Story Pending For More Than 30 days? Please Read. (TL;DR report bug)

[Britva415]

It's not possible that story approvals taking longer than 30 days is "by design" or intentional on the part of the site operators.

It IS possible that this problem is of a magnitude which they aren't aware of - even though people who suffer this situation PM and email them a lot. There are others who don't. And Forum complaints about this aren't likely to get anyone's attention, even when we @ Laurel and Manu.

We do know that many authors are experiencing inexcusably long Pending status times, without any approval or rejection. It's also starting to become clear that canceling the publish request and starting over with a whole new publish request seems to be breaking through some kind of a technical logjam, yielding approvals fairly quickly.

If we put half the energy into filing actual bug reports instead of just forum comments, this is a way to communicate the severity of the issue to the site operators. It's not clear whether they appreciate the severity of the issue or not, so, let's not neglect that tool.

How do I report a bug? Use the online bug report form.

 

[SoCalAshley]

It's also starting to become clear that canceling the publish request and starting over with a whole new publish request seems to be breaking through some kind of a technical logjam, yielding approvals fairly quickly.

Do you know this for a fact? All that I've read said that when you resubmit a story, you will be put at the bottom of the queue.

 

[Britva415]

Do you know this for a fact? All that I've read said that when you resubmit a story, you will be put at the bottom of the queue.

Yes, but at least you'll have a new place in the queue and not stay stuck in whatever unmoving state you were stuck in. Nobody's pending for >30 days because they were at the back of the line.

I can't say I know it for a fact but what I do know for a fact is that over the last couple of days there have been many reports of people trying this and seeing it work. This seems to be new, at least in terms of the number of people who tried it and reported their results.

It's not the first time we've ever seen someone say they did this and it worked, but, it seemed like this past week some kind of critical mass of "hey, let's all try this instead of just continuing to wait" was achieved and not only did a bunch of people try it but they also reported their positive results. Approvals in 1-3 days after re-joining the queue at the bottom.

These were all people who had stories stuck in Pending for way, WAY longer than the 72 hours the site operators talked about when they recently (well, in August) addressed their apparently limited perception of this issue.

 

[feel_the_beast]

Do you know this for a fact? All that I've read said that when you resubmit a story, you will be put at the bottom of the queue.

Worked for me, in limbo for 36 days. Resubmitted, published within 36 hours.

 

[RejectReality]

Resubmitting has always worked. This bug is years old, but the odds of falling into that void twice in a row are slim. Maybe it's getting worse now, but 2 x slim is still slim.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/beginning-to-think.1495964/#post-90425374

There's me saying this in 2019, and it was an old bug at that point. I just got tired of fighting the parrot chorus. "Squawk! Leave it alone! Squawk! Resubmitting makes it worse! Squawk! Patience!"

 

[Britva415]

Resubmitting has always worked. This bug is years old, but the odds of falling into that void twice in a row are slim. Maybe it's getting worse now, but 2 x slim is still slim.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/beginning-to-think.1495964/#post-90425374

There's me saying this in 2019, and it was an old bug at that point. I just got tired of fighting the parrot chorus. "Squawk! Leave it alone! Squawk! Resubmitting makes it worse! Squawk! Patience!"

Having a workaround is great.

Reporting the bug and getting it into whatever bug-tracking system they’re using when it happens is also important.

 

[RejectReality]

Having a workaround is great.

Reporting the bug and getting it into whatever bug-tracking system they’re using when it happens is also important.

Thing is, it's a known bug. It's been known for years. The fact that it isn't fixed means Manu can't track down the issue.

Anybody who does make a report, view the submission that's frozen, and take note of the six digit number that's at the end of the URL. That's the unique ID# for that submission. Having that information will be more useful/easy to work with than any other data you could possibly pass along. That number allows a manual lookup of the submission, where all the other data will be there for retrieval.

And don't do it until the submission has been sitting for at least a week. Maybe two if you're new or have been rejected for content/AI. All the squawking about "patience" gets on my nerves because it's delusional to think that anything would be sitting for a month and it's "normal" when damn near everything goes up in 2-3 days, but you do have to give it at least a little time to make sure there isn't something actually delaying things behind the scenes that isn't related to the bug. If they start getting bombarded with reports for stuff that's at 73 hours since submission, it's not going to be helpful, to say the least.

And if you're going to make a report, don't resubmit. You're going to have to make the sacrifice of your story sitting unpublished in order to provide any useful information about the bug. If you resubmit to reset the submission in the queue, any relevant data about the bug is most likely gone. You're probably not going to get a reply to your report, so give it a day or two, and then resubmit. Hopefully Manu will have had time to look at it by then.

 

[Justplainjeff]

It's not possible that story approvals taking longer than 30 days is "by design" or intentional on the part of the site operators.

It IS possible that this problem is of a magnitude which they aren't aware of - even though people who suffer this situation PM and email them a lot. There are others who don't. And Forum complaints about this aren't likely to get anyone's attention, even when we @ Laurel and Manu.

We do know that many authors are experiencing inexcusably long Pending status times, without any approval or rejection. It's also starting to become clear that canceling the publish request and starting over with a whole new publish request seems to be breaking through some kind of a technical logjam, yielding approvals fairly quickly.

If we put half the energy into filing actual bug reports instead of just forum comments, this is a way to communicate the severity of the issue to the site operators. It's not clear whether they appreciate the severity of the issue or not, so, let's not neglect that tool.

How do I report a bug? Use the online bug report form.

My guess is you must have pissed off the wrong person. By any chance could that person be BlackRandl1958? By the way, neither Laurel nor Manu will answer almost every request.

 

[Britva415]

It's been known for years. The fact that it isn't fixed means Manu can't track down the issue

Fill me in: Has either Manu or Laurel ever acknowledged that they know about it?

When you say "it's been known for years" I agree that AH started describing it long ago. That doesn't say anything about what @Literotica knows.

I also know that AH was skeptical about it and told people they had been doing something wrong, and met reports of breaking the logjam by resubmitting with skepticism. They took it as proof that the author had done something wrong the first time.

And last month, @Literotica addressed the whole "Pending more than 72 hours?" matter with a "please read" which basically did exactly the same: It explained several pitfalls which an author could have fallen into, preventing review and approval. Their statement on the matter didn't acknowledge this bug in any way.

"Don't report the bug" is bad advice, regardless of whether they have tried to track it down or not. If people only complain about it in the Forum, and don't treat it like an actual bug with an actual bug report, then, that's no way to motivate a bugfix effort. Even if they did try and fail, that doesn't mean it's unfixable, it just means they weren't motivated to continue at that time.

Emails, PMs, "contact us" form submissions, and Forum posts on this topic are all prone to being ignored, not taken seriously, or not seen at all. A bug tracker entry is different - or, at least, it should be.

It's possible that @Literotica is in fact aware of the severity and frequency of this bug. They've never indicated that they are, and for years, AH has counseled people to just keep waiting, or send a message. I think it's 100% valid to operate as if they are not aware of the frequency and severity of this bug, and use the bug tracker to bring it to their attention. I mean, they're sure acting like it.

If they regard it as "not a bug," they could have said so in the "please read" which they posted last month. If they regard it as "unfixable" but they know about the workaround, they could have said so. Instead, what they said was "DO NOT take the risk of republishing." That really makes it sound like they are unaware.

 

[iwatchus]

The consistency with which DM'ing Laurel seemed to work, just as resubmitting seems to work now, means that Laurel very likely knew what was wrong. It still seems enormously likely that the long term issue was Laurel having a "pile" of stories she felt needed further review for one reason or another. Sometimes, one would get lost for a while and pinging her would force her to find it.

Many of the others were likely user error in one way or another, which is why it was far more prevalent among less experienced authors. Reporting a bug at that point would have been ignored, I would expect. Most of the support teams I have known would have assumed user error and ignored them for higher priority issues.

The rate of stories pending now has suddenly jumped. Massively. For the first time that any can remember, an event ended with stories still pending for that event. I am hesitant to encourage anyone to do anything massive in reaction, like all of sending PMs or a thousand bug reports. That is as likely to make the situation worse as anything.

At times, "Report the bug" is bad advice as well.

 

[Britva415]

if you're going to make a report, don't resubmit. You're going to have to make the sacrifice of your story sitting unpublished in order to provide any useful information about the bug. If you resubmit to reset the submission in the queue, any relevant data about the bug is most likely gone. You're probably not going to get a reply to your report, so give it a day or two, and then resubmit. Hopefully Manu will have had time to look at it by then.

This is great advice.

 

[Britva415]

The consistency with which DM'ing Laurel seemed to work, just as resubmitting seems to work now, means that Laurel very likely knew what was wrong.

I think it's more likely that all those DMs convinced her that the problems were the ones which she put in the "please read" last month.

She probably saw so many occurrences of those pitfalls that it would have been easy to just publish some of the genuine bug cases without stopping to recognize, "hey, this one thing doesn't look like the others."

 

[Britva415]

A standardized bug report on this particular bug should probably include a checklist from the "please read," indicating clearly in the bug report that none of these are impeding publishing:

[✓] This story is showing in my Pending page (I really did submit it)
[✓] It is not in my Drafts page
[✓] It is not in my Sent Back page
[✓] It does not include the word EDIT or EDITED in the title
[✓] The Submitted date is more than 15 days ago
[✓] In those 15 days, I have not altered it and sent it to the back of the queue.

This is the list of issues they spelled out in the "Story pending for more than 72 hours? Please Read." thread last month.

Submitting a bug report showing that one has done due diligence is a way to clearly demonstrate that this isn't one of the many many cases where the delay wasn't due to this bug.

It's obvious that they get messages all the time complaining about a long pending time when the thing wasn't even pending at all or it was sent to the back of the queue by fatfingering the submission form for an already-pending story.

A clear and unambiguous bug report demonstrating due diligence will highlight that there really is a bug and this is an instance of it.

 

[Britva415]

At times, "Report the bug" is bad advice as well.

A bad bug report is always bad.

So let's make good ones:

State what the Submitted date shows in your Pending page.

Do the due diligence and make sure the bug report spells out clearly that the story isn't subject to one of the pitfalls in the checklist above.

Leave the story pending for at least a little while, to give them a chance to see it before you delete it.

Good bug reports like this aren't spam and they aren't useless and they aren't likely to get ignored, like a simple "waiting hella long time plz help" message would be.

 

[Britva415]

My guess is you must have pissed off the wrong person. By any chance could that person be BlackRandl1958? By the way, neither Laurel nor Manu will answer almost every request.

This actually isn't about me at all. I haven't experienced this bug myself. But I'm convinced that it's a bug and not part of some weird vendetta which you personally are clearly embroiled in.

I also didn't say any damn thing at all about expecting Laurel or Manu to communicate, and I certainly didn't say anything about requesting anything from them, so, I don't even know where you got those ideas from. It seems like you're involved in something and projecting it onto others.

 

[Justplainjeff]

I was just offering my perspective. If it doesn't pertain to your situation please disregard.

 

[RejectReality]

Fill me in: Has either Manu or Laurel ever acknowledged that they know about it?

When you say "it's been known for years" I agree that AH started describing it long ago. That doesn't say anything about what @Literotica knows.

I also know that AH was skeptical about it and told people they had been doing something wrong, and met reports of breaking the logjam by resubmitting with skepticism. They took it as proof that the author had done something wrong the first time.

And last month, @Literotica addressed the whole "Pending more than 72 hours?" matter with a "please read" which basically did exactly the same: It explained several pitfalls which an author could have fallen into, preventing review and approval. Their statement on the matter didn't acknowledge this bug in any way.

"Don't report the bug" is bad advice, regardless of whether they have tried to track it down or not. If people only complain about it in the Forum, and don't treat it like an actual bug with an actual bug report, then, that's no way to motivate a bugfix effort. Even if they did try and fail, that doesn't mean it's unfixable, it just means they weren't motivated to continue at that time.

Emails, PMs, "contact us" form submissions, and Forum posts on this topic are all prone to being ignored, not taken seriously, or not seen at all. A bug tracker entry is different - or, at least, it should be.

It's possible that @Literotica is in fact aware of the severity and frequency of this bug. They've never indicated that they are, and for years, AH has counseled people to just keep waiting, or send a message. I think it's 100% valid to operate as if they are not aware of the frequency and severity of this bug, and use the bug tracker to bring it to their attention. I mean, they're sure acting like it.

If they regard it as "not a bug," they could have said so in the "please read" which they posted last month. If they regard it as "unfixable" but they know about the workaround, they could have said so. Instead, what they said was "DO NOT take the risk of republishing." That really makes it sound like they are unaware.

Yes, it's known. Laurel has said it herself. I'll never find the quote, because the search terms are too generic. She said some things didn't appear in her control panel, but she could find them manually if she knew what was missing. From what I recall, she was passing along all the data from those she manually looked up before approving the submissions as well. As far as it being "unfixable" I'm extrapolating that from the fact it still happens. If Manu could figure out what was happening, it would already be fixed.

My guess is that it's being handled the same way stuff on the public side gets handled. Once there's a bug you can't get a handle on, you deal with it as best you can until you roll out the new version that has features the old one doesn't anyway. New, clean code instead of ancient code that's been tweaked so many times that it's held together with spit and baling wire.

 

[Crevele]

I have a series chapter that has been pending for 30 days; an edit for a series chapter that WAS successfully published (late August) also pending for 30 days; another, subsequent, series chapter, pending for 20 days; an updated series description/cover image pending for 24 days. All subject to the same bug? It seems more likely that there is a manual backlog in approval/moderation.

 

[RejectReality]

I have a series chapter that has been pending for 30 days; an edit for a series chapter that WAS successfully published (late August) also pending for 30 days; another, subsequent, series chapter, pending for 20 days; an updated series description/cover image pending for 24 days. All subject to the same bug? It seems more likely that there is a manual backlog in approval/moderation.

A month for the edit of an existing submission is not unusual. Ditto on series modifications or creation. Those are given low priority to keep up with the new submissions.

If the second series chapter you mentioned is in the same series as the first one, then it's not going to get approved before the previous one ( assuming they're numbered ) except by accident.

If I'm right about the second series chapter, you really only have one being affected by the bug. ( Assuming you're not using AI for editing and running afoul of getting bottom-piled for that )

 

[millamomud]

There have been no new publications on the german side of literotica for four days, which is pretty wild.

 

[Britva415]

you really only have one being affected by the bug. ( Assuming you're not using AI for editing and running afoul of getting bottom-piled for that )

Does that get you bottom-piled or does it just get you rejected?

I don't have the impression that inexcusably long pending times has anything to do with AI submissions. There's a whole different complaint about that, and it's not about long pending times, it's just about getting rejected, period.

 

[RejectReality]

Does that get you bottom-piled or does it just get you rejected?

I don't have the impression that inexcusably long pending times has anything to do with AI submissions. There's a whole different complaint about that, and it's not about long pending times, it's just about getting rejected, period.

There's been a fair number of dual complaints about month long wait times followed by an AI rejection. I don't know for certain that's the case, but there's certainly a whiff of it in the air.

 

[iwatchus]

There's been a fair number of dual complaints about month long wait times followed by an AI rejection. I don't know for certain that's the case, but there's certainly a whiff of it in the air.

That was a big portion of the earlier complaints. Does not seem to be the case for the incidents now