Question about the new Public Request system

[JD]

Hayley

I have to admit that I guessed the bit about the article showing up if it was searched for. However, I did go to a customer's request to try to see if I could attach the article I had submitted and tagged as a (different) public request earlier today and it looked as though I could (although, for obvious reasons, I didn't actually send it to this customer so could very well have received a "you can't do this, the article's been sent to another customer" email had I tried).

Let's wait to see what CC says about it. I think a way forward is the suggestion that when the article is sent to the customer, the customer is advised that he or she has a certain number of days in which to make a purchase, failing which the article will be placed in the general content list (although perhaps not as long as 60 days!).

Jane

[Celeste Stewart]

Hayley, I suppose you could eventually delete it and then resubmit it. Give it a few days, see if the customer picks it up, and then delete and resubmit? Hopefully that won't be necessary though.

[Word Gypsy]

Hi everyone. I wanted to add a few words to the discussion since I agree with the sentiments expressed so far. I linked a few articles that I had written previously to the request and they are now caught up in this cloak of invisibility as well. I tried searching for these articles and they don't come up at all. Plus, the one that I sold for usage is still invisible as well. This makes me reluctant to link articles to any other requests since I would rather take my chances out in the open than have an article be available to only one customer for a lengthy period of time.

Another thought- if the Q & A is going to change and we are going to rely on the inbox, can we have a feature to create folders for our regular customers? It is a real pain to scroll through several messages to find the one that I want and I can only imagine it getting more difficult. I am sure this must be in the works when the switch happens, but just in case...

[HayleyWriter]

Oh No, Word Gypsy is right! Even the articles that were previously in my list and I linked as a SUGGESTION for the new requesting customers to consider my existing articles have disappeared. AAAAArrgggggghhhhhhh - many of my articles are not available for customers to buy, because I thought the requestor MAY also be interested in them. I will stop responding to requests completely unless this feature can be fixed or at the very least time limited. I don't want to have these articles unavailable for purchase by anyone for ages because I stupidly linked them to a request.

I can see that from a requesting customer point of view it is terrific to have exclusive rights to the article but as an author, who often links articles on speculation to requests, it is difficult. I have effectively taken several of my articles out of circulation because I linked them to a request. This did not happen with the previous system, as the articles were still available to the search list if you linked to a request. Therefore, I didn't realise that I was taking these out of circulation and REDUCING my chances for a sale. I thought I was INCREASING my chances for a sale by letting the requesting customer know these articles were also available.

That said (and out of my system), any new system will have bugs in it when it first comes out. I am sure CC will work swiftly to iron out the bugs in the new request system and we will all be happy with it. CC is very good about sorting out author problems.

CC Support - Can you please respond and let us know how long our articles linked to requests will be out of circulation? I certainly didn't plan for that to happen and would hate to miss out on a sale because of the bugs in the new request system.

[Celeste Stewart]

Oh wow, Hayley. That's definitely discouraging. But I'm sure CC will figure it out as they always do. Bugs do happen and since you can't predict everything, it's up to the users to point out the problems. As writers, we don't want to lose our visibility for sure so I hope they fix this soon.

Also, the whole beauty of writing on speculation at CC is that risk is spread out because of this visibility. Having our articles shielded appears to make it riskier to submit articles to specific requests -- which is counterintuitive to the whole system.

Also, Gypsy has a good point about the Q&A thread. I have one customer that currently has about 15 open threads with me, all for different topics that we're working on. It works well keeping each topic separate as we can discuss back and forth and refer to the thread later. For example, if he has a new set of articles for Website A, he'll post those requests in that thread. LIkewise, if I have a question on Website B, I'll ask it under the appropriate thread. That way, the conversations and assignments are easy to find and refer back to as needed. If that goes away, and we have a series of single messages with no way to organize them - yikes!

[jak]

Reading through this thread, most of my concerns have already been picked up. I'd just like to add my voice to say that I would prefer my articles to be showcased as soon as possible, plus would like to be able to see the competition before I decide whether to write for a public request. I can also see pros and cons for customers. They can take their time without fear of losing an article they MIGHT want to buy if nothing better comes along, but they might also be inundated with more similar pieces making the decision more difficult.

I would not want to see the Q/A system removed without another way to contact customers to clarify what is required.

All that said, I'd also like to thank CC for working so hard try to make things easier for both sides of this process.

[BethFields]

After having read through this thread, I wanted to add my support to the comments all ready made. I think the idea of being able to submit directly to a request is great - thank you CC - however, if the requester is to have exclusive rights to read the submissions, I think a period of 7 days is more than enough. Then the article should go into the public system just as if it were new, that way it could be seen on top.

I'm not sure if giving the buyer exclusive rights to read is a productive move. At least when the articles go into the public showcase, a buyer knows that they have competition and might make a faster decision. I've noticed that some buyers never actually buy. Or that they might sound urgent, but really are not. I think that having a pass-through system that gives them 7 days to looky-look is the best solution for both writers and buyers.

[jrichards]

Thanks for all the great discussion on the request system change. It really is a huge help to us to hear what you are thinking about the recent changes so that we can make them work for both the authors and the customers.

The folders idea that Word Gypsey brought up are a great idea. We've tried to keep the messages threaded so that you'll always be able to see all the related messages in the thread at the same time, but introducing folder and a good way to organize the messages is a great idea. I'll put it on our to do list.

With respect to the articles being made viewable even after they have been submitted to a request. The situation that we're trying to avoid is the one where
an author submits an article to a request,
CC sends out an email to the requestor saying "We have a new article for you"
then a customer (who is not the requestor) finds the article and buys it
the the requestor logs into look for the article and finds it nothing there for them to purchase and thinks the email was sent in error.

I certainly appreciate that not having the article in the general pool of articles is a disadvantage to the author.
So, as has been suggested we'll upgrade the system to set a reasonable limit on the time the article is offered exclusively to the requestor.
3 days exclusive opportunity to purchase the document is where we're gravitating to.

[Celeste Stewart]

Thanks Jeff! Three days is awesome. It gives the customer a few days to consider their options but doesn't overly restrict availability of the article to the rest of the world.

[Word Gypsy]

Thanks for the quick response to this issue. I think that 3 days is an excellent choice. I can certainly live with that. Thanks for all the hard work and effort that goes into every improvement. It shows! WG

[BethFields]

I agree, three days sounds great! Thanks for listening to our concerns.

[Celeste Stewart]

Another suggestion:
Not all private requests will have specific "Private Request" threads. For example, I just got a message from a regular customer through the CC inbox and he needs a couple of short articles. In the past, he'd post his new request under a specific, ongoing request, but now I guess it is arriving in the inbox. However, I can't necessarily tell which existing thread it's related to (before, the "new message" symbol appeared by the correct thread. Is there any way to flag the message from the thread it was generated from? Or maybe it's not generated from the thread anymore? I don't know.

Is it possible to add a "link article" box to the messaging system? That way, I can reply to the message with the link to the article in case I can't place it under the right request.

Also, can you make the message replies contain the orginal messages so we can have a reference available to previous conversations?

[HayleyWriter]

Thanks for the quick response and listening to our concerns. Three days is terrific. It gives the customer a chance to buy before anyone else but doesn't leave authors waiting for ages to showcase their work. A great compromise and one I am definitely happy with. Thanks for responding to the concerns so quickly - one of the reasons I love CC!
Hayley

[Word Gypsy]

I agree with Celeste's suggestion on the inbox as well. It is difficult to bounce back and forth among messages, especially when there are several. Including previous messages would be great. At least in the Q & A area, we only had to scroll. WG

[JD]

Just want to say thanks for CC's prompt response to all of this - and, from a writer's point of view, three days sounds good. Also, looking at if from a customer's point of view, even if the customer doesn't buy within the three day period (for whatever reason) and the article returns to the fold, if the customer changes his or her mind, then there's a chance that the article will still be available for purchase (there is if it's mine ;)).

Cheers.

Jane