for your post. Certainly the clearest and most informative post I’ve seen in my years here. A few more like this excellent one could clear up all sorts of questions that seem to come up again and again. Ace mentioned a couple of these questions and I could easily add 3 or 4 more. 
Hi writers!
For clarification and future reference: we do allow characters under the age of 18 in stories. What we don't allow are stories in which characters under the age of 18 are involved in sexual situations. This includes as voyeurs, as the object of a voyeur, masturbation, having sexual thoughts, and so on.
We do allow references to past activity in stories so long as it is not explicit. For example, an adult character referencing his or her history - "I lost my virginity when I was 15" - is fine. Explicit and/or salacious details are not.
These are not new rules nor have our content rules changed in many years.
As far as things slipping through: one thing to realize is that the stories are not approved by a robot or script. They are approved by human eyes, which tire easily as I age.Every story must be formatted; tags, title, and description checked; and skimmed for content issues. The daily update takes hours. If I could find a way to do all this properly with a script, I would. But in the last 12+ years, the only way to do things right is to do it by hand, so to speak.
Mistakes happen. The site has been on a huge growth streak in the past year, with readership & unique visitors up nearly 20%. This means a corresponding growth in submissions. We want to post stories to the site as quickly as possible for you authors. We also want to make sure that the updates are as top-quality as they can be - with a minimum of formatting errors and no forbidden content inadvertently posted. Thorough checking of stories and timely posting is a balance we will continue to work to get right.
I'd like to be able to read every story through, but I can't. Reading 100+ stories/novels a night - much less formatting, tagging, etc. - is just not possible. So, if while skimming I see something that sends up a red flag and further reading doesn't clarify things, I often send it back to the author. If I stopped and read through each novel we receive to check on whether an underage character is sexually active at any point, I would be even further behind than I already am.
When a story is sent back to you for any reason, this is not a final rejection and it is not meant to be taken personally. This just means we have issues or questions. You are free to resubmit either with corrections - or, if you think we're wrong, an explanation of why we're wrong in the NOTES field.
If you believe your story was rejected in error, please open the submission, respond to the rejection in the NOTES field of the submission, and hit SUBMIT. Please do not add the word EDITED to the title, as that denotes someone editing an already approved story. Since we process all edits after the new stories are posted, adding the word EDITED to a title will cause a delay in the posting of your new story. If you are submitting an edit of a rejected story, simply open the rejected form, make the changes in that form, and hit SUBMIT. Do not start a new submission.
If you have any questions, feel free to PM me anytime. PMs are faster than emails.
Thanks everybody, especially those who let me know about this thread - and have a great weekend!
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Hi writers!
As far as things slipping through: one thing to realize is that the stories are not approved by a robot or script.
You know over the years I’ve repeatedly been told that almost all first rejections were done by some ‘bot’.
Mr cut-and-paste, ace, the dumb one, miss stella, even lovergirl all repeatedly spread this misinformation. Every time an author would post a question on the rejection process (usually asking why their story was rejected), one of these so called experts would pontificate on how these ‘bots’ were probably responsible.
Which we now know was a pile of crap. It now appears that these brown-nosers had their heads so far up the palace's rear end that they didn’t know what they were talking about. Which of course doesn’t surprise me. One has to wonder on how many other questions have they been out to lunch on. How much incorrect info they’ve spread over the years.
It’s why I’ve always asked L&M to give us clear answers The two of them could make this site much more enjoyable for all authors if they simply took the few minutes required and post clear statements like the QUEEN’S latest. Hopefully this is the start of a new approach on the palace’s part – if it is it certainly will be appreciated.
