The Problem with Literotica

[SamanthaBehgs]

The reason this objection doesn't work is that Laurel maintains the same ability to take down violating stories. Sure, it might be up for a few hours, but why bother knowing that it will only result in losing their TA status? There could be other limits in place, like requiring 24 hours between new stories, which would give any given violating story time to be discovered and taken down. I think the benefits would vastly outweigh these costs.

I'd think the same if it wasn't for all the porn that is snuck into games on places like Roblox for seemingly no other purpose than to surprise and expose unsuspecting children with/to the content. All for, what? The LOLz I guess. Their account gets banned and then, they just...make another. For some, that's just how they get their jollies.

 

[Bamagan]

The only sustainable solution I could think of is either:

• Pass daily control of the site on to a trusted group of people, Willy Wonka style, and hope that the inheritors maintain the general philosophy and business model of the site going forward.

Oh, shit, I think this has to be written now. I hope @Manu will forgive being cast as all the Oompa-Loompas.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Oh, shit, I think this has to be written now. I hope Manu will forgive being cast as all the Oompa-Loompas.

Is the glass elevator going to be a glass dildo instead? And I can't WAIT to find out the use of the everlasting gobstopper.

 

[SoCalAshley]

I posted this in Em’s “If you are having a lengthy delay in publishing...” thread, but since you started another thread, below is my theory:

I have another theory, and if you are a longtime writer, hear me out before you debunk it. What if Literotica changed the way stories are approved without telling us? What if 100% of the stories are never read by anyone, and they are sorted through a program that checks the story for AI, plagiarism, and other factors predetermined by the owners of the website? If the story passes, it can be published in a matter of hours (unless a backlog exists). If the story fails for whatever reason, it goes into a pending status. What happens next is pure speculation, but I suspect that these stories need to be read and approved by an actual human, and the backlog of pending stories has gotten to the point where it now takes weeks to get a flagged story approved.

This theory explains why some stories are published so quickly (no matter how long the story is or who the author is) and some stories (written by longtime authors who never had a story rejected) are left pending for weeks.

 

[Bamagan]

Is the glass elevator going to be a glass dildo instead? And I can't WAIT to find out the use of the everlasting gobstopper.

I'm not sure yet. So far all I've got is someone saying, "@ElectricBlue , you're turning... electric blue!"

 

[SimonDoom]

The reall issue is communication. We're all just floundering around in the dark taking wild guesses, which is a little frustrating.

Even if they said something short and
Vague like, " we are aware of your concerns about approval times, rest assured we are working on them" it would help.

 

[MythicMind]

I'd think the same if it wasn't for all the porn that is snuck into games on places like Roblox for seemingly no other purpose than to surprise and expose unsuspecting children with/to the content. All for, what? The LOLz I guess. Their account gets banned and then, they just...make another. For some, that's just how they get their jollies.

Not if they have to publish 10 stories first. That's a lot of time and work for LOLz

I was also thinking that they could have a Super Author status, which you might get after 25 stories, who could instantly kick blatantly offending stories into pending mode for manual review.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Not if they have to publish 10 stories first. That's a lot of time and work for LOLz

Is it, though? Would they require that they were stories and not poems? Would they have to be more than 750 words? Do they have to be *good* stories?

 

[Dark_Logan_]

Even if they said something short and
Vague like, " we are aware of your concerns about approval times, rest assured we are working on them" it would help.

This…just this

A simple acknowledgment would stop all the speculation, wild theory’s, and illogical assumptions, not to mention the building malice

Silence isn’t always golden

 

[Rob_Royale]

I get it that things break down, have glitches. Screw up and basically bog down the whole system.
My beef is that our webmasters/site owners have been entirely mum on the subject or any other. Their lack of communication is maddening and frankly quite rude. This site means an awful lot to a whole lot of people and it seems like they don't even care.

 

[Britva415]

Imagine if we had confirmation from Laurel that there's a random, unpredictable glitch that can affect submissions. Imagine if she at least worked around the problem by sending us an automatic notification, something similar to what already exists - the rejection notifications.

Such a notification could simply let us know "Your story has been flagged for something and is awaiting human moderation." In the absence of approval or such a notification within, say, 24-48 hours, we would then know for sure that our story was affected by the glitch and that we should resubmit rather than wait three weeks before attempting it.

They want us to wait 2 weeks.

They didn't say what to do after the 2 weeks, but they didn't say not to do the delete-and-resubmit workaround, so, that to me is as good as approving of it. They know it's happening.

Basically I'm just saying, even if there were a notification like you're talking about, it wouldn't necessarily save anyone's story. 2 weeks is what I consider to be the recommended minimum time before resetting. If you do it too early, you might just be going to the back of the line unnecessarily.

How soon were you thinking about resubmitting after getting that notification, hypothetically?

 

[SimonDoom]

I tend to be optimistic to a fault about these sorts of things, but the fact that the issue is so glaring and yet the silence so persistent makes me worry that something might be going on that has nothing to do with a glitch. it might be a personal or health concern, something they don't want to tell us about (yet). I truly hope that is not the case. But the possibility makes me step back before getting too judgmental or critical. We're still seeing about 175 stories get published every day, and that's a lot, and it means the job is getting done, even if not as fast as we'd like.

 

[Britva415]

I know how frustrating it can be when you can't even reply to comments on your own story without waiting for moderation, which could take full 24 hours even before this crisis. God only knows how long it takes now.

Have story comments also been "permanently pending moderation" lately? Or taking longer than 24 hours? I hadn't heard that there was anything out of the ordinary there, just with story moderation.

 

[Britva415]

You are assuming that a notification (which would have be hard coded) into an already buggy cms would perform correctly, i.e. locating stories that are in pending purgatory and notifying those authors.

I think they were saying to just send that notification to everyone whose story crossed whatever the automated review-queue status was, and if it didn't ever get published after you got that notification, then you'd somehow know "it has been too long" and you'd somehow pull it and resubmit it in order to take advantage of the work-around - and somehow you'd be able to do that without waiting 2 weeks because you'd somehow know it was stuck. It really sounded to me like they meant you could wait a shorter time if you at least had the notification. It didn't make sense to me so I don't know if I have any of this right.

 

[MythicMind]

Not if they have to publish 10 stories first. That's a lot of time and work for LOLz

Is it, though? Would they require that they were stories and not poems? Would they have to be more than 750 words? Do they have to be *good* stories?

Depends on what you mean by "good". Maybe they need a minimum average of 4.0. Do you really believe any significant number of trolls would put in enough work to publish 10 stories that average 4.0 just so they can publish a single LULz story that might stay up a couple of hours, after which they would lose TA status and maybe even banned if the violation was egregious enough? I think that's a stretch. But perhaps you genuinely believe that the site would be overrun with trolls who would absolutely put in weeks of work for such a tiny reward. Fine...make it 20 stories with a minimum average of 4.3. The higher the standard the fewer the TAs they would have, making the effort beside the point, which is to take work off of Lauren's plate so normal pending stories can get published faster.

 

[Britva415]

I have another theory [...] the backlog of pending stories has gotten to the point where it now takes weeks to get a flagged story approved.

This theory explains why some stories are published so quickly (no matter how long the story is or who the author is) and some stories (written by longtime authors who never had a story rejected) are left pending for weeks.

Nah, there are at least 3 clues against that:

1, there are stories which enter that backlog and do get published timely. I'm not talking about the ones which seem to be approved automatically - I'm talking about the ones which get published in anything from 48 to 96 hours. Sometimes authors see the "submitted" date change, I imagine that that's due to this second queue you're talking about. I do think that it's real, I just don't think that the queue itself is weeks and weeks slow.

2, it doesn't explain how there are stories which never get published or rejected, no matter how many weeks the author waits. If it were true that one of these was still in any kind of an actual queue, then there would either be progress at some point, or else everyone in the queue would be waiting that long. This clearly isn't the case.

3, it doesn't explain why the delete-resubmit workaround would work - apparently with @Literotica's blessing.

 

[SimonDoom]

I sent them a message. They've usually been responsive, so we'll see.

 

[SamanthaBehgs]

Depends on what you mean by "good". Maybe they need a minimum average of 4.0. Do you really believe any significant number of trolls would put in enough work to publish 10 stories that average 4.0 just so they can publish a single LULz story that might stay up a couple of hours, after which they would lose TA status and maybe even banned if the violation was egregious enough? I think that's a stretch. But perhaps you genuinely believe that the site would be overrun with trolls who would absolutely put in weeks of work for such a tiny reward. Fine...make it 20 stories with a minimum average of 4.3. The higher the standard the fewer the TAs they would have, making the effort beside the point, which is to take work off of Lauren's plate so normal pending stories can get published faster.

If I didn't know how many hours it takes to make a roblox game and how often this happened, I'd totally agree with you. Actually, I *do* agree with you. That behavior makes no sense to a rational person. I've just watched it exist elsewhere so I worry it would exist here. And it's just that, a worry that is hypothetical unless it becomes a reality.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I'm not sure there's any rhyme or reason we can deduce from this side. Glitches could be happening because of something like "this story has an even number of instances of the singular letter A" where all the stories with an odd count fly through. Or the opposite. Or both. Or neither. Those stories might not even be pending. Sure, they might show pending on our side, but they might be gone completely from the site's end of things.

I'm not trying to be defeatist or antagonistic. I just recognize that there is an entire universe of possibilities, and choose to spend my energy on other things.

I've said it before and I'll say it again; the lack of communication is regrettable.

 

[Katie_Mae]

The reall issue is communication. We're all just floundering around in the dark taking wild guesses, which is a little frustrating.

Communication is so important.
I was eight months into work on an illustrated story when lit banned erotic art.
I was so mad, not so much because of the ban, but because of the way they communicated and the reason they gave. If they'd said the real reason from the get go, then I would have absolutely understood. Honest and open communication go a long way.

But also, Lit wasn't impacted by me being mad. If they're not the ones impacted by their poor communication, then it's less important to them than us.

Depends on what you mean by "good". Maybe they need a minimum average of 4.0. Do you really believe any significant number of trolls would put in enough work to publish 10 stories that average 4.0 just so they can publish a single LULz story that might stay up a couple of hours, after which they would lose TA status and maybe even banned if the violation was egregious enough? I think that's a stretch. But perhaps you genuinely believe that the site would be overrun with trolls who would absolutely put in weeks of work for such a tiny reward. Fine...make it 20 stories with a minimum average of 4.3. The higher the standard the fewer the TAs they would have, making the effort beside the point, which is to take work off of Lauren's plate so normal pending stories can get published faster.

I found an unfinished first draft languishing in a file. I decided I couldn't really be bothered finishing it, but some people might appreciate some of the ideas I had. I slapped a hurried ending on it and posted it as-is. It's spent most of it's life at a 4.7
A score has little relation to quality. Different categories also score differently. a 4.5 is almost guaranteed in some while hard in others. If you write a series, most people who score chapters other than the first few are those who actually like your story, that's why they're reading it. This is why later chapters tend to have higher scores than earlier ones.

Then you have the reason why people break rules. A lot of posts I see asking for help is because they made a genuine mistake. eg I'm sure I recall an author posting that they posted a story about a 19-year-old and at one point in the story made a typo and write "7" instead of "9" and boom! Accidental underage.

At any rate, speculation on if this will work is not much use, Laurel runs lit the way she does it, and we have very little input. It's not a democracy.

 

[MythicMind]

If I didn't know how many hours it takes to make a roblox game and how often this happened, I'd totally agree with you. Actually, I *do* agree with you. That behavior makes no sense to a rational person. I've just watched it exist elsewhere so I worry it would exist here. And it's just that, a worry that is hypothetical unless it becomes a reality.

The difference is that this isn't Roblox with a large child population, where troll interactions are immediate and seen by many. The context is very different here.

 

[MythicMind]

At any rate, speculation on if this will work is not much use, Laurel runs lit the way she does it, and we have very little input. It's not a democracy.

True, but if it is indeed the case that Laurel is slowing down and is getting overwhelmed by the work, at some point there will need to be a solution. No reason not to develop some ideas for her to choose from.

 

[SmilingLez]

I think they were saying to just send that notification to everyone whose story crossed whatever the automated review-queue status was, and if it didn't ever get published after you got that notification, then you'd somehow know "it has been too long" and you'd somehow pull it and resubmit it in order to take advantage of the work-around - and somehow you'd be able to do that without waiting 2 weeks because you'd somehow know it was stuck. It really sounded to me like they meant you could wait a shorter time if you at least had the notification. It didn't make sense to me so I don't know if I have any of this right.

If there is indeed a black hole in the pending queue where some stories / poetry remain there would be no way for the system to know to send out a notification. I am currently 18 days in pending purgatory

 

[IWroteThis]

Do you mean a status that isn't "pending," "published," or "sent back," but instead also includes "needs additional review" or something like that?

Yes, that was basically what I understood the original suggestion to entail, although they said notice rather than status. Either way, I took the point to be that submitters would be able to somewhat reliably tell the difference between a story stuck due to a bug and one stuck due to a potential issue that is waiting to be reviewed.

 

[Britva415]

there would be no way for the system to know to send out a notification

I still don't think this follows from what @AwkwardlySet was trying to say, but I should just let him speak for himself.