Once in a while I have to post something unfunny and since i'm currently dying of tree exposure (can anyone say 'allergen'?) now seemed like a fine time.

I promise to be extra funny next time :)

Recently, I've seen a lot of questions to the trouble tickets and on the forums about rejection notes and while I hope they are relatively self-explanatory in content, I wanted to take a second to explain how they work.

When a chapter is submitted to the queue, it appears for us, like this. (You can click the image to expand to full size. It is an actual screenshot of the queue, the blacked out areas cover data for the story in question and i covered its banner with one of my own. Anonymity and all that jazz.)

As you can see, we are able to see the data for the story as a whole, it's rating, warnings, summary, etc... We can also see the title, author name and then the info for the chapter - including it's title and summary.

Below that is our validation box. The blank box is the area where we enter the validator notes. Within that box, and in the area above it, old rejection notes are still visible. This allows us to determine what past issues have been wtih the chapter, how long the author has been trying to submit it and how many times it has been rejected for the same issue, if any. Because of the nature of this feature, before any given validator note, the validator will almost always include a date. Depending on who it is, the date format may be somewhat different, but it will be there, nevertheless.

While this is a great function for us, it seems to be confusing to some of our members. Remember, when you're dealing with validator notes, unless specifically instructed, the only note you need to pay attention to is that with the most recent date.

So, if this is what you see when you view your story on July 11th:

May 15th 2006 - 16. Your story contained a formatting issue. [Full Details ---- spacing

June 21 - Needs a strong violence warning. Thanks for correcting the formatting!

July 3 - Thanks for changing your rating and warning, but your summary, which includes a very violent act, must be PG in content.

July 10th 2006 - First resubmission without changes.

...you want to look only at the note from the 10th which states that you haven't corrected the problem previously presented to you. If you don't already remember what that was, go back and look at the note from the 3rd, suggesting that you need to tone down the violent content in your story summary. Make the necessary edits and you will be welcome to resubmit - because the issues presented on May 15th and June 21st are taken care of.

Why, if they are handled, do we need to keep them there? The history of an author comes into play when considering them for trusted author status. Trusted Authors are people who, when presented with an issue that violates the TOS, deal with the issue quickly. Authors who have had a lot of rejections for violent content may not be promoted to Trusted Authors until we're sure that they have a firm grasp of the TOS.

With that said, they won't count against you forever. Say, for example, you joined the site in January of 2005 right after watching the worlds most violent and gory movie and decided to do a Harry Potter crossover with it. Problem? Well, no, not necessarily, except that your version involves all of the gore that was present in the unrated version of the DVD. and every single chapter was rejected. Now you were young and you were stubborn, so you went a few rounds with the validators before finally getting over it, accepting defeat, and toning down the violence in the chapters. It's mid-2006 now and you are a bigger person. It's been almost a year since you wrote anything but fluffy James/Lily and you have 35 posted chapters on the site of nothing but smush. When it comes to an Archive-Admin to check your account and determine whether you're ready for trusted status, we will take into account how long ago it was that you posted those chapters and how much your writing has grown or changed since then.