Private request vs Category

[Debbi]

Is there a way then to make articles submitted for a bona fide Prinvate Request have a longer shelf life for the customer? Instead of three days before it goes into the general pool, give it 5 days? And maybe a little tip to the customers when filling out the Private Request form to give their request an expiration date of at least a week so it won't expire too soon?

[canywriter]

I was thinking the same thing myself. And maybe a default expiration which the customer has to override if he wants the duration shorter - or longer?

[Celeste Stewart]

Yeah, Ed, I understand that. However, this customer contacted ME (not the other way around) and said, "I need you to write and article on ____ and I also have three public requests that I'd like you to write as well." So the first one is private and the three additional ones semi-private if that makes sense. I felt it would have been presumptuous to tell him to change the public ones to private to me only so I didn't go there. I did submit the three public articles the official public way and categorized them accordingly but got burned on one. The customer has now issued a private request only to me. It's funny because I would not have written for those requests at all because I have a full workload but since the customer evidently saw my work and specifically asked me to write for him, I did - and I got burned and had to spend additional time rewriting an article that should have gone only to him. Oh well, the new one is waiting for him and is officially private.

[Ed]

I understand, Celeste, and I also understand the dilemma. This isn't just me being a stickler for rules. This is the only way, in a community that is growing by leaps and bounds, to allow people to use the Private Requests function in a way that is legitimate and to prevent those who would abuse this feature from doing so. I just want those who are following this thread to understand what they should do if they find themselves in the same situation.


Thanks,
Ed

[Celeste Stewart]

I know and this was an unusual situation that isn't likely to repeat itself often. Not sure how someone could abuse the system by marking their articles private though. I could see how it would hurt users who don't understand the difference as their articles would never be seen and therefore never be purchased but not sure how the category can be used to exploit the system. But where there's a will, there's a way I suppose.

[Constant]

Fair enough. Good comments from all, so perhaps we need to add a feature that allows for a variable amount of time for the article to remain hidden during the submission process. We will look into that and post a response when we decide what to do.