Rejected submissions for seemingly trivial reasons.

[ShelbyDawn57]

I know you aren't. That was not meant for you.

Yeah, that was all mine, I'm sure. Again, I apologize that you took the brunt of my frustration.

 

[KeithD]

This is a usual explanation, one many people give to newcomers who ask about problems with their stories, but I can't help thinking we are misinforming them by reiterating this common assumption. Nobody here knows this. Some of the older members put this explanation into circulation, based on something Laurel said like 10 or more years ago. So many things changed since then, if it was true even then. The best we can tell is that there is a clear shortage of manpower on Literotica, for whatever reason that is. It could just as well be that she doesn't give a fuck anymore.

What we do know is that the other users of the AH have nothing to do with the selection process, so ranting to us about it is just so much irritating spitting into the wind.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

There seem to be subtle threads of discontent running through a lot of threads lately.

And there is nothing wrong with that. No one among us has any malicious intentions towards the website. However it might seem to you, some people have legitimate grievances.

There seem to be a few that have seen behind the curtain, but you and I are not on that list. It is unfair of us to expect more than she is willing to give, and, unfortunately for you and me, she is the sole arbiter of that.

I don't share your semi-religious approach to Laurel, I must say. I don't think it is unfair if I am complaining or criticizing something on Lit, as long as my intentions aren't malicious. I wish people had done more constructive criticism and helpful suggestions. Maybe Lit would have been an even better place than it is today. Also, when it comes to the work needed and everything, I am one of those who thinks that Lit should introduce donations to the website, or even paid membership if that is what it takes to make Lit better. I certainly wouldn't mind paying to improve this great place. I will also continue to criticize it any time I feel it is deserved.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

What we do know is that the other users of the AH have nothing to do with the selection process, so ranting to us about it is just so much irritating spitting into the wind.

I couldn't agree more, but it is irritating in the exact same way as this praise that is based on wild assumptions and subjective experiences. As long as people keep praising, I will keep ranting, until one day maybe we can start posting objectively and constructively and not based on personal experiences only.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

And there is nothing wrong with that. No one among us has any malicious intentions towards the website. However it might seem to you, some people have legitimate grievances.


I don't share your semi-religious approach to Laurel, I must say. I don't think it is unfair if I am complaining or criticizing something on Lit, as long as my intentions aren't malicious. I wish people had done more constructive criticism and helpful suggestions. Maybe Lit would have been an even better place than it is today. Also, when it comes to the work needed and everything, I am one of those who thinks that Lit should introduce donations to the website, or even paid membership if that is what it takes to make Lit better. I certainly wouldn't mind paying to improve this great place. I will also continue to criticize it any time I feel it is deserved.

Semi-religious, I'm not going to own that. Immense appreciation, sure. I've seen behind the scenes for large scale enterprise software applications with huge databases, which is what this is. Not easy to manage at all. Take for example the vote sweep that took place earlier. That's some complex math and whoever programmed it is better than me.

My issue is that many of the complaints I see are petty. There are at least two massive threads complaining about getting rejected for AI. Come on. AI is brand new and the algorithms she is using are new as well. Give it time and it will get better.
Of my 58 stories, probably half a dozen have been rejected for the standard cryptic reasons, formatting, under 18, formatting, too long paragraphs, etc.... I just went back and made changes. It's all good.

We live in one room of her world and have no clue what Laurel's day looks like. None of us sit in her office and look over her shoulder to witness what she does every day. I'm pretty sure she's not drinking tea at the club and playing tennis.

My dad told me once that conflict is nothing ore than a mismatch of expectation and behavior. We can only control one, so pick wisely. In this case, we own the expectation. What I'm suggesting, is that we all try to manage that better. It is best adjusted by observing current behavior of, in this case, I guess Laurel.
Expect her to be her and if your surprised, it will probably be a good thing.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Thought just occurred to me. You and I keep this up, we might solve climate change.

 

[KeithD]

I wish people had done more constructive criticism and helpful suggestions

Won't roll over for that one. Those of us who've been here longer than a decade know the usual response to "constructive criticism and helpful suggestions" about the site is crickets. In my case, going that route resulted in Laurel calling me a troll (and no response on the "constructive criticism and helpful suggestions" I thought I was giving.) So, I'm generally just grateful for what is provided and go with the flow (and don't get my stories rejected).

 

[djrip]

My issue is that many of the complaints I see are petty. There are at least two massive threads complaining about getting rejected for AI. Come on. AI is brand new and the algorithms she is using are new as well. Give it time and it will get better.

I don't think it's petty to be upset if like 48 of your 53 stories get taken down because of unfounded AI accusations. And then laurel refuses to put them back up after going back and forth with her 3 or 4 times. Authors put a lot of themselves into this. To have dozens of stories taken down for no legitimate reason is a gut punch. Maybe it seems petty because you don't think it could happen to you. I would encourage you to really imagine waking up one day to find all your work gone, and then gradually realizing over the course of many failed appeals that it's not going back up no matter how many times you explain you didn't use any AI. If it happened to me I know I'd be upset.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I don't think it's petty to be upset if like 48 of your 53 stories get taken down because of unfounded AI accusations. And then laurel refuses to put them back up after going back and forth with her 3 or 4 times. Authors put a lot of themselves into this. To have dozens of stories taken down for no legitimate reason is a gut punch. Maybe it seems petty because you don't think it could happen to you. I would encourage you to really imagine waking up one day to find all your work gone, and then gradually realizing over the course of many failed appeals that it's not going back up no matter how many times you explain you didn't use any AI. If it happened to me I know I'd be upset.

I bailed on those threads after a few posts. Wasn’t aware previously approved works were subject, just new submissions which in my view would be a lot less problematic.
Thanks for calling me on that.

 

[KeithD]

I don't think it's petty to be upset if like 48 of your 53 stories get taken down because of unfounded AI accusations.

I agree. Until some sort of reliable mechanism can be found to be assured it's AI assisted, I think the author should be given the benefit of doubt.

 

[MillieDynamite]

The only story I had sent back was because of the age rule being violated. It wasn't actually violated. I have dyslexia, and one time, the girl's age was listed as 21 (which was correct), and one time, 12 (which was incorrect). The issue was it only said age issue in the send-back. At that time, my glasses were broken, and the new pair hadn't been delivered yet, (light lines run through them, which prevents the letters from flipping around like dolphins). I missed what's wrong and removed a statement about, "When I was younger," which didn't reference the age. Of course, it was sent back. In the meantime, my glasses came, and I saw it right off. I put the statement back into the text, filled 12 to 21, and went through lickity split.

I'm considering getting the rose-tented ones and trying them. But they cost three times as much.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I bailed on those threads after a few posts. Wasn’t aware previously approved works were subject, just new submissions which in my view would be a lot less problematic.
Thanks for calling me on that.

It would appear someone went in and reported a bunch of older stories - allegedly. If true, that’s pretty shabby behaviour (but only they and Laurel will know for sure).

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

It would appear someone went in and reported a bunch of older stories - allegedly. If true, that’s pretty shabby behaviour (but only they and Laurel will know for sure).

I would call that the nuclear version of uno-bombing...

 

[SomeoneWhoWritesThings]

Wow this thread blew up more than I expected. Just to pick up a few points from earlier posts, because it seems to have derailed from the main topic a touch...

There is one person doing the reviewing, possibly with the help of a few scripts to detect problematic keywords, and like anyone, she apparently has certain grammatical pet peeves that bother her particularly. She reviews well over 100 stories a day most of the time, and cannot therefore be giving most of them a close read. Ergo, she's presumably looking at random samples from most stories, likely focusing on any sections that dinged the keyword search, such as possible underage references.

That seems actually insane. 1 person reviewing that many erotic submissions must make actually reading any of them for pleasure pretty numbing. I had kind of assumed there was a small team of volunteer reviewers, because a site this size really should not fall on one, or even two peoples shoulders.

And as far as I am aware none of the content in the story breeches any of the moral/ethical guidelines here (only technical ones apparently). I'm happy to link the google-doc in a DM if any of you want to have a read of the story in its current state and offer some suggestions. As I suggested in the OP, its a relatively tame office bi-curious encounter. Its a 100% original work that was actually written by myself (no AI involved) years ago, and been tidied, and reviewed a number of times over the years by more than just myself before I even submitted it, so I am struggling to figure out what's tripping it up so much. The grammar / formatting isn't significantly different to my other submission. If anything I would have thought this one would have faired better as the second story has had a lot less review and editing.

Maybe, as you say, it is simply just a few minor things early in the story and its being flagged by the automated tools. I just don't want to keep sending it back every few days with alterations, only for it to get flagged again. Is there a limit on re-submissions?

Some transparency on the actual review process would be interesting to see. What tools are used, what specifically is looked for, etc. But I imagine that may never be fully forthcoming as people can also use that to circumvent the system.

It may be that she simply found a poorly edited section of your work (with regard to whatever pet peeves) and assumed that it was indicative of the whole. She might also be doing something as simple as opening the text in Word or a similar program with most of the grammar flags turned off except for the things that really irk her, and if she scrolls through and sees lots of squiggles sends it back as a matter of course.

That would seem to be logical, there's no way you could read every letter of every submission. Some of them are way too long for that. But that said I do use those tools too, and have most of the grammar, and spelling features enabled to fix all of that, so I don't quite understand it.

The second response literally just says "Please use ending puntuation with your sentences. Thanks!" That is a direct copy and paste from the "Important Message About Your Submission" window and is also, ironically enough, incorrectly spelled. lol And yes I did miss a couple of fully stops (periods) in a few conversational lines, but I have seem dead-tree-edition published novels that write in that manner too, so I cant believe that's all it was?

I'm getting tired of people complaining about a free service she offers to all of us.

Don't know if that comment was vaguely directed at me (and people like me) for starting this thread, but personally I am not complaining about the service, I am just trying to figure out why a submission with some seemingly minor issues got bounced twice.

Its also worth noting that its in no-way clear that this place is run by just two people, or that ALL the reviewing is done by one person. That seems like a pretty super human effort even if some of it is automated. I am exceedingly thankful for the service that is provided. ASSTR used to be the other real choice of a large database of amateur erotica, but it mostly devolved into extreme/legally questionable stuff over the last few years which I imagine is why its now gone away.

I don't think there are any other sites out there with the amount and variety of submissions as this place. It will be a sad day if it ever goes away.

No conspiracies or category prejudices (outside of *maybe* the cats naturally nearest the site's do not cross line seeing due diligence)

"That's not fair" is the path on which only pain lies.

It's tough taking on faith your assertion of minimal grammatical mistakes being the full cause of rejection.

Nothing to do with you, just historically these type threads OPs usually omit some key consideration beyond cut and dry grammar which ends up being the most probable reason for rejection.

As I noted above, as far as I am aware the relatively tame bi-curious content doesn't get anywhere near any of the "do not cross" lines so its got to be purely a technical issue. Again, happy to supply a link to my gdoc where the original file is if you don't believe me.

The "thats not fair" implication was mostly made out of confusion. If there is a standard being applied then I would expect all stories to be held to the same standard, so if there are live stories here which clearly have the same issues that my submissions are being rejected for, then one can only assume a degree of bias somewhere in the system, or maybe the standards are just being tightened.

As for taking it on faith, I can screen shot the actual response I was given if you want, but I posted the actual single bullet point above, with included spelling errors. Both rejections have been for single, and different, grammatical reasons, nothing else. If there's other reasons beyond that, it was not outlined in the rejection message so I cant fix something I'm not being told about.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Don't know if that comment was vaguely directed at me

No, not at all. I can't give specifics, but I seem to come across people complaining about things I consider trivial and I let it build up and, unfortunately, your thread was the trigger.
I'll stand by my support of Laurel and her herculean task, and continue to recommend we mitigate our expectations with the reality of 'it just is what it is.'
From now on, I'll also be more aware that people are free to express their grievances and that this forum is actually a good place to do just that.

 

[StillStunned]

The second response literally just says "Please use ending puntuation with your sentences. Thanks!" That is a direct copy and paste from the "Important Message About Your Submission" window and is also, ironically enough, incorrectly spelled. lol And yes I did miss a couple of fully stops (periods) in a few conversational lines, but I have seem dead-tree-edition published novels that write in that manner too, so I cant believe that's all it was?

For what it's worth, if I was in a position to do anything about it, it's a rule I'd enforce globally as well. How difficult is it to add that final full stop? No, nowadays it's seen as "aggressive". I'll give kids these days aggressive. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

 

[KeithD]

That seems actually insane. 1 person reviewing that many erotic submissions must make actually reading any of them for pleasure pretty numbing. I had kind of assumed there was a small team of volunteer reviewers, because a site this size really should not fall on one, or even two peoples shoulders.

I fully believe there is no submissions editor here except for Laurel.

And I repeat that, although I can see voicing your having submissions problems on the board, I think it's both spitting into the wind and frustrating/irritating to site users to try to engage anyone but Laurel in arguing over submissions issues.

 

[SomeoneWhoWritesThings]

For what it's worth, if I was in a position to do anything about it, it's a rule I'd enforce globally as well. How difficult is it to add that final full stop? No, nowadays it's seen as "aggressive". I'll give kids these days aggressive. I can feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.

I mean if I was writing for a professional publication, or a dissertation, or something, sure. I can definitely be a grammar nazi when it counts. But this is just amateur erotica, and it is by its nature filled with creative interpretations of words and phrases to try and get the emotive subject across to the reader. No one is really reading it expecting the punctuation to be perfect. As long as the content evokes the right visual in the readers mind the outcome is the same.

 

[SomeoneWhoWritesThings]

I fully believe there is no submissions editor here except for Laurel.

And I repeat that, although I can see voicing your having submissions problems on the board, I think it's both spitting into the wind and frustrating/irritating to site users to try to engage anyone but Laurel in arguing over submissions issues.

I see that now, but I still think that the idea of a single person reviewing all that content is insane. She has a super power if that really is the case. Any other site would have a team of staff or trusted volunteers doing it, which would then give them more individual time to be able to interact on a forum like this.

 

[Bamagan]

That seems actually insane. 1 person reviewing that many erotic submissions must make actually reading any of them for pleasure pretty numbing. I had kind of assumed there was a small team of volunteer reviewers, because a site this size really should not fall on one, or even two peoples shoulders.

And as far as I am aware none of the content in the story breeches any of the moral/ethical guidelines here (only technical ones apparently). I'm happy to link the google-doc in a DM if any of you want to have a read of the story in its current state and offer some suggestions. As I suggested in the OP, its a relatively tame office bi-curious encounter. Its a 100% original work that was actually written by myself (no AI involved) years ago, and been tidied, and reviewed a number of times over the years by more than just myself before I even submitted it, so I am struggling to figure out what's tripping it up so much. The grammar / formatting isn't significantly different to my other submission. If anything I would have thought this one would have faired better as the second story has had a lot less review and editing.

Maybe, as you say, it is simply just a few minor things early in the story and its being flagged by the automated tools. I just don't want to keep sending it back every few days with alterations, only for it to get flagged again. Is there a limit on re-submissions?

Some transparency on the actual review process would be interesting to see. What tools are used, what specifically is looked for, etc. But I imagine that may never be fully forthcoming as people can also use that to circumvent the system.


That would seem to be logical, there's no way you could read every letter of every submission. Some of them are way too long for that. But that said I do use those tools too, and have most of the grammar, and spelling features enabled to fix all of that, so I don't quite understand it.

The second response literally just says "Please use ending puntuation with your sentences. Thanks!" That is a direct copy and paste from the "Important Message About Your Submission" window and is also, ironically enough, incorrectly spelled. lol And yes I did miss a couple of fully stops (periods) in a few conversational lines, but I have seem dead-tree-edition published novels that write in that manner too, so I cant believe that's all it was?

With the caveat that this is still speculation, from my own handful of rejection slips, I can say that dialog punctuation seems to be one of Laurel's pet peeves. It might be so irritating that she simply can't force herself to keep reading if it looks like it's habitual on the part of the writer and not merely an oversight here and there. I can empathize with that, since I do some professional editing and some common mistakes set my teeth on edge, at least when they occur often enough in a work that I know it's intentional. And as far as that goes, it really doesn't matter if any other publishers or readers wave it off as inconsequential. She obviously lets a lot of faulty grammar pass review, either by choice or as a consequence of having too much to do, and if she's inflexible about certain rules, that's her prerogative. To analogize: it's generally very annoying to get a speeding ticket, especially if it's for doing 75 in a 70 zone for example, because we've all seen other drivers doing worse and getting away with it, and we just happen to be the one who got caught.

As for content rejection, that's kind of why I think she likely does a keyword search as part of her review process, and probably early on. I got a couple chapters kicked back for content that was not actually present, but at a glance or a keyword search, it could reasonably have been mistaken as underage content. I returned it with an explanatory note, and while it took a long time to fully review, it eventually got passed with no significant edits, which is why I can now say that the content itself was not the issue, merely the perception of it from a skim or other cursory examination.

As far as I know, there is no limit to re-submissions.

 

[Bamagan]

I see that now, but I still think that the idea of a single person reviewing all that content is insane. She has a super power if that really is the case. Any other site would have a team of staff or trusted volunteers doing it, which would then give them more individual time to be able to interact on a forum like this.

Possibly the desire to avoid having to interact on a forum like this is a good reason to not have a staff.
I suppose they may not have anticipated how big and popular their site would become when they started in 25 years ago. Given the longevity of most websites (excluding those devoted to businesses that don't entirely exist online), however, perhaps they're wise to avoid doing what "any other site" would do.

 

[RejectReality]

Punctuation of dialogue has always been the #1 grammar rejection as long as I've been here. For whatever reason, Laurel sees it and bounces it frequently. Double check it any time you get pinged for grammar.

 

[ronde]

With the caveat that this is still speculation, from my own handful of rejection slips, I can say that dialog punctuation seems to be one of Laurel's pet peeves. It might be so irritating that she simply can't force herself to keep reading if it looks like it's habitual on the part of the writer and not merely an oversight here and there. I can empathize with that, since I do some professional editing and some common mistakes set my teeth on edge, at least when they occur often enough in a work that I know it's intentional. And as far as that goes, it really doesn't matter if any other publishers or readers wave it off as inconsequential. She obviously lets a lot of faulty grammar pass review, either by choice or as a consequence of having too much to do, and if she's inflexible about certain rules, that's her prerogative. To analogize: it's generally very annoying to get a speeding ticket, especially if it's for doing 75 in a 70 zone for example, because we've all seen other drivers doing worse and getting away with it, and we just happen to be the one who got caught.

As for content rejection, that's kind of why I think she likely does a keyword search as part of her review process, and probably early on. I got a couple chapters kicked back for content that was not actually present, but at a glance or a keyword search, it could reasonably have been mistaken as underage content. I returned it with an explanatory note, and while it took a long time to fully review, it eventually got passed with no significant edits, which is why I can now say that the content itself was not the issue, merely the perception of it from a skim or other cursory examination.

As far as I know, there is no limit to re-submissions.

I don't think Lauren is particularly inflexible about anything except stories that inject politics into the story. She's just trying to keep up. I moderated a similar site for almost 2 years and it does take a tremendous amount of time if you try to read every story submission. I would imagine Laurel does much the same as I did. You look for "keys" rather than actually reading.

The first paragraph of a story usually told me where the author was headed as far as style and readability. At least once a week I got a first paragraph of over 200 words and sometimes without any punctuation. Either resulted in a story rejection along with an explanation.

Reading the first line of a paragraph or two will also usually flag violations of the site policy. I looked for words like, "seventeen", "didn't want to" because the site didn't allow NC stories, and any other words that said the story was veering into taboo territory. I didn't immediately reject a story for that, but I did read enough to know if my suspicions were correct or not. If they were, the result was a rejection along with an explanation.

I got occasional stories that were basically unreadable because of punctuation or lack thereof, especially from authors who were "trying out" some new form of denoting dialogue. For instance, one thought that "| She said it didn't matter.|" (quotations are mine) wouldn't confuse readers. Multiple typos also were a condition for rejection of a story if they made it difficult for me to read.

Usually I had enough to accept or reject within a few paragraphs, but I still spent 5 minutes or so in reviewing each story and then either rejecting it or putting it into the queue for publication. Laurel published 144 stories today, 12/13/2023. If she spent the 5 minutes on each story that I used to, that's 12 hours assuming she didn't reject any submissions.

I think we should be grateful for what we have and thank Lauren for making it so.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I mean if I was writing for a professional publication, or a dissertation, or something, sure. I can definitely be a grammar nazi when it counts. But this is just amateur erotica, and it is by its nature filled with creative interpretations of words and phrases to try and get the emotive subject across to the reader. No one is really reading it expecting the punctuation to be perfect. As long as the content evokes the right visual in the readers mind the outcome is the same.

Perhaps the attitude that it is "just amateur erotica" is part of the problem. Obviously errors slip through, they slip through in professional journals and dissertations as well, but our goal should still be to put out an error free product. Even if that product is "just amateur erotica".

 

[Kelliezgirl]

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.

Em

That’s cause a droid don’t pull people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. Ems are known to do that.