The final straw.....

[Kitty420]

I have been trying very hard to submit articles on this site for a very long time now, to no avail. This time the response I recieved was that my article wasn't formatted correctly. I follow the guidelines to the T and even have my mother, and fiance' look over the articles to find mistakes. I am beginning to think that articles are accepted based on the mood and interest of the supposed webmaster. Also, I do think there are a lot of technical problems with this site, because whenever I try to choose categories for my work, it removes those categories in the middle of the submittal, and I always have to go back and fix it.

This site is no where near as good as it is pretending to be, and this so-called selective acceptance of articles is nothing short of tragic, seeing as tho myself as well as OTHER writers whom have been scorned by this site are making a pretty decent living, writing.

[Ed]

If you had looked at your content details, you would see that this part of the submission form was not professionally formatted, and the document itself was the same way.

Your article
was formatted like this. With
inappropriate breaks and
spaces.

We can't accept submissions that are not formatted to our guidelines. Articles that are not formatted correctly are not reviewed for errors, so even if your article is error-free, if it is not submitted correctly we cannot accept it.

Thanks,
Ed

[Kitty420]

Ed, hello. Listen, there is something very wrong with your system, because when I type my articles I follow your guidelines to the T. I don't double space unless between paragraphs, and I don't indent. I type in normal 12pt font, and I use proper grammar and punctuation. I have checked, checked and re-checked every single article you have rejected, and I am STRONGLY starting to suspect that your rejections are based on whether or not you personally like the article, which is unfair because YOU are not the one paying for the articles.

Every time i submit an article, i have to go back and double check i picked subcategories, because anytime I DO, it changes back to blank on it's own. Your site's system is flawed, and therefore you should FIX it, instead of rejecting authors that could possibly bring MORE traffic to your site. Maybe you should just take a little less time playing on the forum, publicly pointing out the faults you think you find in our work, and spend a little more time, maybe putting it into the right format YOURSELF, since YOUR system is obviously what the problem is. I am not the only one who see's this, so I hope someone else speaks up.

[Ed]

As I said before, articles are not read if they don't meet our guidelines.

I'm sorry, but I am unable to help you further.

Thanks,
Ed

[Kitty420]

oh and another thing, i have taken a screen-shot of what my formatting looks like, (a screenshot of the VERY article you keep rejecting) and I will gladly post it on photobucket for all to view.

[Kitty420]

[quote="Ed"]As I said before, articles are not read if they don't meet our guidelines.

I'm sorry, but I am unable to help you further.

Thanks,
Ed[/quote]




This is the lack-of customer service that I am talking about, and this is the exact reason why I am going to make it a priority to warn others against using this site. You have been reminded of your website's technical issues a lot lately, and yet you choose to ignore these issues, and continue to just reject QUALITY works from QUALITY writers. Your attitude is smug and arrogant, and for what?
I hope you realize that there are literally dozens of forums that feature sticky threads on why this website should be avoided, and there are a lot of writers who are very talented that have tried and tried and tried to work with this site, just to be treated the way you treat ppl on here. I have articles and reports published all over the world, including in some Ivy League publications, so to think that I am the one with formatting issues here seems a bit ridiculous, since your guidelines are basically the guidelines I use when submitting work to ANY publishing outlet.

btw - here is the photobucket link to the actual format of my article.

http://s231.photobucket.com/albums/ee90 ... rticle.jpg

[Celeste Stewart]

Sometimes when copying and pasting text from Word and other programs into the submission form, weird formatting happens. For example, if Word uses automatic spacing between paragraphs, the copied text appears as one big chunk with no spacing whatsoever after being pasted into the submission form. I'm not sure why
a submission
would appear
like this with inappropriate
breaks and
what have
you

But, if it is appearing that way on the submission form, then the document may look fine - but the submission form doesn't. You can check your submissions after hitting the "submit" button by going to My Content and clicking the Edit link next to the submitted document's title. That will show you what Ed sees.
If Ed sees
formatting
that
looks like
this
you can bet that
the article will
be rejected
because
customers will not
want to
look at
a block of mixed
up
text in order
to evaluate
the
article.

I have personally tried to help you in another thread though I haven't heard back from you. CC's a terrific site with writers who both love it and hate it. I'm always disappointed when other writers fall into the hate it category because I know firsthand how rewarding CC can be.

[Lola]

Dear Kitty 420,

I looked at the photo you posted. It appears that you indent before items in your numbered lists. According to our guidelines, you should not use any indentations. Maybe that is the problem with your submission.

I do not work for the site- I am only another writer- so I cannot tell you for sure. I can only speculate about what the formatting problem is.

When cutting and pasting for the long summary, make sure you go back and properly space paragraphs so that there is a line between each paragraph and no indentations. I often find that I have to fiddle with my long summaries a little while to get them into the correct format.

Also, what program are you using the write and save your docs? (Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, etc?) Maybe there is some kind of problem where you save it in one format and it somehow gets converted into another one when it is opened here? Maybe try using a different program or a different computer and see if it tries getting rid of the problem. (I don't know a lot about computers, but that is what I would try.)

I know it must be frustrating to have your work rejected, but I am sure it is nothing personal. I have had things rejected for formatting before as well, but it always gets accepted after I work out the formatting issues...even if it takes me a couple of tries! :)

I am personally glad that Ed spends time on the forum, as I find it helpful when he answers questions or offers tips. I have always found him to be helpful and professional.

Best of luck to you,

Lola Vylok

[Celeste Stewart]

I know I should just let this thread rest, but it bothers me. Kitty, you and Ed are obviously seeing two different things. Ed is seeing the end product of the submission form and you are seeing your original Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, GoogleDocs, or whatever-it-is document. Something is being lost in translation. You are seeing a perfectly formatted document in your word processor and Ed is seeing a document with strange spacing errors on the final submission. You're defensive because your document is fine on your end; Ed is rejecting it because it is NOT displaying fine on the CC site.

It's not necessarily your error - nor is it an inherent CC system flaw. If you've never had weird characters (like "AE&ek" or whatever it is in place of curly quotes) show up when copying and pasting text from Word documents into web forms, then you won't necessarily understand. In that case, welcome to the world of copying and pasting text into web forms. On the other hand, if you have experienced these things, then you might give CC a little slack. Perhaps CC could implement some sort of Word-formatting stripping code to resolve problems like this (if this is indeed the problem). However, attacking the editor who has nothing to do with programming isn't the most proactive approach to solving this problem.

Despite your impression, CC works hard to deal with issues like these - as many of us will attest - but adversarial comments tend to halt progress in its tracks. If I were in Ed's shoes, I'd have far stronger words to say and I admire his restraint at leaving it at that. As a fellow writer, I'm compelled to respond only because I understand your frustration. Shoot, print publishers have rejected my manuscripts (unread) because they contained staples when clearly stapled manuscripts are strictly forbidden. On the other hand, CC has paid me handsomely despite my penchant for staples. Go figure. (That's why I rarely have time to work on my novel by the way).

[Celeste Stewart]

Part 2 (due to word count limitations on forum posts):

I'm sure you're a terrific writer but we won't know that until we can get you past this odd submission problem. You have two choices from here: move on or work with the people who are trying to help you solve this. You may think that many of us are happy to say "see ya!" especially after reading some of your frustrated/adversarial posts, but it's not necessarily so. We understand these initial frustrations and do our best to help as you can see from posts such as the one offered by Lola earlier. The CC community is filled with terrific writers and is one of the best places for support that you'll find.

Having looked at your photobucket image, I will say that the article may ultimately get rejected based on the indentation of what looks like a numbered list (hard to say based on the small image I saw). While such a format may be fine for some publications, it's not necessarily the right format for the Web. In general, CC numbered lists must be indented within the paragraph in a block-style format (if that makes sense). In other words, the entire list should have similar margins, not a first line indent.

[Celeste Stewart]

I zoomed into your image to get a closer look, mainly to see if you were using the .docx format. No, it's .doc, so that's good. Looks like you're using OpenOffice.org, so maybe other users can chime in if they have experienced weird copy and paste problems. I use Word 2007, so I'm no help there.

I noticed several typos that will get the article rejected: widel enjoyed (widely enjoyed), easilly accessible (easily accessible), and indidividuals (individuals) to name a few. Also check the spelling of "farenheight" (I believe it should be Fahrenheit).

[MediaMaven]

When in doubt about formatting problems I think a good first step is to revert to a plain text format. Regardless of your operating system, you should have a program for plain text documents. In Windows look for "Notepad" under the "Programs > Accessories" menu.

Copy and paste your full document text into notepad, adjust any spacing issues that might appear, and save as a ".txt" file.

Perhaps you need a day or two to step away from C-C and this problematic article. You're obviously frustrated, but I feel some of the comments you've made in this thread aren't warranted. This can be a very helpful forum, but your negativity towards Ed and the site may make some members think twice about helping you.

[Kitty420]

ok celeste, thanks for putting up with me, and ed I apologize.

I am going to once again re-edit the article and resubmit.

[EricG]

I'd suggest copying and pasting your text from your word processor into a fully featured text editor like NoteTab before submitting to CC.
This strips out the formatting commands, leaving just pure text.

This program has many advantages over Notepad, the standard windows text editor.
A particularly valuable feature is the ability to use a document as a "pasteboard".
This will dump the contents of the clipboard at the bottom of the document. Therefore, you can visit many websites, highlight and copy fragments of text, web addresses, etc. and they will automatically be added to the pasteboard document, one after the other.

(I better stop now - this isn't meant to be a review :-)

The free version is very powerful, and could be of great benefit to your writing.
Try it out at http://www.NotePad.com

cheers,
Eric G.

[Kitty420]

Ty for that :) the site didnt respond tho :(