What is going on with Approval?

[Murakami]

I have been trying to get through the second chapter of my story for over a week., It was sent back 3 times by automated messages about there being an external link (there is not), and now it's been sitting in pending with nothing happening for over a week. I have sent site staff messages asking what is going on, and there is a note in the story as well. I am receiving no response form site staff, and I am receiving comments on the first chapter repeatedly asking where the next one is in anticipatory tones.

I have reached the point of commenting myself that I keep submitting and nothing is happening. I have already written the next 3 chapters in drafts, it's taking so long. What is going on, and what can I do? If this continues I may have to abandon the site for non-responsiveness.

 

[Devils_Erotic_Angel]

Approval is taking longer.

Approval is taking much longer. I'm not sure why that is, but what usually was a four or five day process has now turned into 10-12 days or longer. Then to add to the pain of it all, my last story was denied because I asked to have it added to a series, but titled it in an "unaccepted format."

Hopefully, round two won't take as long to approve.

Also, I still can't message readers as to why there is a delay in posting the next story. Hopefully, the bugs of this new system will be worked out soon and things will return to normal.

 

[Murakami]

Was there a sudden system change? This is literally the second submission I have ever made to the site and I was not aware of anything going on.

 

[jaF0]

My last two went up in about 48 hours.

Once you get one sent back or you edit one that's been pending, there is a different clock. That can take a while.

Anything that even resembles a link could have triggered something. Look closely.


What exactly was the message?

 

[jaF0]

but titled it in an "unaccepted format."

What format were you trying for?

Also, I still can't message readers as to why there is a delay in posting the next story.

You should NOT be able to spam other members. There is something about 'news' though that might still be in the works.

 

[NotWise]

Most questions about story submissions and the acceptance process are better asked in the Author's Hangout. This forum is more about the technical operations of the site.

 

[Devils_Erotic_Angel]

What format were you trying for?

You should NOT be able to spam other members. There is something about 'news' though that might still be in the works.

Answer #1: It wasn't an official format, but I must not have had the title listed the way that is now accepted. In history, I've added my request to add a story as the next part of a series in the comments section of my submission. This time, it was rejected and the following notice was sent:

Hello! Currently, series are created by an automated script. This means that in order for stories to be listed together as a series, they must have a common title - i.e. "STORYTITLE Ch. 01, STORYTITLE Ch. 02, etc." or "STORYTITLE: SUBTITLE, STORYTITLE: ANOTHER SUBTITLE, etc.". If you want stories to be grouped, you must title them as so. Please let me know if you want to keep the titles as is, or change them so that they will group as a series. In the future, authors will be able to make series manually regardless of title. Thank you for your patience!

Answer #2: I don't believe what I was doing would be considered "spam". Often, in history, readers message me or when they are listed on my author's page as favoring my story or me as an author, I message them a thank you. If they send me a comment and it requires a response, I often respond. I don't think that falls into the spam category.

I'm getting the same "this message cannot be sent" that others have mentioned on another thread. Manu fixed it once, but it's returned.

***This may not be the proper thread to reply on, but since this is where the questions initiated, I decided to answer them here.

 

[m_storyman_x]

submissions seem to be going into the bit bucket

I have tried several times to submit a chapter 2 of "a question of love", and each time it says it's accepted but it never shows as being pending and nothing happens. I can't resubmit it with the correct title, because it says one is already submitted with that tittle. (....CH 02) yet in my works it doesn't show up and it doesn't show as pending. Clearly there is something wrong with the process here. It's never making it through the system.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

I've got two in 'Pending'
One of them has a date showing of 06/09/2021 which I suppose means 09/06/2021 in English.
I thought the date was when it was submitted, so either it isn't and if anyone can tell me what it is then I'd be grateful, or the system is truly snookered and thinks tomorrow is four days ago.
Has someone been writing SF Time travel based stories? Have they infected the core? are we going to be consumed in an anomaly?

 

[jaF0]

Since today is 6/8, it should go up sometime after midnight tonight.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

Since today is 6/8, it should go up sometime after midnight tonight.

That's good to know, my over fertile imagination had Arnold Schwarzenegger coming to get me to kill my as yet not conceived child.

 

[Arsenique]

Pending status quirks

I've got two in 'Pending'
One of them has a date showing of 06/09/2021 which I suppose means 09/06/2021 in English.
I thought the date was when it was submitted, so either it isn't and if anyone can tell me what it is then I'd be grateful, or the system is truly snookered and thinks tomorrow is four days ago.
Has someone been writing SF Time travel based stories? Have they infected the core? are we going to be consumed in an anomaly?

In my experience, when I've submitted a new chapter for my story, it sits in the pending category until it is approved. If I click on its "Pending" link in my Works page, it initially just has a little grey Pending note under it, but when I check back a day or two later, that has changed to a date which I take to mean that it has been approved and is now in the queue to be posted on the date shown.

I've not experienced long delays in approval, though there have been a few times that it took 4-5 days, as I recall. Usually it takes 2-3 days to go up, at least for me. I have great sympathy (but no advice) for you authors who are experiencing these long delays or even limbo status. That's tough.

 

[MadeleineSinha]

In my experience, when I've submitted a new chapter for my story, it sits in the pending category until it is approved. If I click on its "Pending" link in my Works page, it initially just has a little grey Pending note under it, but when I check back a day or two later, that has changed to a date which I take to mean that it has been approved and is now in the queue to be posted on the date shown.

I've not experienced long delays in approval, though there have been a few times that it took 4-5 days, as I recall. Usually it takes 2-3 days to go up, at least for me. I have great sympathy (but no advice) for you authors who are experiencing these long delays or even limbo status. That's tough.

I'm still quite new round here so haven't been able to get any expectations of timescale.
My only experience of published fiction beyond here, apart from my sports writing for local newspapers in the UK which often bears little resemblance to the actual game, is trying to get a couple of novels published, which so far has taken six months and no such luck.
I hope I'm not being too judgemental here but....
I find the hissy fit the OP has indulged in here and in the Author's Hangout a bit precious, it's a free to use site, what do they expect? It's not as if any of us are Hilary Mantel, we're not even E L James.
I'm of the view that three weeks in and fifty thousand words published is pretty damn good. If people are so convinced their work is that good then try doing it commercially, otherwise be a hobbyist with the rest of us and accept the limitations that go with that.

 

[Arsenique]

A bit of context

I'm still quite new round here so haven't been able to get any expectations of timescale.
My only experience of published fiction beyond here, apart from my sports writing for local newspapers in the UK which often bears little resemblance to the actual game, is trying to get a couple of novels published, which so far has taken six months and no such luck.
I hope I'm not being too judgemental here but....
[...]
it's a free to use site, what do they expect? It's not as if any of us are Hilary Mantel, we're not even E L James.
I'm of the view that three weeks in and fifty thousand words published is pretty damn good. If people are so convinced their work is that good then try doing it commercially, otherwise be a hobbyist with the rest of us and accept the limitations that go with that.

If you just joined in May, perhaps you are lacking the full context to understand why a good number of authors have been so frustrated.

As I understand it, the owners of this site have been working on a new more mobile-friendly code for the site which has been in Beta testing status for quite some time. Near the end of April, they decided to have the Beta code be the default code for everyone. Unfortunately, the process of doing that, inadvertently knocked the site's security shield out of action for a few days, seemingly making Lit vulnerable to various troll bots which proceeded to scrape away many authors' highest rating votes, knocking their point averages down a notch or two.

Although the site was restored through backups, the process of trying to restore point averages and clean troll votes out has been somewhat hit & miss. Also affected were many site code algorithms for what had been predictable functions, which are now working for some authors and not for others.

So, many authors (and there are more very good writers here than you may be aware of) have been understandably distressed that their stories, which they worked hard on and which had had "Hot" scores built up over time, suddenly were decremented and the new scores did not actually reflect the historic voting averages.

Yes, Lit is "free to use", but that is a two-way street. Authors may not have to pay to submit their stories, but they did have the understandable expectation that rating averages (which are a kind of reward for good popular writing) would be maintained accurately. After all, Lit gets to use the stories submitted as a form of attraction to the site, which can then make $ from many users via the cam models, toy-shop, and other services.

If you haven't already, you might want to check out the Site News & Tech Support wing of the Discussion Board to gain greater insights into the chaos attending the switch to the Beta code. It's getting better, things are still in flux.

And on that note, I think I shall bow out of this discussion thread. I'm sure that if there are any inaccuracies in my summary above, some other members will be happy to point them out or correct them.

 

[Arsenique]

One correction on my summary. Just scrolling down in this Lit Tech Support forum will get you to the many threads trying to troubleshoot and/or explain what has been going on. My memory was incorrect that there are currently explanations in the Site News & Tech Support wing of the DB.