SUGGESTION: Pending hub request

1. 69

   brakel2posted 12 years ago

   Is there a way to exclude hubbers who do not have idled hubs from the 24 hour review for new articles? This may be the wrong place to enter this request, and maybe it is an impossibility. It would be nice if staff could facilitate the process of newly written material.

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   1. 88

      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      What you are suggesting is that those who have idled hubs are substandard writers, whereas hubs are also idled through lack of traffic.
      
      The other point is that there is nothing to stop a hubber of previously good standing from bringing out a substandard hub.
      
      I have issues with new hubs being idled until checked as I do believe there is a window for opportunist theft left open, but the day a division is brought in to allow some hubbers to have their work indexed straight away, and others not, is the day I leave.

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   2. 80

      SimeyCposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Perhaps Hubbers with a score of 80 or above do not get idled on first publication?

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      1. 69

         brakel2posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I thought of doing it by hubscore but wonder if it is representative or some are inflated. Good thought though. I guess staff would know if that would work. We need more feedback.

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2. 72

   Reality Bytesposted 12 years ago

   Great suggestion as we place our trust in Hubpages, perhaps the trust could be reciprocated?

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3. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

   Izzy why are you afraid of theft during the 24-hour period?

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   1. 88

      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      If your work is stolen before it gets indexed by Google, then it becomes the possession of the thief, assuming theirs was indexed first.

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4. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

   How would someone steal it if it isn't published? I must be missing something.

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      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      But it is published. It is still available on Hubpages, just not in Google.

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      rebekahELLEposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/103092

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5. 0

   DigbyAdamsposted 12 years ago

   Ohhh. So some nefarious HP surfer could take it and publish elsewhere. I hadn't considered that possibility. I would think that these hubs would be hard to find. Unless you were following a specific hubber and it showed up under their profile.

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6. 70

   WriteAngledposted 12 years ago

   I think that hubbers, who have not had hubs unpublished for over-promotional, spun, copied or low-quality content in the last x months (x to be defined by HP) should not be subjected to the 24-hour moratorium on new hubs.
   
   I do not see what is supposed to happen over those 24 hours of non-activity for a new hub. I do not believe that all these new hubs are being subjected to manual review, given the small number of staff. Certainly the content coming up in the hopper does not show any real quality control is being applied.
   
   A better option in my view would be to delay publication of new hubs by people who have had hubs unpublished in the last x months and by all brand new hubbers and subject them all to manual review over a defined period. After that period has elapsed, they could have the privilege of immediate publishing, which of course could be revoked again if they get something unpublished. 
   
   This would immediately remove a lot of the one-off garbage that spammers put out constantly here. As it stands at the moment, all of us are being treated as guilty until proved innocent!

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   1. 96

      SmartAndFunposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      +1+1+1+1+1+1

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      1. 88

         IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         LOL, does this mean you agree, maybe just a little bit? 

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      2. 69

         brakel2posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Go for it.  A great agreement!!!  We can all support each other.

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         1. 96

            SmartAndFunposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            LOL, yes, I am in agreement, as you can tell. I think it's a great idea. Once a hubber has been through a trial period and proven they have a good command of English grammar and are not spamming, allow their hubs to be published immediately. It feels like those of us who follow the basic HP standards are being punished for others' subpar practices. I know there are other sites that give new members a trial period. Why not HP?

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7. 69

   brakel2posted 12 years ago

   @izzy.  Try to think of a better way to speed up the process of pending hubs?  What is best action on other writing sites?? We want to move forward faster and not sit in a black hole.

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   1. 88

      IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yes I agree. I have loads of hubs in various states of composition, but am not working on any of them until I see whether or not this new HP change is going to work.
      
      I really don't like this 24 hour delay in indexing, which we have already seen from some other hubbers can turn into several days.
      
      I like WriteAngled's idea of applying this new change to substandard hubbers or new hubbers (until they have proved their worth), but I fear the way HP is going, the differentiate will be between elite or alum hubbers, and ordinary members.
      
      The day that happens, I will walk.

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      1. 95

         wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Uh oh.  I've been really busy in real life lately and hadn't followed this sleeping thing very well.  I didn't realize that HP is intentionally delaying indexing for any period of time, let alone 24 hours.
         
         What are they doing in that time?  Certainly not reading every hub produced - they don't have nearly the people necessary for that.  Why delay a hub?  Is it going to make a difference in whether or not it's indexed or even published?
         
         I knew it was "pending", but thought that was just a period between "sleep" and and "featured" - not that it would not be indexed!

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8. 90

   Daughter Of Maatposted 12 years ago

   I don't see why HP doesn't put brand new hubbers on a trial period, as well as hubbers who have had recently unpublished hubs. I had to go through a trial period for Knoji; you had to write 10 consecutively approved articles before you gained the privilege of being able to self-publish and there is always the risk of losing that privilege if you start publishing substandard material. It is a good way to set a standard.
   
   I really don't like the idea of idle hubs, I understand the concept, I just don't think its a good idea. But that's just me.

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   1. 76

      Barbara Kayposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      That is the way InfoBarrel does it too. After 10 good hubs, they automatically publish. I think Hubpages needs to change this policy.

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      1. 90

         Daughter Of Maatposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         It makes sense, especially if your a large website like HP, Knoji, Infobarrel, etc. There needs to be a certain standard set by the site, otherwise it gets spammed with crap. There are so many great writers on HP, and HP is the easiest site to make money on, but they need to provide some guidance and standards. Writers do need something to strive for, and the threat of losing publishing privileges and having to re-earn them is enough to keep us on our toes.

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         1. 69

            brakel2posted 12 years agoin reply to this

            I agree with you. It would save all the anguish. There must be a reason for not doing it, possibly not enough staff to handle a new system. I do believe that the pendings are improving in time frame, so that is a step in the right direction. Also, my traffic is up a little today, which is unusual for a weekend.

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9. 96

   SmartAndFunposted 12 years ago

   They could allow proven hubbers to publish immediately AND keep the dle hubs feature to alert us to hubs that are not getting much traffic. That would be a nice compromise, right HP?

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      WriteAngledposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      When do HP ever compromise?
      
      They simply impose changes dictatorially, knowing that new people will always flood in to replace those who walk away.

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10. 86

    Sherry Hewinsposted 12 years ago

    I don't really care for it either, even though I didn't get any Zzs on my hubs.

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11. 74

    MickiSposted 12 years ago

    Thanks for the suggestion, brakel2 and all of the discussion it has invoked.
    
    Before I respond, let me clarify a misconception: the date that your published work enters the Google index has nothing to do with your copyright. Google is not the system of record for copyright control. When you create an original work on HubPages, your copyright is from the date published on HubPages (even if you later un-publish it, you can still enforce your copyright).
    
    In those first 24 hours after you publish a Hub, it is live on the Internet: it has a URL, it is linked to from your profile page, it has a "first published" date in our system that you can see in your My Account Stats page. It's not available to Google to index, but that does not mean it doesn't exist.
    
    The Learning Center entry on Idle Hubs reflects this (and specifically calls out enforcing DMCA complaints and Idle Hubs): http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/Feat … -Idle-Hubs
    
    With that out of the way, let me address the suggestion...
    
    The reason that all new published work is held in a pending state is that we need 24 hours to run our automated processes on it: check for duplicates, spam, spun content, violations, allow our moderators to run through flagged stuff, and so on.
    
    We need to do this because if ANY of this stuff gets into the Google index, it hurts us all. Under our previous policy of letting everything get indexed and then taking down the bad stuff, it means that Google's index had the opportunity to see the bad staff.
    
    Those bad apples spoil it for all of us. Hence, everyone--evenly applied with no favoritism--is subject to the 24 hour index delay--even me, a high level staff member with 45 published Hubs and none of them idle.
    
    In the long run, this will make us all look a LOT better in the eyes of Google.
    
    Additionally, I will add that even the best of writers can't keep 100% out of idle 100% of the time. Every writer has work in their portfolio that is less than the best. Idle is way for HubPages to tell you which work may be dragging down the rest of your sub-domain.

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12. 90

    Sue Adamsposted 12 years ago

    Well, that shut us all up Micki.
    Maybe it's just the terminology of "Idle" hubs that 's putting people off. If HP had called the change "Held for moderation/revision" there wouldn't have been so much fuss about the new feature. I for one support any attempt at weeding out the crap on this site, even my own.

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    1. STAFF

       pauldeedsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       If you look at the legend at the bottom of my account the idle status of hubs that are getting their 24 hour review is referred to as "pending", and if you click on "pending" it says:
       
       The status of Hubs that are new and updated will be established after a 24-hour processing period. Please note that editing any Hubs with a pending status resets the 24-hour processing period.
       
       Perhaps there are ways we can make that more clear, though.  A lot of people probably don't scroll down and look at the legend.

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          Daughter Of Maatposted 12 years agoin reply to this

          I accidentally hit the edit button on a hub that I just published (I was aiming for the one below it) and it completely reset the 24 hour thing. Now that SUCKS! Maybe they need to add a "Are you sure you want to edit this right now?" or "Sorry this hub cannot be edited for 24 hours" message for those of us (like myself) who happen to click too fast!

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          1. STAFF

             pauldeedsposted 12 years agoin reply to this

             When that happens if you don't change anything in the Hub, it should not reset the pending clock (just click done editing or use your back button).  But if you edit a capsule or change the title or something it will.
             
             But, yes, perhaps we will add a little warning.

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             1. 69

                brakel2posted 12 years agoin reply to this

                Thanks to staff for coming on this thread with explanations. I appreciate any help you can provide.

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13. 90

    Sue Adamsposted 12 years ago

    Exactly Paul,  a lot of people don't scroll down and look at the legend.
    
    Perhaps the statement:
    "The status of Hubs that are new and updated will be established after a 24-hour processing period." should also appear in the first paragraph of the "Start a new Hub" page. Then there will be no arguments and disappointments (at least from new Hubbers).
    
    Bottom of "My accounts" page. When you click on the legend for "Idle" you get:
    "Very few people are visiting this Hub right now. While it is fine to leave this Hub as is, consider updating it with fresh, high quality text and media."
    Here you could add "Title Tuning, Summary and Keyword revision."
    
    [b.t.w. the summary capsule should allow no more than 140 characters.]
    
    I still feel that  "Zz & Idle" is negative. "Re-awaken", "Kick up the butt", "Shake Back to Life" or any other more fun, more positive terminology would perhaps not have caused such a major uproar.
    
    Anyway, it's done now. We'll get used to "Zz & Idle", don't worry.

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14. 70

    WriteAngledposted 12 years ago

    So therefore please explain, MIckiS, why I have, in the last 5 minutes, been able to flag a hub, published 2 hours ago, which is an exact copy of another article on the Net, plus a second complete duplicate, which was published 12 hours ago.
    
    Your algorithm seems incapable of picking up 100% duplicates, so I have my doubts that it has any capacity to identify spun stuff.
    
    Yet this is your excuse for why we are all being treated like spammers and cheats!

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15. 78

    Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

    I strongly agree that newly published hubs should not be fettered with a NOINDEX attribute.
    
    Example:  I just wrote a hub on a topic which will be a major news item tomorrow morning. As soon as I hit publish, I Tweeted it and linked to it from a forum post. Since I have established author clout, Googlebot will probably be by within half an hour to crawl the hub.
    
    If it does come, Googlebot will see the NoIndex tag. It will NOT index the page. Then, Googlebot may not return for weeks; why should it recrawl a page it's been told not to index?
    
    Which means that when we first publish on Hubpages, we dare not promote or advertise a new hub in any way, lest Googlebot come by and discover the NOINDEX tag. We can't even risk sharing on social media, because sometimes, Google follows Tweets or other publicly-viewable shares to discover new pages.
    
    If I had published this content on Squidoo, it would be be getting search traffic RIGHT NOW, perhaps several hundred by morning. (But of course, Squidoo doesn't prorate advertising revenue and doesn't pay for a partial month; this was why Hubpages has become my favorite platform for posting on fresh/current/trending content.)
    
    As it is, that hub won't be getting any traffic besides social traffic.
    
    Before, Hubpages was a great site to publish on topical, trending topics, drawing a big intial traffic and earnings spike which would then die down to a low, steady trickle, thanks to the natural links dropped by some of the initial surge of visitors.
    
    Example: For the Mars Landing, I pulled in many thousand visitors during the 48 hours around the landing. Nearly all of those visitors were Google search traffic, since I was posting images as it was happening. The backlinks I got from those initial visitors mean that hub now enjoys a modest but steady trickle of traffic.  If "Idle Hubs" had been enacted then, Hubpages would've lost out on thousands of visitors and quite a bit of ad revenue, and that page might still be struggling to break through on search traffic.
    
    I created this new hub today in order to put the "trending topic" problem to the test, since I wasn't 100% sure whether a pending hub got a noindex tag. I see it does.
    
    For the reasons I explained above, I think this is a problem that needs to be fixed. Reserve "Idle Status" for hubs that have had their chances, and really have gone idle. Don't lump "pending" into the NOINDEX bucket — it cuts off Hubpage's opportunities to rank for fresh or trending search queries.

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       SmartAndFunposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I strongly agree, also. This is big problem for writers and IMHO HP needs to work with us on this. Keep your hard line of ignoring our opinions on other matters but please take some action to resolve this particularly problematic issue.

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16. 78

    Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

    Followup: I gave up and created a semi-asinine Squidoo on the same event -- written from scratch so the textual content was original -- as a test. The hub had better on-page optimization, richer and more thoughtful content, and should've ranked higher on Google's quality ratings score.
    
    I promoted the Squidoo lens with one Tweet. I posted a link to it from a small no-name forum where Squidoo/Hubpages members hang out. That's exactly the same steps I followed yesterday to promote the hub.
    
    Checking Google's cache with cache:url shows the just-published lens is now indexed by Google 33 minutes after publish, whereas yesterday's hub on the same topic is still getting the "not in Google cache" 404 message 16 hours after publish. [Update: first image search traffic from Google has now arrived on the lens, 51 minutes after publish.]
    
    Again, I'd much prefer to be doing this kind of thing on HP, because Squidoo doesn't start paying for ad revenue (i.e. impressions) until the first of the next month, whereas Hubpages starts paying us as soon as we start earning ad impressions/clicks.
    
    Leverage that advantage, HubTeam; it's one thing that makes Hubpages more appealing for pragmatists who consider ROI when deciding which platform to use for publishing.

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17. 78

    Greekgeekposted 12 years ago

    And another followup:
    
    32 hours after the new hub was published:
    PENDING status remains. Google has seen the NOINDEX tag on the hub, and may not come back for weeks, since it now knows that's a page Hubpages doesn't want it to see.
    
    16 hours after the new lens was published:
    48 search engine visits have come by, mostly image search. It's been scooped and gotten a few backlinks. Visitors have clicked on an Amazon module I added as an afterthought (also on the hub) in case anyone looking for photos and info about the topic might also want to buy a video related to the topic.
    Modest numbers, but it shows the potential for ad impressions and sales during an unfolding event.
    
    Conclusion: Before Pending Status was added to Hubpages, Hubpages was absolutely the best place I'd found to publish on newsbreaking, trending, and unfolding events. My best mark so far was over 9 thousand visits in the first day and a half of an event, and I was starting to refine my technique now that I'd figured out HP's great potential here.
    
    Now, it is no longer possible to reap the benefits of posting a timely article on Hubpages.
    
    Remember, once Google crawls a page and determines that it shouldn't be indexed, Google may not be back for weeks and weeks to re-check. Ditto other search engines, which are generally slower at recrawling than big G.
    
    Google strongly favors fresh content. I think you're hurting HP by making it mandatory that Google NEVER SEE fresh content on Hubpages, only stale content. What will Panda make of that?

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    1. 69

       brakel2posted 12 years agoin reply to this

       This is another reason why good writers at HubPages need to publish immediately. I do not know what procedure would work. However, if good writers leave, HubPages would suffer. Maybe staff could reconsider and come up with a procedure that would work. I read about the assumption that all good writers have bad articles once in a while. How bad could they be? I am happy about the views, and appreciate what staff has done to improve the site.

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       IzzyMposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I was just listening to a BBC radio profile about Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com.
       
       It said there that what flung his website to superstardom was breaking the news of the Hudson River plane crash of 2009.
       
       As an avid social network user, Pete saw the Tweets from witnesses and immediately published an article on it, long before the news sites.
       
       Obviously he must have already been in Google's good books, as it was indexed straight away.
       
       With this 24 hour delay, it seems that hubbers would be far better off starting their own sites, even if it is only a free blog, and building up a good standing with Google by publishing regularly.
       
       Then when some big story does break, they are in the ideal position to get first place in Google by being the first to write about it.
       
       Hubpages WAS a great place to write about 'breaking news' or the anniversary of something or other.
       
       With the new 24 hour delay, it now isn't, which can be nothing but harmful.

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18. 90

    Sue Adamsposted 12 years ago

    That's a very valid point. No breaking news stories on HubPages unless maybe some hubbers can see into the future. The only future we see at the moment is slashed views and income.

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