If you are having a lengthy delay in publishing, please add the name of your story and when submitted here.

[Actingup]

I'm confused why you added the disclaimers each time. And you only waited a week (8 days from submission) for the first one.

To be honest, if I was Laurel, I would be reading the story carefully now, checking to see if it had underage characters you were trying to slide by. Let her reject something for that before you try to defend it, unless there really is a problem.

Same for the AI. Unless you know something about your story, why would she have any suspicion of AI? I have no doubt that stories from @Actingup and @MelissaBaby are clean of AI (or underage) and they got caught in the pending.

I'm not surprised that mine got stuck at least briefly, and I think the problem was that some things that were stuck briefly got wedged long term. It seems to be better, if not completely back to where it was earlier this summer. Personally, I'm going to leave mine sit for a long time before resubmitting again. (I have after three weeks, twice).

Yeah, mine was as clean as a whistle, apart from a dodgy 'shared bed' joke and (according to some of the zillion comments received) insufficient justification for the MC not murdering his ex, or allowing her to be murdered through inaction. I had been just at the point of resubmitting again when it was approved after a few weeks in purgatory. At this stage, @IWroteThis, I would suggest just lettings things lie. Read a few books, work on the fitness campaign, check that the house is bear-proof - whatever you need to do as winter/summer approaches. Hopefully the stories will work through the system.

 

[IWroteThis]

I'm confused why you added the disclaimers each time. And you only waited a week (8 days from submission) for the first one.

To be honest, if I was Laurel, I would be reading the story carefully now, checking to see if it had underage characters you were trying to slide by. Let her reject something for that before you try to defend it, unless there really is a problem.

Same for the AI. Unless you know something about your story, why would she have any suspicion of AI? I have no doubt that stories from @Actingup and @MelissaBaby are clean of AI (or underage) and they got caught in the pending.

I'm not surprised that mine got stuck at least briefly, and I think the problem was that some things that were stuck briefly got wedged long term. It seems to be better, if not completely back to where it was earlier this summer. Personally, I'm going to leave mine sit for a long time before resubmitting again. (I have after three weeks, twice).

Well, the last time I had a story get stuck in Pending, I realized that you had to actually do math to figure out the ages of certain characters, so I added a disclaimer. It was then published after the normal delay. While I thought it was apparent that the gym employees were adults, I realized that there was nothing in my story that clearly stated they weren't high school girls, so I added the same notice on ages.

Also, that was still fairly early in the situation, and I wasn't a regular in the forums yet, so I thought waiting a week was reasonable.

As for the AI disclaimer, I added that because I'm a high-functioning Autistic. There is a lot of stuff out there about the failure of AI detection with certain mental conditions and a bit less about ADA compliance issues when making these accusations. So, the specific note was something along the lines of, "This story was written by a high-functioning Autistic, not AI."

Also, the suggestion for resubmitting was 15 days, but I waited 17. It made sense to add the disclaimer since I was resubmitting anyway.

 

[EmilyMiller]

As for the AI disclaimer, I added that because I'm a high-functioning Autistic. There is a lot of stuff out there about the failure of AI detection with certain mental conditions and a bit less about ADA compliance issues when making these accusations. So, the specific note was something along the lines of, "This story was written by a high-functioning Autistic, not AI."

Seriously? I’m L1 ASD and have never been accused of using AI. I kinda object to this - autists are like robots characterization. Not attacking you, but it’s fucking annoying.

 

[IWroteThis]

Seriously? I’m L1 ASD and have never been accused of using AI. I kinda object to this - autists are like robots characterization. Not attacking you, but it’s fucking annoying.

Well, that's it then. The ego has spoken. Never mind the facts that are out there...

It is kind of funny how you mischaracterized what I said so you could claim to be offended by "my" characterization.

 

[Actingup]

Well, that's it then. The ego has spoken. Never mind the facts that are out there...

It is kind of funny how you mischaracterized what I said so you could claim to be offended by "my" characterization.

Em is well able defend herself, but I would argue that she's correctly characterized it as 'fucking annoying' (not your description of it, but the thing itself).

For example:
Recent findings suggest that detection models for artificial intelligence (AI) cannot accurately identify AI-generated text and may exhibit bias against certain minority groups. In the present study, anecdotal claims that autistic writers more often have their work flagged as AI-generated are examined empirically. A corpus of approximately 60,000 Reddit posts split into “likely-autistic” and “general-Reddit” subcorpora is used to compare the distribution of probabilities output by the OpenAI GPT-2 detection model. Differences in textual features between subcorpora are observed and compared to reported features of AI-generated text. Results showed that while less than two-percent of either subcorpus was flagged as AI-generated by the model, significantly more texts from the likely-autistic subcorpus were flagged. Connections between features of text with likely-autistic authors and AI-generated text were not straightforward. The widespread use of AI-detection models with a potential bias against autistic writers in their output prompts ethical scrutiny, and the authors recommend further critical examination of the models themselves as well as their use in academic contexts.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-98420-4_7

...translates to me as 'be really careful in this space'.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Well, that's it then. The ego has spoken. Never mind the facts that are out there...

It is kind of funny how you mischaracterized what I said so you could claim to be offended by "my" characterization.

So, people like us take any criticism ultra-personally, right?

Even when I say, “Not attacking you, but it’s fucking annoying.”

And I can’t view the whole article, but the abstract reeks of a bizarre approach to statistics.

 

[Just4Sheets]

My sympathies!

I can only suggest wholly deleting them and resubmitting. It’s not guaranteed to work, but it’s worth trying as it has helped some people.

That's what I did on 9/25 .. one story did get approved the next day .. but 3 stayed behind.

I guess I could try it again though .. just frustrating.

J4S

 

[John_Q_Dough]

You’re getting stories looked at? I get auto-reject.

 

[Actingup]

You’re getting stories looked at? I get auto-reject.

What message do you get when the stories are rejected?

 

[SyleusSnow]

A little good news: I submitted a story for the Halloween contest and it was reviewed and queued for publication within six hours. Then I noticed a careless mistake in the title so deleted it, did more edits and re-submitted many hours past the deadline. I figured it'd just get added to the mountain of non-contest stories still waiting, but Literotica was kind enough to re-review it within a few hours. It went live as part of contest this morning.

(Thanks so much, Laurel!)

Contest stories get priority, but this indicates they're at least able to review stories quickly. Meanwhile, I've got a story edit that's been pending since Sep 14 (resubmitted Oct 12 and still waiting). Perhaps they can fix all the issues before the Christmas event tsunami.

 

[DEFCOM5]

I know we get very frustrated when our stories get stuck in the pending bug and the silence from the admins can be maddening but they are doing a great job and remember, this site is free.

 

[Just4Sheets]

My sympathies!

I can only suggest wholly deleting them and resubmitting. It’s not guaranteed to work, but it’s worth trying as it has helped some people.

4 stories wholly deleted and then resubmitted

Hope it works! (Trying to stay positive)

J4S

 

[SkyBubble]

Recent findings suggest that detection models for artificial intelligence (AI) cannot accurately identify AI-generated text

But let's rely on one to detect AI.

 

[iwatchus]

But let's rely on one to detect AI.

I am fairly confident that the final say for AI here is not an automated checker. They probably do use an automated checker to raise suspicions, but that is pure speculation on my part.

 

[RejectReality]

I am fairly confident that the final say for AI here is not an automated checker. They probably do use an automated checker to raise suspicions, but that is pure speculation on my part.

Laurel probably overrides a lot of the detections — particularly for tenured and well-known authors. I still say that the overwhelming majority of long publishing delays are because they've been flagged for AI, and Laurel is leaving that flagged section of the queue as lower priority. The moderator notes probably override that, and appear on the dashboard screen, so tenured authors who resubmit with a note get processed quickly. Everybody else sits in the dungeon again or gets rejected for AI.

( Never being rejected for AI ≠ never being flagged for AI. These fucking things think the Constitution and Harry Potter were written by AI because they're unreliable, hallucinating garbage. )

 

[iwatchus]

feLaurel probably overrides a lot of the detections — particularly for tenured and well-known authors. I still say that the overwhelming majority of long publishing delays are because they've been flagged for AI, and Laurel is leaving that flagged section of the queue as lower priority. The moderator notes probably override that, and appear on the dashboard screen, so tenured authors who resubmit with a note get processed quickly. Everybody else sits in the dungeon again or gets rejected for AI.

( Never being rejected for AI ≠ never being flagged for AI. These fucking things think the Constitution and Harry Potter were written by AI because they're unreliable, hallucinating garbage. )

In generalities, I agree with your assumptions. Other than what they use for AI detection. The online AI detectors are essentially useless. They might still sue one, but I think she would quickly decide it was useless. I've read enough student essays (in the thousands) that a handful pop almost immediately as suspicious. I don;t know what I'm seeing, but it doesn't;t take more than a paragraph or two to become suspicious. Laurel has read hundreds of thousands of stories. It has to be much more obvious to her and maybe she put her finger on what was her trigger and Manu wrote a tool to do it. I have some ideas, but I don;t want to speculate in public. For all their failings (and it's more than a few), I suspect Laurel and Manu are practical about works and doesn't. The on-line AI detectors don't. They are no better than a coin toss. Not even a fair one.

 

[Darknight666writer]

Does anyone keep having Publication Dates that have currently PASSED assigned to your pending stories? Then, the story just sits in the Pending area and is never released. The first three chapters of my story were assigned "upcoming" dates at the time and were released on those dates. I have deleted and re-posted the next chapter FOUR times now, and after the first one, have been including an Admin note about the date issue. The latest re-up was yesterday (26th) and the next chapter received a release date of 10-25.

As an aside to the AI-detection talk also going on, I recently submitted an old story that was heavy on Transformation/Corruption tropes to ZeroGPT and it came back as 32% AI-written. I wrote the piece at least 10 years ago, when AI wasn't even a thought in the public consciousness. So, there ya' go regarding the accuracy of those tools.

 

[iwatchus]

Does anyone keep having Publication Dates that have currently PASSED assigned to your pending stories? Then, the story just sits in the Pending area and is never released. The first three chapters of my story were assigned "upcoming" dates at the time and were released on those dates. I have deleted and re-posted the next chapter FOUR times now, and after the first one, have been including an Admin note about the date issue. The latest re-up was yesterday (26th) and the next chapter received a release date of 10-25.

As an aside to the AI-detection talk also going on, I recently submitted an old story that was heavy on Transformation/Corruption tropes to ZeroGPT and it came back as 32% AI-written. I wrote the piece at least 10 years ago, when AI wasn't even a thought in the public consciousness. So, there ya' go regarding the accuracy of those tools.

If you have stories that are a day or more past their publish date still in pending, I would shoot Manu a note.

 

[cw5523729]

Hmmm, so i was ready to post that my streak came to an end when the last of the scheduled parts of my stories was published with no more ready.

And then, in the past 30 minutes, 3 more parts totalling nearly 30k words got approved at the same time.

Yay me, I guess?

 

[cw5523729]

I have no clue as to what makes a difference so all I can do is throw out these details and someone else can speculate:

My story is 160k words, broken up into parts - but length doesn't seem to matter much. Initially the parts were only 2,500 words or so but one of the last 3 is over 10,000 and @Nightaelf reported her story stuck in limbo despite being only 6k words. The added length has not changed the approval rate any.

While my account dates back to 2018, I'm hardly well known and can't even be bothered to make an avatar. So that doesn't seem to make any difference.

I submitted all parts via the copy-and-paste text here mechanism. It was originally created in Google Docs, edited there, and pasted in chunks as discussed above. No HTML as the suggested by the portal. Nothing uploaded.

I only had one human editor, no Grammarly or anything else that could be interpreted as AI.

Native English speaker writing in English - since that's my only language save for a few Spanish swear words. I would say my written English is average so maybe not bot-ish?

Technically the parts approved today were submitted back on 10/15 but that's only because I've submitted a slew of parts totaling 28 over the course of a week. The first part took a couple of days to be approved but after that, they are being approved regularly with future scheduled publication dates, typically done 2 or 3 at a time.

eta: the speed with which the three parts were approved today seems to imply that it's primarily automated (unless they read a hell of a lot faster than I do) but I also can't rule out that they were gone through over a longer time frame and only approved all at once since the last batch was approved toward the end of last week sometime.

2nd eta: I forgot to add that it's in the BDSM category. Maybe categories like INCEST get closer scrutiny?

 

[KaceyLoveington]

It's been 6+weeks since I have had various stories or chapters submitted and just sitting in pending. Multiple long spells(3weeks being the most) before I deleted and re-submitted them. Haven't been able to get a single thing published, or even sent back.

It leaves you questioning what the issue is with your submission. Is it because it's 18-25K words and they don't have the time right now to check it? Is it because it's a Word Document file?

I thought it might be the whole file upload thing, so I went to try and sit down and paste it, and format it in the story text box, but you then can't then have italics and bold writing. So that option is out for me.

Also, during this 6 week period, I have seen the same author, in the category I write in, have their 1.2K word chapters being published every few days. They've had over 10 published chapters in the same time I haven't had anything I have submitted leave pending status.


I have 2 stories right now pending, 3 in my draft folder. And I easily have a dozen more I could upload...Should I just upload and submit them all? Would that increase my odds of one of them leaving this pending purgatory? Or will it just make more of a mess and slow things down even further?

 

[cw5523729]

I thought it might be the whole file upload thing, so I went to try and sit down and paste it, and format it in the story text box, but you then can't then have italics and bold writing. So that option is out for me.

Yeah, that part does suck. I even lost my tab indents on sentences but I didn't want to screw around with whatever was working.

 

[iwatchus]

I thought it might be the whole file upload thing, so I went to try and sit down and paste it, and format it in the story text box, but you then can't then have italics and bold writing. So that option is out for me.

If you use the text box, you have to manually insert the html tags, but that's pretty straightforward. @FrancesScott how to on formatting (here) explains it nicely.

 

[KaceyLoveington]

If you use the text box, you have to manually insert the html tags, but that's pretty straightforward. @FrancesScott how to on formatting (here) explains it nicely.

Thank you for sharing that, had no idea that was a thing. Might have to resort to using that if I don't have any luck soon!

 

[Es_Orik_]

Has anyone’s story ever been published after noticing the change of submission date?

Whenever that happens to me, my story just sits in pending hell.