Maybe I’m just spoiled, but when I submit a new story to GSS, I get really excited anticipating the reader feedback I’ll receive. So when it takes a day or more for a new story to get approved and appear on the site, it’s an erotic anticlimax for me.
I know the GSS moderation team is busy reading all the stories, but I do wonder if they could maybe just skim through stories by frequent authors before approving them. I think those of us who have contributed, say, 5 or more stories to the site know the rules and norms pretty well–and thus we’re less likely to submit something unsuitable for publication. Just a suggestion!
This has been requested before. It’s a dilemma. I used to skim through stories, especially when I was the only person to approve stories, and that has caused some problematic stuff to get published. To fix that after publishing is always cause for distraught by many people.
But I totally understand your desire to see your story being published ASAP. And my inbox is full of people asking me, when their story will be finally published.
So either we have to get more approvers on board (if you - whoever reads this - feel like that’s something you’d like to do, just write me a PM!) or I’d have to reduce the attention we put into the approval process. What you’re suggesting would be one way. I trust authors, but there’s always a bit of a risk involved, even with the author meaning well.
Let’s see, please vote this up, if you agree with @Hypnothrill
I have definitely felt what you’re saying before, Hypnothrill, wanting to see my story approved quickly so I can hear how people liked what I wrote. It’s rough because the point of expanding the approval team was so that all stories could be read all the way through before posting, but that means that the approval process for any given story is slower and takes more energy. And ultimately, the more detailed approval process was introduced in the first place because a frequent, esteemed author published something that was outside the boundaries of site rules and it had been let through without anyone realising. So although it’d be a nice policy, I’d be worried about the same thing happening again.
I’ve used OpenAI’s ‘Functions’ API a couple times recently and it’s been good at returning structured data that answers specific questions about text. I’d recommend using something like that, rather than freeform query responses, because sometimes it’s a lot of work to get a consistently usable result back.
That said, AI isn’t intelligence – not yet. If you went with AI route, I’d still recommend a ‘report’ button or something to allow people to flag misses for manual review.
I was weary of recommending OpenAI because they are prudes. But that’s for generating text, maybe for analyzing it it’s different.
They have APIs and you just need a key.
Otherwise, maybe there’s software that runs an open source LLM that can provide a “functions” like API to it.
But as Derek says, it’s not really intelligence, it gives the illusion of it. But it can be quite good, as a first defence. I would not rely on it completely at all, but it can certainly be good for flagging and reduce drastically the effort to enforce rules.
Another problem is that using OpenAI would involve sending them our texts, and their idea of privacy is “we promise we’ll look at your stuff only if we feel the need to”. I’d be uncomfortable with that. Also, they strongly aligned their AI and it’s very very moralistic.
I’m skeptic about using language models. If at all, it would have to be a “small language model” that could be installed on a local system. And even then, the system would need to be pretty powerful which means high expenses.
Using a model residing in the cloud is something I’m not comfortable with.
In the end, all our stories are already scanned by language models anyway (all the search engine bots are scanning the sites, and of course, the material is used in language models, whether we like it or not). Still, it’s different to actively send them to a remote server to be analyzed even before they’re published.
I like the idea, but as long as there is no feasible and affordable service available on AWS itself, I don’t see this happening.
Keep an eye out. Already, it is possible to install on AWS a server that can run any of the thousands of hugging face models, including uncensored ones. Soon it may be a viable option.
Practical question, how long does it take most stories to get approved (ignoring the influx around holidays/competitions etc): days, weeks, months?
If it’s days, what is one more day?
Here’s a slightly different idea, how about approvers get their stories bumped up the list (a perk for volunteering your time)? This could help increase the pool of approvers.
Usually between 1-3 days, in rare cases, it can be 4 or 5 days.
We try to approve in the order the stories are put into the queue (the story longest in the queue taking priority), but sometimes approvers skip certain stories that don’t fit their taste, like if there are themes in the story which they’re not comfortable with.
I’ve found that some approvers would do this anyways, honestly—and sometimes without bothering to approve anyone else’s work. It doesn’t happen too often, but I don’t feel great seeing it when it does.
My feeling has always been that if an approver is expediting their own story (or the story of a friend), they should try to clear out the entire queue first of stories waiting on approvals. Yes, it’s a lot of work to read through and approve all the stories in the queue… but it feels like a fair price to pay for deciding exactly when your story (or your friend’s story) gets posted to the site.
(And I’ll note that some approvers do do this already! There’s a few I’ve noticed who are always meticulous about clearing out the queue and approving everyone else’s story before they post one of their own. It feels like a good system to me, because it can motivate approvers to work through the backlog. And then everyone benefits.)
Responding to an earlier thought, I don’t know if # of stories published is a good measure of adherence to the rules. In my experience, the people with the most problematic stories I’ve reviewed have been more prolific than most of the people keeping the rules.
The site seems to me to have a pretty good balance of maintaining standards and providing authors with relatively quick response. It’s kind of remarkable that all this runs more or less on volunteer effort. If there were a paywall or something and the site made money to hire staff, it might be different, but considering it’s free to any reader AND any author and many people commit their time to allow the whole experience to avoid some of the less appealing aspects of an open-to-the-world internet project, I think it’s kind of a marvel that things move as efficiently and relatively smoothly as they do.
One line of thought I’d like bring into the conversation is “publish dates”
Imagine when you submit the story, you (the author) include a release date, let’s say “Jan 10, 20:30”
36 hours later an approver approves it, the story stays where it is. Then on Jan 10, at the given time, your story is released on the button, as intended.
In other words, the story drops when you say so, it’s just a matter of submitting it soon enough before that time for an approver to get to it. Then it waits there, approved, until that time. And if you don’t want that, you could just leave it blank to mean “publish as soon as it’s approved” (like how it is now)
It’d give the author control over when exactly the story goes up, and eliminate the small margins of unknowables such as if approvers are busy, or there is a long queue.
If you’re into that kind of thing you can get your tweets and blogs ready knowing (for certain) when your work is gonna drop.
Not waiting by your emails getting “excitement blue-balls.”
I want to agree, but I’m lucky to get a comment or two when I post a new chapter, and even luckier if I get more than a one or two ratings. I LOVE when folks say nice things about my stories and sometimes they even give helpful suggestions that help be construct the next development - not always, but sometimes. But now it’s gotten to a point where the 24-48 hour wait doesn’t matter anymore because I feel that my material is sort of overlooked or just not good enough for positive attention by abundance. But I still like looking at this meme and be reminded of when I started writing eons ago and I used to get positive comments on a fair rate
I wonder if your series is not just a bit too long. You’ve lost me on the way, I’m afraid. I always look forward to reading your stories, and there’ve been many great stories you’ve written (as the badges on them tell), but that Djjinn series is just not my thing. And I guess that’s true for other readers too…
Ouu, interesting.
I couldn’t agree less? I guess I’ve never looked at it like that.
I absolutely approve my own stories once I publish them. Like, all in the one click, the approval queue doesn’t factor into the process (besides, what am I gonna do, sit around and make another staff member read them as well? when I already know the contents and suitability?) I wouldn’t have imagined that was odd or cynical.
What I would find a bit would be me — or any given approver — clicking submit on their own work, then clearing a very large queue before approving their own story, thus awarding themselves top and centre slot on ‘Home’ page.
My approval “rule” (if I have one) is to never bury other people’s work in big batches, nor gerrymander the sequencing to put myself above other authors. I’d typically approve maybe two or three stories in one sitting, unless one of the stories was my own just approved, in which case mine will be lowest from the top and the other authors get their 12~24~36 hours at/near the top of the page and (importantly,) I’m not rigging it to grab that position for myself.
I would feel especially ashamed of myself if some guy was waiting a day-and-a-half for publication, only to have his stuff approved and immediately beneath 9 other stories, dangling from the bottom of the home page.
Not saying my perspective is correct, It’s just I’ve never “flipped this script” in my head before. Maybe few people care about the publishing order on a given day.
For me it’s just when you publish, you’re story is there forever, but you only get one teeny window to be the 1st,2nd,3rd,4th (etc) most recent publication on the front page of GKS/GSS, and that entire moment is at the whim of how the admin/approver is feeling that day and how many stories they approve in a short spell.
It doesn’t happen too often, but I don’t feel great seeing it when it does.
And then everyone benefits.)
would be me — or any given approver — clicking submit on their own work, then clearing a very large queue before approving their own story, thus awarding themselves top and centre slot on ‘Home’ page.