Account Suspended

[JeffreyTymczak]

Hello All!

My account was suspended today for grammatical errors. I sent an email asking support to reconsider as I am still learning the ropes and hoped I would be given another opportunity to write here. My question, if you get suspended, is it basically over, no recourse?

Was hoping to get another opportunity to become a writer, and I realize I did make some mistakes. Any help appreciated.

Thanks

Jeffrey Tymczak

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Jeffrey,

Unfortunately, once your account is suspended, that's it. CC is looking for writers who are able to provide "publish ready" articles. Can I suggest you try other places, like Newbie Writers, for encouragement and support as you learn the craft of writing? There are some other websites that pay for articles, so you may find a market out there for your writing endeavours. However, if you do want to be a good writer, you'll need to practice your grammatical usage, so try a training course on grammar. I wish you the best of luck in the future.

KInd regards,

Hayley

[JeffreyTymczak]

So, if you make initial mistakes on this site, i.e small grammatical mistakes, you are basically suspended and never given another opportunity to show your skills? I am currently writing on 9 different websites, and I sell my articles on sites like TextBroker and Associated Content. I had a few issues with a title that was incorrect, and now I am banned from writing here? I think that is a little harsh, no?

I kindly asked support for the opportunity to show improvement but they will not reply to my emails.

Jeffrey Tymczak

[Antonia]

No, it's not harsh. It's just the standard policy. If you'd taken the time to read the forums and guidelines before submitting, you would have learned that CC is a completely different ballgame from the sites you mentioned. (And THAT may sound harsh - but it's the truth.)

I wouldn't bother writing to Support about it as they are unlikely to make an exception. Hayley's advice is sound. Even if you can't sell work at CC, improving your grammar skills will only help you elsewhere. Best of luck.

[JeffreyTymczak]

Antonia,

I am surprised by your response. Besides it being completely unprofessional, you made an assumption about me and posted it on this forum, without even taking the time to find out the truth. Your rush to judgment was callous and couldn't be further from the truth. I DID TAKE THE TIME to read all the FAQ's, the guidelines, and I read this forum for 6 hours last month. Just because a person DOESN'T post on this form, it DOES NOT mean they haven't read quite a bit of the posts. I read ALL the posts on the 3 strike rule and I WAS aware that you are held to a more stick standard here. I had an issue with my title having a ; instead of a :, and I kept resubmitting thinking I was fixing grammatical errors in the body, not until the 4th submit did support clarify it was the title that was the trouble. So because i submitted 4 times, I got the boot. No where in the forum, guidelines or the FAQ's does it say that if you resubmit an article multiple times and fail to address the initial problem, are you suspended.

Antonia, you reply was typical of the users who feel they need to berate the newbies before they even take the time to understand what the REAL issue is. I never ASKED for YOUR opinion on "if I IGNORED the rules here". That was never the issue. You took it upon your self to try and make me look like someone who came here, posted garbage, and now is crying to be reinstated. You need to really take a look at your people skills, and not go berate a person and make assumptions that are not only untrue, but hurtful because any potential reader will presuppose you are right because you have been here a while and I am new,. Your statement If you'd taken the time to read the forums and guidelines before submitting, was unprofessional, ignorant and intentionally meant to be hurtful. I hope no newbie ever looks for help from you on this forum, You are a not the type who should be giving potential writers your one sided biased opinion. I came here asking for help getting reinstated, not to be berated by someone who feels they know me by reading my one post. I didn't come here to have you post assumptions based on your feelings, that is not what this post was for. If you feel the need to berate and try to teach newbies by talking DOWN to them, maybe you should make you own post on this forum and talk to people there.

You post not only was unprofessional, it now keeps others posters who may have information I need, to post here because they READ your post and ASSUME I never read any of the rules because YOU SAID I DIDN'T! Don't hijack my posts and come here telling all future readers I don't read guidelines, FAQ's and this forum, when you don't know me at all. You should either delete your ignorant post, or at the least, apologize for your post that pretty much stopped my thread in its tracks. No one will offer me some potential help after reading your evaluation of my situation. Please do not offer me any more help, I am asking for someone who can either tell me how I can address my problem, or who I may contact to see if there may have been an error with my account standings. I don't need to be scolded like a five year old because you assumed something that was completely untrue!!!!!!!!

Jeff

Jeff

[BarryDavidson]

Jeff,

Basically, when a member of the editorial team suspends an account, that's all she wrote. I know of no instance where the decision has been reversed. The site's owners and administrators are pretty 'hands-off' when it comes to editorial decisions. Sorry that it's not the news you'd like to hear, but I'm nothing if not honest.

I don't know of any other site like this one. I wish I could help more.


Barry

[JeffreyTymczak]

Barry,

Thanks for the information. I appreciate your reply, and its unfortunate for me that I will not be getting a second chance. Thanks for the help!

Jeff

[jadedragon]

What a completely inappropriate attack on Antonia. She is honestly trying to help and she is completely right that Constant Content is a completely different ball game than the other sites you mentioned. We foster a supportive environment between writers here, but the site does not exist to help you improve your writing. Your attitude is very inappropriate and attacking another writer here is really not going to get you reinstated. Good luck.

[JeffreyTymczak]

Jade,

You are wrong!

I did NOT come here for help improving my writing skills, I came here asking for assistance on whether a suspended account could be reinstated. Rather than answer my question for help, Antonia decided to assume I was here wasting all your time, as SHE SAD "If you'd taken the time to read the forums and guidelines before submitting".................By saying this, the rest of the forum assumes I did not read the guidelines, or the forum, which i did, FOR HOURS. I have been a lurker on this site for 4 weeks, never posting. That did not give Antonia the right to say what she did. It was inappropriate, callous and unprofessional. It did not address my question, it did not help me, all it did was allow her to make a wild assumption on a newbie. That speaks volumes about her character. I am sorry you got to see her true side, but it is in moments like this when peoples true colors are exposed. I asked for help, and Barry was the only one who kindly offered me some assistance. For that, I do wish Barry good luck here in the future.

Jeff

[Celeste Stewart]

Context, assumptions, overreactions. . . those are but a few problems with forums. I see that Jeffrey came here honestly looking for help, trying to understand the policy. I don't see Antonia's response as being overly harsh or mean-spirited. She made an assumption. I don't think her character should be questioned for that. Don't we all make assumptions on a regular basis? In fact, her silence right now speaks volumes about her character. My assumption is that she's not allowing emotions to get the better of her and that she's avoiding a battle of characters. That's not easy given the circumstances.

I also don't think the forum crowd here follows each poster's opinion or assumptions blindly either. We're smarter than that. Just because Antonia implied that you hadn't read the forums doesn't make it an accepted fact to the rest of us. Edit to add: Nor would we particularly care if you had or hadn't. While the forums are useful, they aren't a prerequisite to getting your articles submitted.

Antonia's post didn't stop anyone from responding, either. In all honesty, we see so many posts on account suspensions that there's not much more to say other than "that's CC's policy" and "here are some ideas that might help you move forward." Hayley already did that. I personally dislike these threads because we really are powerless to help due to the current policy. Yes, it is harsh. I'd love to see CC implement something less harsh than a lifetime ban but until that happens there's not much point in getting involved in a long debate about the policy with people who have unfortunately been suspended.

This whole situation is unfortunate. With forums, we can't see the lurkers quietly studying and learning and trying to figure out this site. Thankfully they are doing this and this is a good lesson to us all to remember that. When we see a first post, it's natural to assume this is a new member of the community that doesn't know his way around yet. Perhaps it would have been more tactful to have worded the response along the lines of "Have you had a chance to explore the forums, FAQs, etc...?" I'm sorry that the assumption offended you. I'm also sorry to see Antonia's character get blasted for that because she doesn't deserve it. She's not a hurtful person.

[Evelyn]

Can I also point out that forums on other sites (such as eHow, when it was still a real site) ban users and delete flames all the time, just to keep some kind of nice community or political front going.

The only users we ban here are the true spammers, and only if they post spam.

In other words, this discussion will stand forever for all the world to see, or until the asteroid strikes in 2012. (I heard a rumor about that.) What's written on the Internet stays on the Internet, leaving someone who could have been a friend looking like a petulant child and others trying to smooth the situation over. None of us are really that black and white, and I'm glad that such flame posts rarely occur here.

Antonia has posted 300 times in the last year and half, by the way.

And Jeff, do come back if you want to, but please don't throw invectives at fellow writers. Whether your account was suspended with C-C or not, we're actually still here on the forums and will continue to remain helpful if you let us.

[Elizabeth Ann West]

Hey Jeff,

Give Support some time, it generally takes time for a response. It might be a misunderstanding. We do have new editorial staff and there have been some hiccoughs. Think of it this way: to someone on the editorial staff, it might seem like you were ignoring their suggestion about the title, resubmitting over and over again. Not to make another assumption, but if you were fixing grammatical errors each pass, as opposed to stylistic changes, that may also have played into the decision.

C-C is very different from other writing sites. I write on the other two sites you mentioned and often have problems going back and forth. When I take a hiatus, I will get a rare rejection myself. It's not that C-C is snootier than the others; it's a different market. First and foremost, C-C is here for its customers. They do listen to the writers, but at the end of the day it's the people paying the money that literally pay the bills, so their concerns are paramount. That said, I have noticed an increase in the standards. I would honestly say that C-C is more difficult for new writers to break into today than it was nearly 3 years ago when I joined.

Many websites for web writing stroke our egos. The reality is in today's writing market, authors are a dime a dozen. I couldn't find you on Associated Content (you must use another name there) but I did read some articles under your name on GoArticles and Ezine. Reading over the copy, I can see how C-C would be a challenge for you. It's very difficult to break out of writing promotional copy, and C-C is almost the polar opposite. To be fair, the articles on one site were from 2009. I noticed a few instances of "your" that should be "you're." There were crutch words all of us struggle to cut from our copy: sometimes, maybe, many,... and so on. The reason one of my recent articles was rejected seems to haunt you, too -- the run on sentence!

I've had articles rejected at Demand Studios, Helium, and Associated Content, but I've sold nearly 100 licenses here. It's really apples and oranges to compare accolades on one site to another. Good luck to you.

[Antonia]

Thanks for defending my character, everyone. It's never pleasant to be personally attacked, even online. I love that CC is a community where we speak up for one another. No, I'm not a deliberately hurtful person, and yes, I do make assumptions that turn out to be wrong (quite often actually!). Receiving a suspension must leave one in a sensitive frame of mind and I wish I'd phrased my comment with that in mind; I certainly didn't intend to be hurtful but I can see that I was blunt. I'm sorry, Jeffrey, that you were offended.

[JeffreyTymczak]

Thank You Elizabeth, Evelyn and Celeste for your professional and caring replies, I do appreciate them.

Support has been in contact with me, so fingers crossed. I have been reading these posts for about 5 weeks now. I was always hesitant posting, for the exact reason this thread turned out going. I was never in a "sensitive frame of mind", I simply decided to speak up and ask some of the board elders for a little help, or quality advice. Without having previously posted, some members take it upon themselves to sometimes treat the newbies as little children, and then wonder why we lurk behind the protective cover of anonymity.

Hopefully I am back writing in the near future here and can get to know some of you better.

Jeff