain they said the story was immediately passed once the mistake was pointed out )

I could even imagine a situation where there is something automated behind the scenes that flags submissions in the queue due to problematic keywords. What I can't imagine is that bot kicking the story back without Laurel looking at it first.

We would know.

And a whole lot of those complaints about stories falsely rejected for underage boil down to the author not understanding what "sexual situations" means on Lit. They don't see drooling over a girl in a bikini as sex. Lit does. Once you dig down, they did indeed violate the content rules.

 

[Lumiere_Amie]

I’m small, but not that small!

Emily

Curious that you don't deny being Laurel’s little helper. Or maybe you're Laurels’s alt?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I could even imagine a situation where there is something automated behind the scenes that flags submissions in the queue due to problematic keywords. What I can't imagine is that bot kicking the story back without Laurel looking at it first.

We would know.

And a whole lot of those complaints about stories falsely rejected for underage boil down to the author not understanding what "sexual situations" means on Lit. They don't see drooling over a girl in a bikini as sex. Lit does. Once you dig down, they did indeed violate the content rules.

I've thought for years that it's been a simple keyword search that flags rejections. Over the last two or three years I've thought that the first pass has evolved into an auto-reject notice, because, as you say, as soon as human eyes get on to it, the problem is easily identified. A word bot will spot an age mention, but human eyes can immediately tell if it's under-age or not. I think that first pass scan might be automated now, whereas it wasn't before.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Curious that you don't deny being Laurel’s little helper. Or maybe you're Laurels’s alt?

Laurel and Manu are both my alts

Emily the All-Powerful

 

[EmilyMiller]

At least years ago, when I looked into it, these were all disallowed keywords.

grape, parapet, drape, scraper, trapeze. Anything with the four letter string "rape" was a disallowed keyword.

I use the word “rape” in stories. I just had one approved for publishing with it in. What I don’t have is fetishized rape, I have rape that destroys people, like in real life.

Emily

 

[RejectReality]

I've thought for years that it's been a simple keyword search that flags rejections. Over the last two or three years I've thought that the first pass has evolved into an auto-reject notice, because, as you say, as soon as human eyes get on to it, the problem is easily identified. A word bot will spot an age mention, but human eyes can immediately tell if it's under-age or not. I think that first pass scan might be automated now, whereas it wasn't before.

From my most recent RR release, which went through without a hitch:

Teenage girls are not exactly keen to spend time at home with parental figures, so it hadn't really bothered him.

Tell me any automated keyword bot wouldn't have sent that flying back to me at the speed of light.

One released a few days before that has umpteen instances of "girl" and "slip of a girl" Ruby red flags.

The one before that has "child" and "childhood" in the first two paragraphs.

You can't convince me there's some sophisticated bot behind the scenes that can tell the difference.

 

[ElectricBlue]

From my most recent RR release, which went through without a hitch:

Tell me any automated keyword bot wouldn't have sent that flying back to me at the speed of light.

One released a few days before that has umpteen instances of "girl" and "slip of a girl" Ruby red flags.

The one before that has "child" and "childhood" in the first two paragraphs.

You can't convince me there's some sophisticated bot behind the scenes that can tell the difference.

I'd say you're on a "trusted writers" list, based on your track record, and more than likely get a quick pass.

 

[RejectReality]

I'd say you're on a "trusted writers" list, based on your track record, and more than likely get a quick pass.

I've had a rejection that required edits to go through. ( Dumb oversight on my part ) I've also had one rejected that was flat out denied on the basic concept. ( Article about not trusting your fans to behave themselves with regards to double voting and trolling other authors. ) So, with two legitimate rejections ( and a couple more mistaken ones over the years ) why would I be on a trusted list?

 

[lovecraft68]

I've had a rejection that required edits to go through. ( Dumb oversight on my part ) I've also had one rejected that was flat out denied on the basic concept. ( Article about not trusting your fans to behave themselves with regards to double voting and trolling other authors. ) So, with two legitimate rejections ( and a couple more mistaken ones over the years ) why would I be on a trusted list?

You've been here-under your oldest name since what, 2006? Pretty sure over time Laurel knows who she can trust.
I've had two rejections in my time here, one about 12 years ago for underaged because the MC referenced a 12 year old sister who lived with his mother and wasn't featured in the story other than that mention so it was in error.

The second was last year...a weird underaged kick back and in the notes field I pasted the three-yes three lines on the first page that mentioned the characters being 18. But there was a line in there "every summer since we turned 14" and I think that triggered it, which to me proves there is some type of system that gets triggered by numbers, but not seeing context.

But I'm still fairly certain someone like myself gets nary a glance, and same for other long time authors. Giving us more of a pass frees up time to look more closely at newer authors. I find it interesting that none of the regulars here seem to have been affected by the glitch that has people's stories trapped in pending for 10 days because they're somehow not visible to Laurel, so I'm thinking we get an easy pass of sorts and just pushed on through.

BTW to one of your other posts. The oft-at the time-talked about rejection was Bronzeage for including a 15 year old bottle of scotch in his story. There were others, but that's the one that everyone seems to remember.

 

[RejectReality]

I feel like we're getting into Occam's Razor territory here. There's an automated bot that rejects things based on keywords, but some people are on an exclusion list which explains why they can easily get things through that look really sketchy out of context, and yet there are some stories from one hit wonders that make people wonder how they got through when they're filled with problematic words...

There's an awful lot of bending, twisting, and beating things with a hammer to make this theory work. ( and probably a lack of knowledge about how inconsistent and shitty any type of content reviewing software is )

 

[ElectricBlue]

There's an awful lot of bending, twisting, and beating things with a hammer to make this theory work. ( and probably a lack of knowledge about how inconsistent and shitty any type of content reviewing software is )

Not really hammering. Only my observations over ten years, the same as you. Whether or not it's automated, sure, that's only speculation, but it's pretty obvious a key word scan does happen (which as someone pointed out, recruiters have been doing for years). Whether it auto-rejects or red-flags to human eyes, that's impossible for us to say; but the process has changed subtly over the decade I've been here. Early rejections seem to be more frequent these last two years - obviously, the whole AI hoo-ha is skewing that right now, and there may be more people coming to the AH with rejections.

I kinda miss the old days when rejections were nearly always someone skating the line.

 

[RejectReality]

I don't see any more people complaining about rejections ( other than AI ) than in the past, or much change in the legitimacy of them. It's mostly the same old "I don't have any underage sex in my story. It's just some guy jacking off" and "But this story has something just as bad" that have been going on since I've been here.

The AI rejections are the result of content review software, and frankly only reinforce my view that no such software is being employed for other forms of content. The moment it went into place, the forum was awash in a spike of complaints. It's shit, like all content review software...

( Tell me you haven't stared at a squiggle underneath a word and facepalmed when you saw the completely braindead suggestion provided. )

...and if such a thing was ever put into place, we'd be inundated with similar numbers of complaints about bogus rejections.

When was the last non-AI rejection complaint? Been a minute from what I can remember, but maybe I missed one.

 

[Seadog777]

It's no secret that stories by new writers, or writers with few submissions, are more thoroughly screened.

I wouldn't be surprised if she has a few people at least, helping her out.

Laurel is a wonderful woman, and both her and Manu work hard here on Lit.

It's no secret that I'll walk through razor wire for her.

 

[gunhilltrain]

A million monkeys, bashing away at a million keyboards. One day we'll reproduce the works of Shakespeare, or more likely "Trembleshaft".

For us, the stories aren't an accident, but among all the other stories here, they are a product. They don't even last as long as automobiles. Two weeks and they are rarely read again. Although, I've been lucky and have been getting more "favorites" for old stories. So I guess some momentum is generated. I just wish more of those people would vote too.

That reminds me that someone has said that there will eventually be more dead people with Facebook accounts than live ones. They don't have a policy for closing inactive accounts (at least I think so), and neither does Lit.