Now tell me this site isn’t broken

[ShelbyDawn57]

And I don't know why folks think that. An actual response from her is rare. If I had a need to talk to her, I wouldn't expect a response, I would just know she saw it by whatever change was made, eventually. The users that claimed to have conversations with her, I have no doubt it's true, and they're a small percentage of all the ones that's reached out.

And to save making another post; if the issues are that big, especially with publishing; why haven't they closed submissions, to get on top of it? At least for a week or two.

The issues with long submission times were obviously transient as recent evidence seems to indicate they have been mitigated successfully. Not sure I see the point in bringing this back up.

 

[RocketGrunt]

How would it increase the backlog of stories if they closed submissions?

People wouldn't stop writing during a week of closed submissions. The moderators just wouldn't see them. So when the submissions turned back on, they'd see 8 days worth of submissions that no moderator had even run a scan on yet. The backlog would immediately be thousands of stories to review the moment the dam started letting water through again.

 

[Voboy]

Your experience is probably fairly common. But just like Yelp and Google reviews, I suspect we see a skewed and inaccurate representation of what the average experience is here. Which makes sense. People are way more motivated to speak up about a negative experience then a positive experience.

This.

I've never had a story take more than about seven days to post, and most have been well under three. Poems have always taken far longer. But I've made well over a hundred submissions, so it would never occur to me to start a thread saying, "Hey! Just a data point: my shit posted in three days!"

If it had occurred to me, the AH would have 123 new threads by now, all of them saying that my posting times were normal. I assume the VAST majority of stories post that rapidly, or without too much more time taken than that. The negative threads here prime us all to assume there's a bigger problem than there really is, most likely.

With that said, I fully agree that for those affected by the delays, it's a pain in the ass. I also understand why such folks expect more communication from the site. I have been here long enough to assume the communication will be poor, unless I need something fixed; on the few occasions I have, I've found Laurel extremely responsive.

If I had a story in pending hell? It might not occur to me to post about it, due to those very assumptions I've built up over the years. But then, maybe it would. Hopefully, I'll never need to find out.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

The issues with long submission times were obviously transient as recent evidence seems to indicate they have been mitigated successfully. Not sure I see the point in bringing this back up.

I haven't been here in like two weeks, I didn't know.

 

[M_K_Babalon]

People wouldn't stop writing during a week of closed submissions. The moderators just wouldn't see them. So when the submissions turned back on, they'd see 8 days worth of submissions that no moderator had even run a scan on yet. The backlog would immediately be thousands of stories to review the moment the dam started letting water through again.

When a site closes submissions, like LushStories did between xmas and new years day, there's no submit button—story submissions are closed, the function is dissabled. Folks can write all they want to, they'll just need to wait. How hard is this to understand? If a stores closed, they lock the doors. Like AdultFanFiction did after their cyber attack a few years ago.

 

[Writer61]

When a site closes submissions, like LushStories did between xmas and new years day, there's no submit button—story submissions are closed, the function is dissabled. Folks can write all they want to, they'll just need to wait. How hard is this to understand? If a stores closed, they lock the doors. Like AdultFanFiction did after their cyber attack a few years ago.

It is not hard to understand that closing to submissions does not stop people writing. Or that when submissions reopen, more stories than usual are submitted.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

How would it increase the backlog of stories if they closed submissions?

People would flood the boards even more ranting and raving. They'd be saving up their submissions.

When the page was opened again, they'd all try to get in all at once. A few thousand or more submissions would hit instead a couple of hundred.

 

[SmilingLez]

This.

I've never had a story take more than about seven days to post, and most have been well under three. Poems have always taken far longer. But I've made well over a hundred submissions, so it would never occur to me to start a thread saying, "Hey! Just a data point: my shit posted in three days!"

My poetry and one audio took no more than 3 days to get posted. My single story - more than three times as long to post. My second story stayed in pending purgatory on and off from September 2025 to January 2026. I turned it into free verse and submitted it without problem in the poetry section

 

[Voboy]

My poetry takes no more than 3 days to get posted. Stories more than three times as long as poetry

I've not submitted a poem in awhile now, but back when I was putting them in regularly? Publishing times were often several weeks. It seemed to be the same for Illustrated and Audio, and the consensus back then was that all three categories were batch-processed just a couple times a month.

But, in keeping with longtime Lit practice, it was just a consensus. Nobody ever saw a post about it from site management.

 

[Britva415]

recent evidence seems to indicate they have been mitigated successfully.

I haven't gotten the memo. What is that evidence? And what does "mitigation" even mean? It doesn't sound like a solve, but something else. I'd call the delete-and-try-resubmitting-again a mitigation, since it often works. It fds doesn't mean the problem went away.

Aside: Those problems lasted for months and months. "Transient" isn't a word I'd describe the situation with, even if there was a resolution or mitigation recently.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I haven't gotten the memo. What is that evidence?

The plethora of posts bragging about turnarounds in a few hours.

People tend to find what they look for, maybe you're just not looking for those. I dunno...

 

[SmilingLez]

Tomorrow I will submit my vignette in the Valentine's Day contest, the 750 word challenge and the pink orchid project. It will be curious to see how long it will take if it gets posted. I still don't believe the glitch was ever fixed. Perhaps a weak Band-Aid but not a fix

 

[Britva415]

The plethora of posts bragging about turnarounds in a few hours.

Oh, I've seen them. But we always knew that the normal-approve-time crowd was much bigger than the permanently-pending crowd. Just because they started saying "not everyone" doesn't mean that now nobody is getting stuck in permanently-pending.

Besides, you mentioned a mitigation. What supposedly happened to mitigate the situation?

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Oh, I've seen them. But we always knew that the normal-approve-time crowd was much bigger than the permanently-pending crowd. Just because they started saying "not everyone" doesn't mean that now nobody is getting stuck in permanently-pending.

Besides, you mentioned a mitigation. What supposedly happened to mitigate the situation?

Something changed to make things faster for what appears to be a lot of people.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Even in the depths of the crisis, when people like @ChloeTzang and @MelissaBaby (and me) were caught, others (most likely the vast majority) were still getting published in resonable timeframes. Sometimes the same author would have one story in purgatory and another approved in hours.

We are still having people getting caught and waiting for weeks. Absent any real data, it feels like it’s happening to less people, but that could actually also be people voting with their feet. Or embarrassed to add yet another - my story is stuck thread (or worried about the reception to raising their problem here).

I think it’s premature to declare, “Problem over!”

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Even in the depths of the criss, when people like @ChloeTzang and @MelissaBaby (and me) were caught, others (most likely the vast majority) were still getting published in resonable timeframes. Sometimes the same author would have one story in purgatory and another approved in hours.

We are still having people getting caught and waiting for weeks. Absent any real data, it feels like it’s happening to less people, but that could actually also be people voting with their feet. Or embarrassed to add yet another - my story is stuck thread (or worried about the reception to raising their problem here).

I think it’s premature to declare, “Problem over!”

Only two people have sufficient data to say whether or not the problem is 'over.' The rest of us have to take what data points we do have and make the best judgements we can. From my point of view, and as a terminal optimist, I see things improving, and significantly so. But it's as true for me as it is for anyone else, we find what we look for.

 

[Writer61]

I think it’s premature to declare, “Problem over!”

Agree.

By chance, in three recent months, I had several stories (all EC or E/V) approved for publication:

Jun '25: 0-4 days (6 stories)
Nov '25: 2-3 days (4 stories) and 13-16 (3 stories)
Jan '26: 0-2 (4 stories) and 7 (4 stories)

Clearly, there is a positive trend since last autumn, but the variation is surprising.

EDIT:
• IIRC, at least one of the Nov batch was >16 days and got through after withdrawal and resubmission.
• Two weeks pending is bad enough, so I feel for those who have experienced far worse

EDIT2:
I assume that Nov and Jan show two groups of stories: ones that go through with and without additional review. Allowing for that, I would say that approval times (on my stories) have halved between Nov and Jan. Obviously, a small sample size.

 

[RejectReality]

It's not rocket science. AI rejection complaints decline, long wait complaints ramp up. Long wait complaints decline, AI rejection complaints ramp up.

Anybody getting stuck at this point will likely see an immediate remedy by simply opening the pending submission, previewing it, and hitting submit to reset their position in the queue. That bug isn't getting resolved until the underlying code for the backend dashboard is R&Rd, and it's rare. ( Which is why it's damn near impossible to diagnose )

The queue got behind, the wrong person got caught in the dashboard bug, and social contagion ensued. Sifting through the onslaught of PMs and bug reports that likely contained not a single bit of useful information only slowed things down even more.

 

[Writer61]

It's not rocket science. AI rejection complaints decline, long wait complaints ramp up. Long wait complaints decline, AI rejection complaints ramp up.

Stats?

 

[IWroteThis]

The plethora of posts bragging about turnarounds in a few hours.

There was never a time when no stories got through, so having some stories get through does not mean what you seem to think it means.

In fact, while I had a story that languished in Pending Purgatory from September to January, I had two other submissions go through in a normal timeframe. Did them getting published mean the problem had been mitigated, or did the one still sitting in Pending mean it hadn't? I don't know about you, but I'm going with the latter.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Stats?

Memory for trends that we see.

I doubt anyone keeps detailed counts of this post, that post, the other subject post, but over time one sees trends and shifts in the flow.

Some might say, "anecdotally blah blah blah," that's probably going to be the best that you'll get.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Jun '25: 0-4 days (6 stories)
Nov '25: 2-3 days (4 stories) and 13-16 (3 stories)
Jan '26: 0-2 (4 stories) and 7 (4 stories)

1 - 4 days has always been typical for me. I've had a few fall through the cracks over the years, pushing out over a week, ten days. I've sent PMs to Laurel as a consequence, received a "sorry" email back, and the story got published. The difference might be, no Ginger and Fred song and dance about it.

 

[Writer61]

Memory for trends that we see.

The problem is that I don't remember such a clear correlation, and even if it's true, causality is not certain.

 

[Writer61]

1 - 4 days has always been typical for me. I've had a few fall through the cracks over the years, pushing out over a week, ten days. I've sent PMs to Laurel as a consequence, received a "sorry" email back, and the story got published. The difference might be, no Ginger and Fred song and dance about it.

I have 15 stories approved outside those months, only 2 with tracked dates, but 1-4 feels right.

 

[RejectReality]

The problem is that I don't remember such a clear correlation, and even if it's true, causality is not certain.

I'm not going to go through and build a spreadsheet of threads and dates and whatnot. I'm in the middle of scanning bloody receipts and loading them into a spreadsheet, so I'm going to have no appetite for that for a good long while. If you didn't notice the trends, I don't know what to tell you.