Story verification times

Evocative, that's very comprehensive. Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts together in a cohesive manner.

Some of your points (auto-publish or a fast-track skim read for trusted members who consistently publish work that needs little to no effort from the moderation team) have been considered and I really like the ideas.

(Moderators already get Premium as a perk, btw.)

Community-level screening and flagging is an excellent idea too, and we've considered this. It's something I'd be keen to offer if we can make it work. You have highlighted one of the pitfalls: people reporting content to eliminate the competition. We do, sadly, have members with axes to grind and some just badger us with report after report. People are triggered on some strange things, so basing decisions on the level of reporting isn't useful if someone has a vendetta or is thin-skinned. Limiting reports and reducing or removing the privilege if the reports don't hold value is a good workaround, but requires additional development and also takes time away from moderators to investigate or respond, so we need to be sure we're not merely swapping one duty for another.

Likewise, levelling-up based on scores and trust works, as long as we're careful. Even without the incentives, we've had authors in the past who gained popularity by exchanging favours or begging for reviews just to increase popularity. If there are other carrots, well, let's just say being popular or buying a high tier account doesn't necessarily mean stories meet our publishing guidelines.

We have the pesky problem of AI-generated content, which authors already swamp the queue with. It's all technically sound and would pass any automatic or pre-screen or skim read checks (because it's programmed to make flawless technical content), but it's lifeless drivel and boring as all fuck to read. In an auto-publish paradigm, anyone who routinely generates this crap and basks in the glory of doing next to nothing, can immediately push it to the site after any rate limits we enforce. The site quality will gradually deteriorate because the stories are essentially plagiarised from millions of others, and the whole site will descend into a soup of mediocrity.

I quite like the idea of trusted yet unmoderated stuff only being available to premium members. Hadn't considered that. The sneak preview angle is neat. Again, we need to be cautious. We're already in the cross hairs of ridiculous government legislation initiatives because of our images and content choices (IF, primarily) and almost no financial institutions will work with us (they prefer funding war, guns and AI to erotica, but that's their moral compass). If we start automatically publishing stuff, we'll potentially get hit even harder if the slightest sniff of controversy occurs. It's, frankly, pathetic when all we're trying to do is help people be happy in this fucked-up excuse for society!

The other fly in the ointment is that all your proposals require development effort. Currently, we have almost none due to various reasons I won't bore you with. Until we are allocated a suitable chunk of development time, we're unfortunately stuck with what we have right now.

We'll definitely take your ideas and cogitate, because there are some fantastic proposals in there that would definitely help the site and its authors. Thank you again for voicing them.

Very informative post , also from evocative, outlining the problems and issues. I find this an eye opener, especially the creeping menace of AI into our lives.sorry to hear about bitchiness.complaints and rivalry. I'm fortunate never to have experienced this but then again I'm not one of the prolific, popular authors. I'm not a threat or competition to anyone. Keep up the great work Mods and thanks.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith

Evocative, that's very comprehensive. Thank you for taking the time to put your thoughts together in a cohesive manner.

Some of your points (auto-publish or a fast-track skim read for trusted members who consistently publish work that needs little to no effort from the moderation team) have been considered and I really like the ideas.

Another here WW, who wants to thank you for taking the time to fully answer Evocative’s comprehensive post. 🙂

Quote by wxt55uk
thank you for taking the time to fully answer Evocative’s comprehensive post.

I didn't reply as comprehensively as I'd like, but I'm at work.

Evocative: what a great example of a post of well thought out suggestions presented in such an intelligent, calm way! Much more helpful to addressing the issue than posting a bitch-fest about verification times. ❤️

Quote by MissVixen

Why can't y'all just ban AI generated stories. I know many colleges are prohibiting AI generated essays and thesis submissions. They seem to be easy to spot.

I run my submissions through QuillBot, but only to check grammer and spelling.

Submitting an AI generated story just seems blah to me. The fun of writing erotica is getting off on my imagination.

They are banned but that won't stop people from trying to submit them.🙄 After all, they keep trying to submit stories that break other rules like age and consent.

Evocative has some great ideas there. Some would be a lot of work for the devs so aren't coming imminently, as WW points out, but definitely something that could be the start of a "roadmap".

Quote by MissVixen
They seem to be easy to spot.

If it only it was that simple. We can tell with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but where do we draw the line? We ask authors to use Grammarly and its friends to spot errors. Those tools - even Microsoft Word with its stupid Copilot - now have "AI" features built-in that rewrite sentences for you, to make your work sound like everyone else.

How can we reasonably turn around and say "don't use any AI features to improve your work" when we've asked you to use such a tool that now oversteps its original station, to bring writing up to scratch from a technical viewpoint?

There's:

• AI-written "A". You type a scenario. It steals shit off the internet and recycles it for you. You keep prompting "carry on" until it's the length you want.

• AI-written "B". You steal an existing work, or supply a prompt, then ask the engine to rewrite it in the style of {some published author}.

• AI-assisted "A". You write a story and pass it through an AI engine to make your work sound more polished.

• AI-assisted "B". You generate a story like in point (1) or (2) but then rewrite or extend parts to make it raunchier than the bot is allowed to generate.

• AI-assisted "C". You write a story and pass it through a grammar checker. It makes suggestions and you keep some or all of them.

Although it's sometimes obvious, it's more hassle than we have time to filter, discuss, reject and potentially piss off authors who have written good work but have picked up AI traits and used them a lot in their writing.

We don't like lazy authors. We want to discourage authors from using AI to generate stories because it's not fair on those of us who work hard on, and love, the craft of writing, and enjoy storytelling.

It's not impossible to spot, and we have a naughty list, but at this stage we're not actively rejecting them. That may change.

When I first started writing I was directed by Lush to use Grammarly to check my work. To be honest i am pretty ignorant about AI. I honestly thought Grammarly was a type of Spellchecker App. My mistakes tend to be misuse of commas. I don't know if it’s a Uk/USA issue. I was always taught not to use a comma with a conjunction which doesn’t seem to be the case with some of the mods. I’ve had a few great chats with some of them about this. I only select Grammarly suggestion for commas, semi-colons, spelling mistakes. I ignore the rest, after all it’s my story to tell. I find this technology chilling and worry about its misuse..

Quote by Shyexhibitionist
I was always taught not to use a comma with a conjunction

At the risk of spinning this thread waaaay further off-topic, that's the problem with rules. They're too rigid and don't capture the nuances of language. I was told the same thing. And never to start a sentence with "And". Or "but" or "because". But I do.

My rough stance: "is the sentence clear with/without the comma or rule? Then leave it the hell alone." I'll only change it if the meaning is ambiguous or the sentence needs it for clarity. Otherwise, who cares?

I get irked if I have some dialogue like this:

"Me too."

And someone changes it to the grammatically correct:

"Me, too."

If I'd wanted my character to have said: "Me {pause} too." I'd have put the comma in myself. But they're saying it fast, and it's speech, so, y'know, it's fine to relax rules. But I know the rules and have chosen to break them. It's different maybe if you're starting out and need to learn them first. That's where the tools come in: a learning aid.

Likewise, I use the Oxford comma if it's needed for clarity, or omit it if it isn't. And I apply the same logic to story submissions. If the sentence is clear without it, that suits me just fine.

My Obsessed competition entry is chock full of sentence fragments. It's a grammatist's nightmare. But my character narrates like that, so that's how I told it. I'd have had words with anyone who sandblasted it for grammaticalness unless their version was clearly better (and I know that sounds terribly arrogant - it's not meant to be). But there's a difference between using fragments for stylistic purposes (knowing they're bad but using them for effect) vs not grasping why they're bad and using them wrongly. We do get a lot of people who don't realise they break narrative flow if used willy-nilly.

Mods do a fantastic job at guiding authors, and love working with people who care about writing. They've caught countless errors I've made and it's always appreciated. I've learned an awful lot from reading other stories, and from Mods' advice (I still do).

The automated tools are there to help authors help us by presenting the best version of their story. But the tools aren't foolproof and sometimes make ridiculous suggestions, so basic knowledge and reading up on the rules and when to apply them can help to know when the tool is being overly prescriptive. Sometimes they contradict themselves!

Thank you everyone for the compliments and for those of you who could provide some extra context into the issues the admin and mod team are running into. If I had the technical or web based developmental skills, I’d lend more of a helping hand. However, I can provide a possible low-tech approach as a proof of concept for the admin team to mull over.

Additionally, I would highly recommend a submission limit to one a week from the last time the user had a story published.

Lightweight Queue Relief & Proof of Concept

1. Premium Sneak Preview (Manual Version)

• Create a hidden forum section or group for Gold/Platinum members.

• When new stories enter the queue, a batch of them (say, 10–20 per day) are posted there as “Sneak Previews.”

• Readers can comment with either “Approve” or “Report. The comment section is where people can leave “Approve,” or some variation of approval. While the “Report,” feature can be used to, well, report guideline issues within the story.

Benefit: No coding needed beyond setting up a private forum. Tests whether readers want to participate in pre-screening.

2. Simple Report Friction

• Require one-sentence justification when flagging a story (even in the forum).

• Mods skim justifications first; if it’s nonsense (“I don’t like this author”), they can ignore without wasting time.

Benefit: Cuts down on spite reports immediately, even before a code-based weighting system exists.

3. Rate Limits on Submissions

• Impose a daily or weekly cap on how many stories one user can submit (especially for Regular/free users).

• Premium tiers may get higher caps, but still with limits.

Benefit: Blunts the AI-drivel flood without needing sophisticated detection.

4. Trusted Author Skim-Read Path

• Identify authors with 10+ cleanly approved stories and fast-track them: one mod skim-read, not full review.

• Track record remains the metric, not popularity or payment tier.

Benefit: Rewards reliable contributors while easing workload.

5. Community Feedback Loop

• Run a 3-month pilot of the Sneak Preview system.

• Collect data:

  • How many stories premium readers “Approve” vs. how many mods later approve.

  • How many stories readers “Reported” vs. mod rejections.

• Use this data to refine thresholds before automating.

Benefit: Provides evidence to justify dev investment later.

Why This Is Feasible Now

• Uses existing site infrastructure (forums, groups, moderator controls).

• Doesn’t replace mods—just gives them signals from trusted readers to triage better.

• Builds a community culture of pre-screening before any automation.

• Can scale later: once dev time is available, swap forum threads for actual upvote/report buttons and trust scores.

This way, Lush can say: “We’re testing community pre-screening right now with Premium members. If it works, we’ll build it into the site more formally.” It’s reversible, low-risk, and buys breathing room for moderators.

You have clearly thought this over very carefully and spent a lot of time on it. The Mods do incredible work here on a voluntary basis. I notice the same names publishing on a very regular basis, not saying there is anything wrong with that, but I think the idea of a week after publication before another submission sounds really reasonable and practical. Other ideas sound good too but I’m not tech-minded enough to know how feasible it is. Thanks for your ideas .

Quote by Evocative

Thank you everyone for the compliments and for those of you who could provide some extra context into the issues the admin and mod team are running into. If I had the technical or web based developmental skills, I’d lend more of a helping hand. However, I can provide a possible low-tech approach as a proof of concept for the admin team to mull over.

Additionally, I would highly recommend a submission limit to one a week from the last time the user had a story published.

Once again I see you have put a lot of thought into this, and having proven gold/Platinum proof readers seems a good idea, actually it is one I mentioned on a different thread a little while ago.

Although, I do not think limiting submissions to one a week is a good idea. In fact I think pushing out story submission times should be only seen as a very short term fix, though it not a fix at all as all you really doing is kicking the can down the road.

Remember there are those who post micro stories, poetry or don’t post for months, then write a story series and will want to post the parts a little quicker than one a week.

We also need to think how memberships are sold, what members join for, restrictions are never a good selling point.

Finally, I for one want to see this site continue to grow. More members. More stories and hopefully with more income. I know from experience getting software written costs a lot, and often when you relying on others you finding yourself in a long queue.

I would suggest 48 hours is a good compromise between story submissions.

The one thing I never really understood and I brought it up in this thread, is why the number of moderator’s has never really increased. Yes, there was explanations, but with 6,000 members, surely the number could be pushed up to nearer 50. Maybe, for that to happen, it has got to be pushed for by the moderator’s themselves. I just don't know. 🙄😊

Quote by Evocative
Why This Is Feasible Now

Well, nearly! The following elements require developer time:

• Create a hidden forum section.

• Batch post there as “Sneak Previews”.

• Readers can comment with "Approve” [comments stay with a story after publication so would need special dispensation if they're not to be displayed post-publication]

• Require one-sentence justification [how would this be enforced?]

• Impose a daily or weekly cap [for the record, I dislike this. I would prefer to limit an individual's submission rate by empowering mods to see how "fast" someone is submitting and/or being rejected or deleting stories etc]

• Identify authors with 10+ cleanly approved stories [needs stats displaying somehow to mods]

• Collect data

Sadly, developer time is limited at present. But I like the idea of a softly softly trial of some of these features if we can swing it.

Sadly, developer time is limited at present. But I like the idea of a softly softly trial of some of these features if we can swing it.

All fair points. The hidden aspect doesn’t even need to be hidden. Maybe a specialized forum like you already have for gold/platinum?

Regardless, it’s clear to me that you, the rest of admin, and mods are working on the issue. I have no doubt you all will push on and better the site in the long run and I’m here for it. I’ll sit with MissVixen in the meantime and enjoy the little things, maybe make a friend or two on here. Or go enjoy the lingering remnants of summer.

Thanks for the insight and for the back and forth, WW. Looking forward to what’s to come.

What an interesting thread this has been A lot of very smart people commenting, I do not include myself in this group! I’m not tech minded. Thanks to all who have joined in. Happy reading and writing. Sadly summer has gone here in Scotland Evocative 😞🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Quote by MissVixen

I know I said practice patience, but can I ask if you accept a story in to your personal queue and can't get to it in a timely manner please put it back into the main queue. Maybe someone else will have time, but if it's in your personal queue that won't happen.

Thanks

That's normal procedure. There are other reasons why we might lock a story though. I wouldn't pay too much attention to it. We do it for queue management. It doesn't always mean much.

You'll get a PM when it's published.

Quote by MissVixen

I know but I just had a story sitting in a moderator's queue for four days. Worse part I was looking at a spelling error and wanted to fix it.

Maybe a PM why it's sitting would be nice.

You can easily edit after it's published if the moderator doesn't catch it.

Unfortunately we're busy enough without adding unnecessary dialogue into the mix.

Quote by Jen

You can easily edit after it's published if the moderator doesn't catch it.

I think the mods are often overwhelmed by the sheer number of stories in the queue (and I sympathize!), and they don't know how long a job will take until they open the story and read the notes to the moderator saying it's a quick fix. Sometimes a mod will be grouchy if an author asks for a quick spelling or punctuation edit, saying that you're clogging up the queue with unimportant busywork, instead of being relieved that it was a job that took less than one minute to complete.

Quote by Chet_Morton
they don't know how long a job will take until they open the story

This is true. It's not immediately obvious whether a resubmission contains a handful of changes or a tonne, and we need to lock it to find out.

I've locked a story before, started it, then got a client have something fall over and I drop everything to get them back online. That can lead to a flurry of changes that may take a few days and I might not even log back into Lush, so I'm not distracted.

Sometimes things just don't go as planned.

Oh who would want to be a Moderator??????

It seems a thankless task and a lot of hassle.

Honestly, I applaud you all 👏

Going into the second week that the 2nd chapter of my story has been "being reviewed". The next chapter is waiting to be submitted. The loss of continuity is disappointing. Has it been placed at the back of the queue?

Quote by Johnnycumlately
Going into the second week that the 2nd chapter of my story has been "being reviewed". The next chapter is waiting to be submitted. The loss of continuity is disappointing. Has it been placed at the back of the queue?

Hi!
If you refer to Phoebe's Big Adventure II, it was submitted on Sept 18. Most TV shows air once a week, and there's no loss of continuity, only greater anticipation.
We will get to it. A little patience, please.

Something I want to share with people is that I used to think story parts needed to be published right away for readers to continue enjoying a series. However, as I've grown wiser (hopefully), I've come to understand a few things:

1. If people are really interested in your story, they will read the next part whenever it is published.

2. Publishing parts too close together can actually be detrimental, as it doesn't give your readers time to catch up. You are likely not the only author they follow, and if you bombard them with too many stories back-to-back, they may become overwhelmed.

3. If people really like to binge stories, they will wait until a few "episodes" are published and read them in one sitting.

It's hard to be patient when you want your story to be published. However, it won't deter members from reading your story once it becomes available. I promise!

Why hasn't my comment/complaint about the pace of reviewing been posted here?

Quote by Johnnycumlately

Why hasn't my comment/complaint about the pace of reviewing been posted here?

I am confused by what you mean. Scroll up, it's there. And Avidly Curious addressed it.

Yes, thanks. I see it now. I find navigating your web site difficult at times. Was it you or me who named me Rooky scribe?

Oops. I meant "I". Don't want to upset the grammarians.

Quote by Johnnycumlately

Yes, thanks. I see it now. I find navigating your web site difficult at times. Was it you or me who named me Rooky scribe?

System generated. You can change it here

Quote by Johnnycumlately

...who named me Rooky scribe?

It's a default rank. You can change it by clicking the Sex Stories Forum link near the top of the page, then click More, then click Forum Settings.

Damn, Jen, you fast!