Now tell me this site isn’t broken

[Writer61]

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.

I am not asking you to do that.

I am saying that my perception is not quite the same as yours, and even if it were, that does not mean there is a correlation between increased AI rejections and decreasing approval times. Just as the reducing number of pirates is not necessarily the cause of global warming.

May you be touched by his noodly appendage
Ramen

 

[ElectricBlue]

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

Your recall or lack thereof doesn't negate other folk's recall. As @RejectReality notes, some of us see patterns over time, others don't. There's no burden of proof, that's why it's called anecdotal evidence.

There's been a typical ebb and flow of the AH for the decade (just over) that I've been here, and RR has been here much longer. I for one give him credence. There are some constants, there are new dynamics on occasion, but the trends are there to be seen.

 

[Writer61]

There's no burden of proof, that's why it's called anecdotal evidence.

I am not asking you to provide proof.

Your recall or lack thereof doesn't negate other folk's recall. As @RejectReality notes, some of us see patterns over time, others don't. There's no burden of proof, that's why it's called anecdotal evidence.

I accept that you may be right, and I may be wrong.

However, you keep dodging the question of causality. That is, does one cause the other? If so, which is which?

What is your hypothesis?

 

[ICantLeafYou]

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

I submitted my 750 word challenge piece several hours ago and it was very quickly put into pending status, incredibly quick.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I am not asking you to provide proof.


I accept that you may be right, and I may be wrong.

However, you keep dodging the question of causality. That is, does one cause the other? If so, which is which?

What is your hypothesis?

My take is that there was technical glitch which affected a group of writers, how many I don't know, which chucked their stories into a long time pending cycle for some reason. At the same time, the throughput of published stories didn't change much compared to the last year or so. So something was working for most, even while it was broken for others.

I reckon the pending thing was probably related to a surge in AI junk submissions, stories getting caught up in whatever the site is doing to get on top of that. What process the site uses to filter for AI, I don't have a clue, but I suspect @AwkwardMD's working theory (which she's shared with me) has some merit. Plus Laurel reading the content - AI content has a "feel" about it that you can sense, even if you can't be bothered parsing why. It reads like boilerplate business writing, not spontaneous or edited fiction.

My observation over the last decade is that the site always slows down some in the period between US summer holidays and Thanksgiving, and I was never convinced this year was really that much different. There was a more vocal reaction, certainly, and some long timers were obviously affected. Why, I don't know. At the same time, the throughput was fairly steady, so again, some bits were working, even if there was a black hole for others.

I didn't submit a great deal over the drama period, but what I did submit went through pretty much as expected: one in 24 hours (fast), several in two or three days (typical), and most recently an edit (my fault entirely, bad proof reading with one wrong name), as expected, three weeks. The edit went wrong, I exchanged PMs with Laurel, and ten days later I followed up, and the fix went live that midnight.

The thing that was different this year was the drama, which was unusual.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I submitted my 750 word challenge piece several hours ago and it was very quickly put into pending status, incredibly quick.

Stories always go into Pending straight away. The issue has been the lengthy gap before the status switches to New. That's the delay that some folk have experienced. While a story is Pending, that just means it's not been processed yet.

 

[ICantLeafYou]

Stories always go into Pending straight away. The issue has been the lengthy gap before the status switches to New. That's the delay that some folk have experienced. While a story is Pending, that just means it's not been processed yet.

I may have worded my previous post badly, but it is "published" and awaiting actual posting.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Can y'all pull the claws and fangs in for at least one thread?

 

[RejectReality]

I am not asking you to provide proof.


I accept that you may be right, and I may be wrong.

However, you keep dodging the question of causality. That is, does one cause the other? If so, which is which?

What is your hypothesis?

There's an obvious pattern to the complaints. It's the same sort of repeating pattern that's always been here. The reason we can nail down damn near every "How to make your characters talk" rejection is we've seen it a thousand times. Check your punctuation around dialog. As often as not, we can find the problem in their existing, published work which managed to sneak through.

Early last year, AI rejection complaints started ramping up. They reached a fever pitch sometime before the middle of the year. Closer to the middle of the year, we started seeing the long-pending complaints. AI rejection complaints declined in direct proportion to the surge in long-pending. A while into that, the #1 author and a drama llama both got caught in the pending bug. Both were able to escape it by doing what's been suggested for literally years whenever the rare long-pending complaint popped up in the past — resubmit to reset your position in the queue. The #1 author went on with her life. The drama llama started running around like a chicken with her head cut off screaming that the sky was falling.

Lit didn't help it by releasing a buggy update to the activity page at the same time the panic was ramping up.

As we approached the end of the year, the long-pending complaints began to tail off. Lo and behold ( exactly as I predicted numerous times during the social contagion ) AI rejection complaints started surging again.

Lit has set a bar that I believe is too high for AI rejections. That's the reason for those. In the meantime, the queue got behind. Part of that was the queue getting filled up with what Lit considers AI. Even if it's not intentional, when you've got a nearly insurmountable problem in front of you, you're going to default to what's easy at first. Known authors. Easy reviews where there's not much getting marked up in the dashboard. Pound them out. Keep the content flowing. That stuff getting flagged as AI that's a pain in the ass? You can work on that tomorrow.

Laurel slammed her nose into the grindstone late last year and plowed through that backlog, getting things back to something reasonable. That undoubtedly resulted in some questionable things sneaking through, and even harsher evaluations on what was considered AI, because snap decisions are the only way you can eliminate a backlog like that as one person. Non-English submissions were particularly hard-hit by this. Since it's likely Laurel isn't fluent in all of them, some were basically impossible for her to make a judgement call on once they were flagged as AI. They got kicked back as she fought the monster.

Now that the beast is contained, you're seeing more Non-English submissions go through. Probably using other factors to decide whether to override the AI flag. Long-pending complaints are virtually gone. Every day there's a new thread about AI rejections.

Unless you're ignoring the complaint threads ( Understandable. ) the patterns are so obvious they're like the changing of the seasons.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

There's an obvious pattern to the complaints. It's the same sort of repeating pattern that's always been here. The reason we can nail down damn near every "How to make your characters talk" rejection is we've seen it a thousand times. Check your punctuation around dialog. As often as not, we can find the problem in their existing, published work which managed to sneak through.

Early last year, AI rejection complaints started ramping up. They reached a fever pitch sometime before the middle of the year. Closer to the middle of the year, we started seeing the long-pending complaints. AI rejection complaints declined in direct proportion to the surge in long-pending. A while into that, the #1 author and a drama llama both got caught in the pending bug. Both were able to escape it by doing what's been suggested for literally years whenever the rare long-pending complaint popped up in the past — resubmit to reset your position in the queue. The #1 author went on with her life. The drama llama started running around like a chicken with her head cut off screaming that the sky was falling.

Lit didn't help it by releasing a buggy update to the activity page at the same time the panic was ramping up.

As we approached the end of the year, the long-pending complaints began to tail off. Lo and behold ( exactly as I predicted numerous times during the social contagion ) AI rejection complaints started surging again.

Lit has set a bar that I believe is too high for AI rejections. That's the reason for those. In the meantime, the queue got behind. Part of that was the queue getting filled up with what Lit considers AI. Even if it's not intentional, when you've got a nearly insurmountable problem in front of you, you're going to default to what's easy at first. Known authors. Easy reviews where there's not much getting marked up in the dashboard. Pound them out. Keep the content flowing. That stuff getting flagged as AI that's a pain in the ass? You can work on that tomorrow.

Laurel slammed her nose into the grindstone late last year and plowed through that backlog, getting things back to something reasonable. That undoubtedly resulted in some questionable things sneaking through, and even harsher evaluations on what was considered AI, because snap decisions are the only way you can eliminate a backlog like that as one person. Non-English submissions were particularly hard-hit by this. Since it's likely Laurel isn't fluent in all of them, some were basically impossible for her to make a judgement call on once they were flagged as AI. They got kicked back as she fought the monster.

Now that the beast is contained, you're seeing more Non-English submissions go through. Probably using other factors to decide whether to override the AI flag. Long-pending complaints are virtually gone. Every day there's a new thread about AI rejections.

Unless you're ignoring the complaint threads ( Understandable. ) the patterns are so obvious they're like the changing of the seasons.

And there will always be the anomalies and things that simply fall through the cracks from time to time.

Taking any of these as personal is a waste of time and effort.

 

[Britva415]

As we approached the end of the year, the long-pending complaints began to tail off. Lo and behold ( exactly as I predicted numerous times during the social contagion ) AI rejection complaints started surging again.

This isn't my perception at all. Mine is that for most of last year both of these complaints came very frequently.

 

[EmilyMiller]

I feel there is little point trying to convince those who firmly disbelieve in the extent of the problems (still ongoing) that there was and remains an issue. If it doesn’t impact you personally, it’s obviously not real. It’s impossible to penetrate armor like that. I’m giving up trying.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I feel there is little point trying to convince those who firmly disbelieve in the extent of the problems (still ongoing) that there was and remains an issue. If it doesn’t impact you personally, it’s obviously not real. It’s impossible to penetrate armor like that. I’m giving up trying.

I don't remember anyone stating the issue(Inordinately long publishing delays) was gone, only that there was evidence that the situation had improved, and possible greatly. Perhaps you can explain then the reason for complaining ad nauseum about an issue you 1. don't know the actual cause of, and 2. can't do anything about, while ignoring the obvious that this site, all warts included, remains the best option for publishing our stories to the widest audience, and that it is Laurel and Manu's business, that they are very vested in it working properly which would imply they were most likely fully aware of the issue(s) and were/are doing everything they could to resolve it/them as quickly as possible.

It's vanity at its worst to think we 'deserve' to be included in how they run this site. What we are is symbionts, extracting whatever value we deem appropriate and offering our stories up for them to publish for whatever gains they receive in return. We do so willingly, and to bitch and moan and complain just to hear ourselves talk is a gloriously self-serving waste of time. So, please, explain... If you can.

 

[lovecraft68]

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

And if they did that they wouldn't tell anyone and people would try to submit a story and be told they can't. Can you imagine the panic that would cause? People would run around the net saying the site's closing.

They need to fix whatever it is that's causing some stories to vanish into some type of pending limbo.