jaylar
Human moderation is useful. But only where there is a large battalion of moderators. An article posted on Friday should not languish until Monday, because the moderator takes the weekend off.
What happens when there is slow moderation is that many writers, who participate in a number of different sites will ‘double up’.
They will post an item on Site One. After 12 hours where there is no action, they post it on Site Two. Site Two publishes it instantly.
By the time the moderator of Site One goes to read the item, any plagiarism checker will turn up the fact it is published elsewhere.
If the article goes viral, that is a loss to Site One.
Writers tend to do this double up, for it makes no sense to post and wait and wait until if/when the moderator gets around to it.
Sites with slow moderation usually go down. This is because they become last choice for the best writers and the best work.
Simply put, if I write an item on a current event, if I can be published first I’ll get the hits. What use is it for me to wait 72 hours so that everyone who writes on that topic is published before me?
Moderation should never take more than four hours at the most for that leads to disgust by the writer. Hence, the least brilliant of their work will decorate the slow site, the best on the fast one.
As I said earlier, I never had problems with moderation as I never finished and put in an article for moderation on Friday. At least, not here on Virily. But I can understand why some writers can become frustrated. But imagine me as a freelance translator who works from home and who wants to ask the project manager of a translation agency a question and she or he does not answer me over the weekend till Monday morning. Oh they have a helpdesk but this is closed on the weekend too.This is also very, very frustrating. I think I should not be working for that agency any more. Sorry about this answer, I am venting some of my anger and stress out. But as I said I understand the writer’s frustration because I live it in my working life.
I adore that you got the point completely. The slowing down has it’s nefarious purpose.