Low delay in story release - common denominators

[LetsMisBehave]

At the risk of allowing the bots to get better at imitating humans, I was wondering whether it might be worth people sharing whether there are common features to stories which suffer delays and those which don't and whether there are lessons we humans can learn from each other.
Having been in a job where my day would be mixed between things I could make the call very quickly, things where I knew that I needed a cold towel and hours of undisturbed thinking time, and others where I sensed that I was not being given all the facts and had to work out what I needed to ask to elicit them, I can understand how difficult, but not urgent, calls end up in the Bermuda triangle of that's far too difficult ot there is something off.
Thus, as authors, it makes sense for us to ensure that we don't ring alarm bells unnecessarily.
The one bad delay I have suffered was my fault for messing up the numbering in a series. Third time around, this was pointed out. Still, my fault, and I'm not complaining.
Otherwise, they seem to go through in about 2 to 3 days and are mostly cleared for publication within 24 hours. Any additional delay I assume down to not having too many stories published each day
I use Grammarly because some of my earlier stories had weird typos, grammar issues, and punctuation problems. Some still slip through, but fewer than before. I always state that I have used Grammarly and rejected 80-90% of the suggested changes, even if they were arguably no worse or a miniscule improvement. Let's face it, it is one thing standardising internal reports and another thing making dialogue overly formal and stilted. Frankly, a lot of the suggestions are just plain weird. Still, I think explaining that up-front can do no harm.
Second, being UK-based and of a certain age, there are idiosyncratic turns of phrase and vocabulary that come naturally to me, which it would not be profitable for an AI to imitate. The more general point is that having a distinctive authorial voice (even if it cheeses off readers) probably helps get a story through the sniff test.

 

[Britva415]

I'm not going to nay-say this idea—who knows, maybe there is a pattern waiting to be discovered.

And I don't know what to make of the fact that the delete-and-resubmit workaround seems to be effective. It would seem to greatly blur the line between what gets stuck and what doesn't get stuck, because those events both happen to the same material.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

The Writing Group's last two stories were processed within hours of submission. "Swarmed" was approved, "Winnings" was rejected, but accepted on resubmission with an explanation (as covered in this forum message and the rest of the thread.).

We write in text. Formatting is done by manually putting in HTML codes. No Grammarly and no AI.

A human reads all submitted stories and presumably catches most obvious errors.

--Annie

 

[RejectReality]

Dime to a donut it's 90% AI rejections and the rest are getting caught in the submissions glitch.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Dime to a donut it's 90% AI rejections and the rest are getting caught in the submissions glitch.

The glitch isn't universal, that's for sure. I submitted a new story about twelve hours ago and it's scheduled for a release on the 17th. And I know it's been looked at by human eyes, as there was a Note to the Editor asking for a tweak to the Title field length, which has been done.

 

[RejectReality]

The glitch isn't universal, that's for sure. I submitted a new story about twelve hours ago and it's scheduled for a release on the 17th. And I know it's been looked at by human eyes, as there was a Note to the Editor asking for a tweak to the Title field length, which has been done.

I'd be willing to bet the submissions glitch is the same as it's always been. You've got a 1 in 1000 shot of falling into the cracks with any submission. ( random percentage meant to demonstrate it's unlikely ) The timing of the proliferation of these long wait complaints coincided with a significant reduction in the number of complaints about AI rejections. The number of people complaining of a long wait followed by an AI rejection are not statistically insignificant either.

Silk got caught in the submissions glitch for the first time about the same time someone else who comes here did, and they accidentally created a social contagion panic.

Pretty much positive that nothing has changed unless you're using AI for editing or Lit thinks you are, and you're getting bottom-piled.

 

[Britva415]

Pretty much positive that nothing has changed unless you're using AI for editing or Lit thinks you are, and you're getting bottom-piled.

That doesn't explain the many, many instances of people deleting their Pending submission after many weeks (at least 3, often more than 4) who then get very rapid approvals when they re-submit.

 

[RejectReality]

That doesn't explain the many, many instances of people deleting their Pending submission after many weeks (at least 3, often more than 4) who then get very rapid approvals when they re-submit.

What's "Many", and how long of a time period are we talking about? How many of these reports are saying, "Hey, that happened to me three months ago!" That's what happens with the submissions glitch. The odds of falling into the void twice in a row are slim, to say the least, so a resubmit almost always goes through in the normal course of a couple of days.

 

[Britva415]

What's "Many", and how long of a time period are we talking about? How many of these reports are saying, "Hey, that happened to me three months ago!" That's what happens with the submissions glitch. The odds of falling into the void twice in a row are slim, to say the least, so a resubmit almost always goes through in the normal course of a couple of days.

It might be a matter of perception, but you tell me:

Getting bottom-piled looks very different from getting caught by the glitch. We aren't seeing people reporting unresolved 30-day delays which then yield an AI rejection, with or without deletion and resubmission. We are seeing people reporting unresolved 30-day delays which then yield approval and a publish date when they delete and resubmit.

So as far as I can tell, from self-reporting in the AH, the "how many" figure is 100% glitch and 0% AI bottom-piling.

And they aren't about it happening 3 months ago, they're happening now/on an ongoing basis.

 

[RejectReality]

It might be a matter of perception, but you tell me:

Getting bottom-piled looks very different from getting caught by the glitch. We aren't seeing people reporting unresolved 30-day delays which then yield an AI rejection, with or without deletion and resubmission. We are seeing people reporting unresolved 30-day delays which then yield approval and a publish date when they delete and resubmit.

So as far as I can tell, from self-reporting in the AH, the "how many" figure is 100% glitch and 0% AI bottom-piling.

And they aren't about it happening 3 months ago, they're happening now/on an ongoing basis.

https://forum.literotica.com/thread...nd-ai-false-positives.1642446/#post-101676527

Just the most recent one off the top of my head, which had its own thread. It's not at all statistically insignificant.

 

[Britva415]

https://forum.literotica.com/thread...nd-ai-false-positives.1642446/#post-101676527

Just the most recent one off the top of my head, which had its own thread. It's not at all statistically insignificant.

Find me an instance where they deleted (after a long time) and resubmitted and THEN got the AI rejection. That is what I haven't seen.

In this instance, OK, sure, rejection took a long time, and it demonstrates AI bottom-piling (which I never said wasn't happening), but it doesn't demonstrate that you can avoid AI rejections by cutting the line after a long Pending wait without resolution.

Most of the people waiting forever will eventually be rejected for AI.

Clearly not the case. If it were, then, deleting and resubmitting would not work. Quickly or slowly, either way, you'd still get an AI rejection.

The other thing I'm reacting to is your "nothing has changed" statement. Yes, we know this publishing glitch has been around for a long time, and yes, we know that (at least) a couple of prominent authors did recently get caught in it and subsequently raise its visibility, but, the visibility was already rising before that happened and hasn't noticeably risen further as a result of that happening. The reason the visibility was rising, AND probably the reason they got caught in it, has got to be because the frequency of the glitch is in fact rising.

That's different from "nothing has changed." Another thing which has changed is that @Literotica felt compelled to give instructions about what to do in case of "long-ish" (>72 hours) Pending waits. That announcement very conspicuously named "fifteen days" as how long you should wait without doing anything. It also very conspicuously didn't tell you what to do after fifteen days. This community has figured out on our own that the delete/resubmit workaround is effective—for working around the glitch, not for beating AI rejections.

The fact that @Literotica published that statement at all, after what appears anecdotally, based on AH traffic and Tech Support questions, to be an increase in the frequency of authors asking "wtf why long pending" and getting told to "PM @Laurel," is very strongly suggestive that they were noticing it too, and the increase in frequency is real and not just an illusion of anecdote. AND that PMing Laurel isn't how they want anyone to react to it.

 

[RejectReality]

Find me an instance where they deleted (after a long time) and resubmitted and THEN got the AI rejection. That is what I haven't seen.

In this instance, OK, sure, rejection took a long time, and it demonstrates AI bottom-piling (which I never said wasn't happening), but it doesn't demonstrate that you can avoid AI rejections by cutting the line after a long Pending wait without resolution.

What I'm reacting to is your "nothing has changed" statement. Yes, we know this publishing glitch has been around for a long time, and yes, we know that (at least) a couple of prominent authors did recently get caught in it and subsequently raise its visibility, but, the visibility was already rising before that happened and hasn't noticeably risen further as a result of that happening. The reason the visibility was rising, AND probably the reason they got caught in it, has got to be because the frequency of the glitch is in fact rising.

That's different from "nothing has changed." Another thing which has changed is that @Literotica felt compelled to give instructions about what to do in case of "long-ish" (>72 hours) Pending waits. That announcement very conspicuously named "fifteen days" as how long you should wait without doing anything. It also very conspicuously didn't tell you what to do after fifteen days. This community has figured out on our own that the delete/resubmit workaround is effective. The fact that @Literotica published that statement at all, after what appears anecdotally, based on AH traffic and Tech Support questions, to be an increase in the frequency of authors asking "wtf why long pending" and getting told to "PM @Laurel," is very strongly suggestive that the increase in frequency is real and not just an illusion of anecdote.

The reason you're not seeing too many reports of waiting, resubmitting, waiting, and finally getting an AI rejection is because they're still in the second waiting phase, and most of them will give up and never report back because they've moved on.

Laurel started posting those sticky threads in a failed attempt to slow down the fifty-million PMs she was undoubtedly getting every day from people who will eventually get AI rejections, and to cover the bases of reasons people end up waiting because of a mistake THEY made that is out of Lit's hands.

Now, on top of the PMs, she's getting blasted with bug reports as well. Odds are most of them are providing no useful information whatsoever to actually track down the submissions bug, so they're just another onslaught of stuff she has to wade through to get to the queue that's an interminable slog by itself.

 

[Britva415]

The reason you're not seeing too many reports of waiting, resubmitting, waiting, and finally getting an AI rejection is because they're still in the second waiting phase, and most of them will give up and never report back because they've moved on.

If it's happening at all, it isn't "most" of them, it's "all" of them. That seems very unlikely.

And back to my original statement: It doesn't explain why everyone who treats it like the glitch and not like AI bottom-piling gets published pronto after exercising the workaround.

I don't know - maybe you have stumbled upon an exploit. You should submit a bug report if you think AI rejections are being evaded by deleting and resubmitting.

 

[Duleigh]

A human reads all submitted stories and presumably catches most obvious errors.

There's absolutely no evidence to support this. In fact if you read the FAQ, it clearly states that edited stories take longer to publish than new stories because edited stories must be reviewed by a human.
You don't have to be Einstein to figure that new stories are reviewed by a bot and not a person. And no, their system isn't looking for errors, the stories on this site are filled with errors.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

I wrote:

A human reads all submitted stories and presumably catches most obvious errors.

There's absolutely no evidence to support this. In fact if you read the FAQ, it clearly states that edited stories take longer to publish than new stories because edited stories must be reviewed by a human.
You don't have to be Einstein to figure that new stories are reviewed by a bot and not a person. And no, their system isn't looking for errors, the stories on this site are filled with errors.

I meant that before this account submits a story one of the Writing Group reads it at least once and catches the most obvious of errors. Some slip through, but you never see how many get caught. Just today, 10 or so by me.

--Annie

 

[RejectReality]

If it's happening at all, it isn't "most" of them, it's "all" of them. That seems very unlikely.

And back to my original statement: It doesn't explain why everyone who treats it like the glitch and not like AI bottom-piling gets published pronto after exercising the workaround.

I don't know - maybe you have stumbled upon an exploit. You should submit a bug report if you think AI rejections are being evaded by deleting and resubmitting.

Most of them are never reporting at all, because the tiniest sliver of the authors on the site will ever come here. This brouhaha has been bubbling for a couple of weeks. They're barely in the window of possibly getting a final rejection at this point if they resubmitted the moment people started suggesting that at the beginning of this. ( Which I've been doing for YEARS despite the chorus of people squawking that just makes it worse ) Let it get to a month, and anybody who hasn't taken their ball and gone home will be back screaming bloody murder that they waited months only to be rejected for AI.

I've been saying this since long before the current panic started. It's not new. It's a fairly consistent pattern. Here's just the first example I found quickly scrolling through my feed from April. https://forum.literotica.com/threads/story-not-published.1632606/#post-100904899

I'm seeing nothing to indicate the glitch is happening any more often. Maybe that will change in time if more evidence emerges, but nothing in the last couple of weeks is giving me that impression. It just looks like it happened to the "wrong" people this time, and it's getting amplified into a social contagion.

I got caught in the glitch a couple of years back. After five days, I reset it, got published in the normal course of time, and went on with my life.