Shout it out loud: fast approval times

[StillStunned]

Last Sunday I submitted a sword & sorcery story, and it was approved within 2-3 hours. If reading this is starting make your blood boil, I suggest you click away now.

Anyway, fast approval times. It's not fashionable to talk about them, with everyone getting worked up about how long they have to wait. But plenty of stories *don't* get stuck or lost. I rarely have to wait more than a day or two, for instance, and I'm sure I'm not the only one here.

In this particular case, I really appreciated it. It was my first proper full-length story for months, and I'd made an effort to complete it and break my slump. Getting it approved so quickly was very welcome: extra encouragement while I was riding the wave of positivity.

So here's a place to share your fast approvals. Express your gratitude and appreciation for @Laurel (may she live forever). Offer some hope to new authors who might be daunted by all the complaints about having to wait for days or weeks.

(And if you'd rather gripe, keep it out of this thread. When you created your account, you said you were at least 18. So act like the grown-up you are and take responsibility for curating your own forum experience. There's a useful "Ignore" button that will make this thread disappear from your screen, and with it all my other pesky positivity and other nonsense. Go on, click it now.)

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Last Sunday I submitted a sword & sorcery story, and it was approved within 2-3 hours. If reading this is starting make your blood boil, I suggest you click away now.

2 - 3 hours, really. My Valentine's entry took six. Who did you bribe?

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

fast approval times. It's not fashionable to talk about them...

Side note. I think it's telling that I paused before I replied...

 

[StillStunned]

2 - 3 hours, really. My Valentine's entry took six. Who did you bribe?

I assume Laurel (may she live forever) is a fan of sword & sorcery.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I only have Pink Orchid stories on the horizon, so I won't have any idea about non-contest submissions for a while.

 

[StillStunned]

Side note. I think it's telling that I paused before I replied...

Very telling. I paused before writing this post.

But no more, I say! No longer will we keep our silence before the tyranny of complaint!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Very telling. I paused before writing this post.

But no more, I say! No longer will we keep our silence before the tyranny of complaint!

Careful... Don't want to offend anyone.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I want to believe

 

[CalBishForNow]

I'm pretty sure none of my stories took more than three days to post. Or less than one, so 2-3 hours still sounds weird to me, but still, nothing like what people complain about. This and some other recent thread about things going surprisingly fast make me curious about whether it's resolved, and eager to hit Publish on my almost-all-done-after-far-too-long story to find out for myself, but I still have a few things to take care of first.

 

[StillStunned]

This and some other recent thread about things going surprisingly fast make me curious about whether it's resolved,

I certainly hope not! I prefer being one of the site's special darlings!

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I want to believe

Sometimes seeing is believing. Sometimes believing is seeing.

That's from some Santa Clause movie, I think.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I'm pretty sure none of my stories took more than three days to post. Or less than one, so 2-3 hours still sounds weird to me, but still, nothing like what people complain about. This and some other recent thread about things going surprisingly fast make me curious about whether it's resolved, and eager to hit Publish on my almost-all-done-after-far-too-long story to find out for myself, but I still have a few things to take care of first.

There were serious wait times back in the fall. Looks like the issue has been mitigated, but some people never let it go.

 

[Bazzle]

My last two submissions have been approved just after 24 hours.

So no complaints from me!

 

[SyleusSnow]

My last story was submitted 4PM on Dec 29. 10K words. It was approved and queued by 10PM.

But the publication date was Dec 31, not Dec 30. I assume that's due to some cutoff time for approved stories to go live the next day, or a max limit on the number of stories published per day

 

[VerbalAbuse]

why, I came so hard reading the OP. very intense piece. keep it up.

 

[TheLobster]

What is this thread? Sir, this is an erotica site. We pride ourselves in having things last for a long time, and usually for multiple rounds thereafter!

 

[metropolinational]

Why does anything need to be moderated at all? Why?

There is no reason. Everywhere else on the internet, I can publish instantaneously. X, Youtube. Facebook, even my own damn rinkydink websites. Even this forum, right here! If one of us turns out to be an EvilDoer, then the post can be reported and then reviewed. That's how all of the rest of the internet works.

I find it a bit frustrating, obviously.

 

[redgarters]

All my stories have published on the second night of waiting like clockwork (except this last one that had to wait for the contest to open).

 

[old_prof]

Why does anything need to be moderated at all? Why?

There is no reason. Everywhere else on the internet, I can publish instantaneously. X, Youtube. Facebook, even my own damn rinkydink websites. Even this forum, right here! If one of us turns out to be an EvilDoer, then the post can be reported and then reviewed. That's how all of the rest of the internet works.

I find it a bit frustrating, obviously.

There is a benefit to the readers of having certain standards. It's part of what the readers are here for. Some people have made the point of raising the standards higher. Th biggest frustration as a reader is the roughly half the stories on here that are unreadably bad. If they allowed AI slop in here, it would be far worse and stop be a garden for growing new writers, which is my reservation about making the standards too high.

There are lots of legal concerns about some content. And many of us writers do not want to be associated with some kinds of content, so allowing anything would drive away authors.

Overall, I think they've done an admirable job of threading that needle. Not every decision is the one I would make, but they'r all defensible and make a coherent entity taken as a whole.

And back to the OP comment, My most recent submission took somewhere between 8 and 16 hours to be approved -- it was approved over night to me. And appeared the day after that. As annoying as rejections and pending can be (I did have a story pending for two months), I think that part of the site works amazingly well. Three cheers for Laurel (may she live forever).

 

[metropolinational]

Old Prof, are you saying they are moderating for quality too? If so, I actually support their efforts to moderate. However, I am asking because I find that hard to believe. I assumed they were only moderating for illegal content.

I don't like to be a jerk, but a very large number of the stories I find (at all rating levels) on the main category pages are simply unreadable. I don't even bother to finish them or rate them, as a low rating in my genre (LW) can actually mean the story is good, not bad.

(Luckily, now that I started publishing, I never have to visit the main category pages again. I simply look at the stories my followers have favorited and I am never disappointed. Some even make meticulously categorized lists. I now have more high quality stories than I could ever have time to read. It's wonderful.)

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Old Prof, are you saying they are moderating for quality too? If so, I actually support their efforts to moderate. However, I am asking because I find that hard to believe. I assumed they were only moderating for illegal content.

I don't like to be a jerk, but a very large number of the stories I find (at all rating levels) on the main category pages are simply unreadable. I don't even bother to finish them or rate them, as a low rating in my genre (LW) can actually mean the story is good, not bad.

(Luckily, now that I started publishing, I never have to visit the main category pages again. I simply look at the stories my followers have favorited and I am never disappointed. Some even make meticulously categorized lists. I now have more high quality stories than I could ever have time to read. It's wonderful.)

Currently, the site moderates content. Through scoring, favoring, and feedback the readers moderate quality (or their perception of quality).

I think most are fine with that.

 

[Zootonius]

After publishing about 60 stories that typically went live in 2-3 days, I now have one stuck in pending for a week. Not sure what that's about.

 

[YmaOHyd]

As unreadable as some of the bad stories here are, there are definitely people writing at a lower level than that and getting rejected.

If Lit didn't have some level of moderation for CSAM content I wouldn't publish or read here.

 

[old_prof]

Old Prof, are you saying they are moderating for quality too? If so, I actually support their efforts to moderate. However, I am asking because I find that hard to believe. I assumed they were only moderating for illegal content.

Yes. Bad punctuation, especially around dialog, is a common rejection point.

I don't like to be a jerk, but a very large number of the stories I find (at all rating levels) on the main category pages are simply unreadable. I don't even bother to finish them or rate them, as a low rating in my genre (LW) can actually mean the story is good, not bad.

This was my point that there is an argument to be made for raising the standard. In reality, I think that ship has sailed long ago. All of us feel that. I'm not a fan of LW, so I don't see the weird ratings that exist very often. When I was just a reader, I just ignored anything below about a 4.3 and focused on the H stories.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Old Prof, are you saying they are moderating for quality too? If so, I actually support their efforts to moderate. However, I am asking because I find that hard to believe. I assumed they were only moderating for illegal content.

I don't like to be a jerk, but a very large number of the stories I find (at all rating levels) on the main category pages are simply unreadable. I don't even bother to finish them or rate them, as a low rating in my genre (LW) can actually mean the story is good, not bad.

(Luckily, now that I started publishing, I never have to visit the main category pages again. I simply look at the stories my followers have favorited and I am never disappointed. Some even make meticulously categorized lists. I now have more high quality stories than I could ever have time to read. It's wonderful.)

I don't think the site moderates for bad writing, per se, but they do reject stories that fall below a certain level of proper grammar, punctuation, formatting, etc.