Being vague here...LOL

[writingisfun]

In interests of anonymity, I actually set up a new account here so I can comment on this. My issues are that the review times have literally no new guidelines, so in theory you could wait six months to even find out what you did wrong. If we are to be held to strict guidelines, then I would like clear, consistent guidelines as to my responsibilities.

An opinion of one editor is not fact and therefore, their preferences as to what I should be writing about when I have been given a vague topic and encouraged to think outside the box should not be sufficient to disregard an otherwise well-written, accurate article that meets expectations.

My other issue is that since they knew the changes were occurring, I feel that editors should have been hired and trained by the time the new articles rolled out. Otherwise, I feel like it's the blind leading the blind, and I do not read braille.

Still love the company, but I am nervous as to how they will do in six months or a year. Watching this one closely and adding to my eggs...I can't afford to work and have no idea when I'll get paid.

[adbullock]

I'm still recovering from surgery so I haven't committed to writing anywhere full time, but I did write one on the very first day. It's been over a month and it still hasn't been reviewed. According to TPTB 45% of writers that have written since the change have not received reviews of any kind. Also according to TPTB, 40% go through without any revisions. 29% require one revision and 12% require two revisions. Some are ultimately rejected, though, according the them, those numbers are few.

The good news is that there is plenty of work available. The not-so-good news is who knows when you'll get paid for it.

I saw go for it. Write one or two and see how they go for you. They keep asserting that they are making changes to speed up the review process. Some people have been paid.

[mtgywriter]

Not much I can add, other than verifying what others have already posted. Yep, review times are slow, quite a few writers who submitted content in March are waiting for reviews, those who have received reviews have also received revisions. There have been some instances of articles being accepted without revisions. Some writers have challenged the revision requests and sent them to the company's support team for review. Some of those writers have had support agree with them and had the articles approved without the revisions requested by the reviewers.

Personally, I've had one accepted, and one revision I chose not to do and ended up selling locally for more than twice what I would've been paid. I still have several that I did in March that as of today are still pending review.

Things are still in flux and probably will be for some time. Once the writers and the reviewers are on the same page, I think it will be a great egg. In the meantime, I'm focusing on other clients until the rest of my pending articles are reviewed.

Just another reason to remember to never rely too heavily on any one egg - be it a mill or a private client. Any of them can crack at any moment.

[Hoping2]

Originally Posted by Squarix

Other writers are complaining about (hope I'm not giving too much away here) their new "ideation" issues thing. They say it seems like every editor is on a different page, and requests revisions due to their own "personal" vision of how the article should be. Those are the two biggest complaints I've seen so far.

This is exactly what is going on. They are now DMS but with lower pay and extremely long wait times. Some people have now waited six weeks for their work to be reviewed. They are also worse than DMS in that the revisions don't go back to the same editor- they go to a random editor that may disagree with what the first editor said. It's utter chaos, and I seriously doubt I will ever be paid for the work I've done.

They've admitted to firing many of the "reviewers," and now they're understaffed and can't keep up with the articles coming in. I had high hopes for the changes, but instead it looks like they're going out of business.

[Miss Aurora]

It's obvious that there's been some sort of shakeup in their editorial department, but I think they've got too much invested in this to be "going out of business."

I'm not having any serious issues with reviews; they could be faster, though.

[ShellieJ]

Originally Posted by Hoping2

They've admitted to firing many of the "reviewers,"

I don't think they ever said that.

[AG1976]

From reading all of the comments, I think I'm going to hold off for now until they get their kinks worked out.

[Squarix]

The wait for reviews is seriously getting ridiculous. Despite what they keep saying on their facebook page, clients can't possibly be getting their orders done in time, if writers wrote articles in early march, with a due date of late march, and still haven't gotten a review in mid April. They keep saying the same tired lines about "writers deadlines are different from client deadlines!" and "articles are only one part of the package we provide!"

Well, I'm not buying it. They may be able to screw over their writers - we're a dime a dozen. But they can't screw over their clients. They're missing deadlines, alright, which means valuable clients will be leaving. And things are only going to get worse. With the article pool growing every day, review times will lengthen, and nobody wants to write because of the slow reviews. I'm not sure what they can do to fix it. Maybe hire more of their college kid editors?

The change seemed like a good idea at first - now it just seems like a disaster.

Edited to add: just checked their facebook page again, and writers are reporting that their April articles are getting reviewed quickly, while their March articles are still sitting. This makes me think maybe they already missed some deadlines for March, and got cancelled orders, which they now don't know what to do with.

[KatyaG]

Originally Posted by Squarix

The wait for reviews is seriously getting ridiculous. Despite what they keep saying on their facebook page, clients can't possibly be getting their orders done in time, if writers wrote articles in early march, with a due date of late march, and still haven't gotten a review in mid April. They keep saying the same tired lines about "writers deadlines are different from client deadlines!" and "articles are only one part of the package we provide!"

Well, I'm not buying it. They may be able to screw over their writers - we're a dime a dozen. But they can't screw over their clients. They're missing deadlines, alright, which means valuable clients will be leaving. And things are only going to get worse. With the article pool growing every day, review times will lengthen, and nobody wants to write because of the slow reviews. I'm not sure what they can do to fix it. Maybe hire more of their college kid editors?

The change seemed like a good idea at first - now it just seems like a disaster.

Edited to add: just checked their facebook page again, and writers are reporting that their April articles are getting reviewed quickly, while their March articles are still sitting. This makes me think maybe they already missed some deadlines for March, and got cancelled orders, which they now don't know what to do with.

I was on a roll for a while and had seven articles in a row accepted with no revisions. They all received 4s. Today I get two articles returned to me because they just had "surface level" information. And they were rated a 1! How is that possible? I think they were both reviewed by the same stupid editor. When I had an article returned to me in the beginning, the editors at least wrote helpful comments. This idiot editor just tore apart the article and didn't write anything helpful.

I'm just ranting now. It just ticked me off so bad that I'm not going to write any more articles for them today. I'll at least wait until tomorrow.. hopefully then I will get an editor with a brain.

[Hoping2]

Originally Posted by ShellieJ

I don't think they ever said that.

Take a look at their Facebook page. They've said it at least twice now.