Comments aren't moderated for content, but for html (spam) links. There appears to be regular (?) word scan, after comments are posted, that looks for hate content; plus comments can be reported and purged. And of course, authors can delete any comment on their stories.
Age doesn't render something irrelevant.
It's surprising how many people think, when a story gets rejected, that there's a personal issue involved; but when it all gets unravelled, either there's been some technical cock up, or it transpires the author was in fact doing something wrong. The issues are always variations on the same things - which is why the site has a set of generic rejection notices - one of the reasons I think a first pass is done by a machine.
Word filtering is notoriously difficult to fine tune. If an automated tool had been put in place to screen stories prior to Laurel seeing them, we would have known. The puzzling rejections would have gone through the roof. There would have been no missing it.
You realize this was months ago? Also, the story in question was my story number 17 at the time if I am not mistaken, and there was nothing different in it compared to my previous stories. It got rejected after 8 days pending. I've pm-ed with Laurel and did some minor changes that were never a problem in my previous stories and then the story got published. I can only guess it was software showing some non existent red flag and then Laurel rejecting it after a long delay, maybe due to some contest clogs etc; maybe she simply didn't have the time to check it properly. But also maybe it was some other reason. Many people here state some things confidently, things about how the website works, how the story approval process works, how much work it is, how little the website earns, how much it exists only due to enthusiasm of two people and so on. After these several months I've spent publishing stories and posting on AH, there is only one thing I can be certain of: Nobody here knows jack shit how anything works. There are just assumptions and wild guesses.
I do not doubt what you are saying,my point was that trotting out a forum post from 23 years ago as proof of what the current status is, isnt exactly cast iron proof.
Okay, I missed that. It doesn't change my comment though - you thought the site had a beef against you personally, when it didn't - you're not the first to think that, you won't be the last.
Once again, you are sure of something you can't possible be sure of. Whether the site or some moderator had a beef with me or not is not something any among us can know with certainty - It would require us actually knowing how things work to make such confident statements. As I said, we don't know anything. (Jon Snow
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