I don’t want to make too big a deal of this. My interactions with editors over the past few years have been very positive and I appreciate their work. There are some excellent people on the HP editorial staff today.
However, I think there is always room for improvement, suggestions, and constructive criticism. If anyone wishes to chime in on this thread, let’s try to stay on track and constructive.
I recently had an article on one of my other accounts moved from Owlcation back to HubPages. I was initially irked, but after thinking about it, I believe this was not a bad decision.
I received a standard email with vague information I already know about site standards, as well as some possible reasons articles are moved back, which did not seem to apply.
Then they said I could edit and reapply. I'm not sure if I will do that or not, but if I don’t know what you didn’t like, how do I know what you want fixed? Knowing why it was kicked out would help me make that decision.
It is also possible that the editors made a mistake. How can I point that out if I don’t know what they are thinking?
These are not new articles by bumbling new writers that they are moving off the niche sites. In my case, this was an article that has been around for almost a decade, has been edited by staff twice, and was curated and moved to Owlcation when the niche sites launched.
Lack of communication between editors and writers is one of the reasons I initially despised the editing program. It has gotten a lot better over the years, but things like this shouldn’t happen.
Whoever decides the article needs to get kicked off a niche site should take 30 seconds to jot a note as to why. This should be mandatory for editors.
As I said, I have had good interactions with editors lately, and this one incident is an outlier. However, writer morale is currently at the lowest I have ever seen in my 10+ years on this site. When writers feel like they don’t matter—not even worthy of 30 seconds of an editor’s time to explain a rejection – it makes them less likely to contribute new articles, and may even make them leave.
In other words, it makes HubPages a worse place all around. And, as editors, it makes your job harder.
You could choose to make it a better place by taking those seconds to interact with a writer. You never know, it could make the difference between a new writer sticking around and contributing for years. Or, feeling like their work isn’t appreciated and taking it elsewhere.
And you’ll never know what you missed.
In conclusion, I’ll give editors the same piece of advice I joking give my wife when she gets a little grumpy: If you ever aren’t sure how to interact with me, just pretend I’m a person.
I'm fully in agreement with all of your issues here and want to state from the outset that continuing bad treatment of veteran HP writers in particular is an outrage and an insult. I'm lost for words. It's just plain common decency to give a reason for shifting a quality article from a niche site.
Having said that I welcome the editorial work currently being undertaken - I've had dozens of Owlcation articles edited in record time!! - all have been returned to the Owlcation site but I'm keeping a close eye on them, just in case.
HP needs new enthusiastic writers as fresh blood that's true but it also must keep its veterans happy, those who have committed to the cause over many years and have a solid core of quality work, regularly updated, competing at the top for organic traffic.
I'm still confident as a writer on HP despite all the recent turmoil and will continue to produce new articles but it's imperative that HP raises its game when it comes to basic communication. We need it now more than ever.
Thanks very much for posting this view Eric as it is very important as well as have immense value. As somewhat of an outsider looking in, though a member for eleven years now reading the forums daily since becoming a member seeking knowledge, others experience both novice and expert, and encouragement, I seek as all success as a writer earning an income.
I say outside looking in mainly because I have not published anything at all including poetry other than one recently since 2019. But, at one time I had over 200 articles while most are deleted now. Though not successful at gaining traction to be earners, I had enthusiasm with a goal of earning and went for the gusto. Thus, is 'Learning', which is Key to being successful while one weighs criteria for risk assessment of the venture to write or edit an article. In other words is it worth it in the grand scheme of things?
Why? Because it seems a daunting task now-a-days to break the glass ceiling of quality desired by HP. I gain that knowledge not through experience, but reading these forums. Frankly, I have not written an information article since 2017 while do have one on Discover earning a trickle of income, which was the original intent having a supplemental income for retirement much needed.
Just reading about the veterans in the forums with their adventures dealing with their once successful articles being rejected for no known cause other than the generic computer generated shall we say 'excuse' I pause and contemplate this and that.
I am confounded as well as have lost enthusiasm to join the fray of writing once again. At least that is how I feel today. However, seeing the many articles Dr. Mark published recently with his Q&A theme gives both inspiration and pause seeing hope on the horizon.
One thing I notice there seems not to be accountability by the editors. In other words who are they when a rejection is done. The rejection email does not say from what I gather. Does the re-submitted article get reviewed by that same editor who knows why it was rejected? If not, then a whole new subjective perspective would be undertaken by a different editor, though guided objectively by provided criteria. Perplexing!
That alone is daunting to us new writers seeking to break that glass ceiling of quality. Perhaps could be said is overwhelming. First, is the traditional QAP. Next, I would look at the specific criteria of a Niche site for quality, which is very specific. And, of course, adhere to the desired language guidelines provided by HP (Link below). Those guidelines for me of least are overwhelming both not having a natural inclination to the English language rules and such nor an extensive educational background in it.
In other words my view is what is sought by HP are English major graduates of a learning institute, a professional background in a Niche, have great knowledge of SEO, and, of course, creativity especially with article layout with illustrations and such enhancing the article.
HubPages Writing Style Guide
https://hubpageshelp.com/standards/HubP … tyle-Guide
Thanks for the opportunity to both share my view and experience. Apologies for the length. Maybe I should just jump in and swim discovering if I can or not. Yet, having had a 40 year career in the automotive field in several specific areas I have learned having a plan brings greater success. I think the veteran writers here at HP can concur with that and that is one issue today. How do you plan today with at its crux no idea of what HP is both desiring and aiming for in the market place. Or, maybe I got that wrong . . .
I agree with your points about communication but I do want to ask about the Owlcation article.
Was it still getting traffic? I had an email some time back about one of my articles being moved since one of the editors did not like a few facts I had mentioned (personal experience) and did not include a source. I checked the article, saw that the traffic was terrible anyway, and just deleted the capsule the editor was asking about.
Based on your earlier thread about editing, I went back in and tried to heavily edit some of the poorer performers. I noticed a brief improvement but nothing substansial after a week or so. Therefore I am going through and deleting my poor performers and rewriting them so that they will do better with todays Google. When written 8 or 10 years ago a short list may have been okay but now I am including lists of 20 or 30. (I think it is the only way to make them stand out anymore, and they may need to be done again in another 5 or 10 years when they are buried in the competition.)
Maybe we do need to go back and delete, even if some editor years ago decided that it was good enough for a niche site.
Do you think the editor failed to communicate with you because it was a traffic issue? I agree that it still should have been communicated.
Yes, it's impossible to have a specific view on a specific article without a link to the article and some basic statistical info like the views from search engines.
I think you're right (Dr Mark) about doing some drastic rewriting, though I'm not sure whether this has to entail deletion and a fresh start, I've had some great results with just editing/rewriting/expanding existing articles.
While I do delete on occasion, it's always very much a last resort.
I've been writing a lot of new material in recent months (a few hubs per week), in part to see what works and what doesn't nowadays (Paul E often used to pop up and tell us this, but that no longer happens). However, I plan to switch focus back to doing more editing and rewrites soon.
I had one article that went from 50 views/day to 500 thanks to editing.
I've also had a newly published article go from zero to 120 views/day within 2 weeks in recent months.
So there is still hope.
I just wish communications were better, it was always a huge strength of the site. For sure, they've moved away from a "community laissez-faire" approach to more of a "professional publishing with strict oversight" approach, but still...
What are the traffic sources for the article that went from 50 to 500? That is great. I have not seen that sort of increase from Google, so maybe I am not doing something right during editing?
So, here is the story with that article. (I will nutshell as best I can.)
Back when we had subdomains, my strategy was to treat them like little niche websites. I had one sub that was on paranormal phenomenon and other weird stuff.
That "treat it like a website" idea did very well, BTW, before HP kaboshed it all.
When the niche sites went live, that article--and a few others I didn't expect -- went to Owlcation instead of Exemplore for some reason. The intent of some of the articles I wrote was to link to and provide further information on other articles I had written.
But, once the article was separated out to Owlcation, away from the parent article that was on Exemplore, it was kind of pointless.
I've edited it a bunch of times, but it is tough. It is still a good article (I think) but because it was now on Owlcation it had to stand on its own, and it is on a subject where a) there isn't a lot of search volume to begin with and b) a few big mainstream sites already have it covered.
So, yes, it is a traffic issue, I would guess. And that is why I decided it wasn't a big deal that they moved it. It would be nice to know for sure so I don't waste my time.
All that said, I do think it is a good article with images, videos, and sources listed. It certainly wasn't hurting the niche site.
Something seems off. I just received an email saying one of my articles was being moved off a network site as it was not up to standards. It is not my best work and I am not arguing with that but what they say is wrong makes no sense:
photos that are too small (<700px wide)
photos without captions
There is only one photo. It is larger the 700px wide and it has a caption.
If the editors are going to comment on what is wrong they should get it right or maybe we should start editing their emails for correctness.
It was probably the standard email with no notes. Here is what HP staff said "The list of items to consider that appears in the notification email (long walls of text, non-evergreen content, photos that are too small (<700px wide), and photos without captions) are some of the issues that we see most often, but they do not apply to every article that is moved off of a Network Site."
The most likely reason your article was moved is lack of traffic. What is the traffic for the last month?
You are right the traffic is low. I just wish they included that as one of the reasons instead of boggling my mind trying to figure out where there was a too small picture without a caption.
Maybe TAG have a policy that Hubpages staff should interact as little as possible with writers (Sort of like Star Trek's Prime Directive). Or possibly there's no longer a Hubpages team and it has merged or is remote controlled by TAG, with just editors and Matt remaining to keep the site ticking over? Or else they're so overwhelmed and short staffed, they haven't time to interact with us. We can only speculate.
I am always up for a good conspiracy theory.
Unfortunately, I think the likely truth is much more depressing.
Eric, I can surely understand what are you feeling like. I had an article about winter sports on SkyAboveUs, the article stayed featured on skyaboveus for more than 14 months, and it generated a lot of traffic during the season. But, a few weeks ago, I received an email from HP stating:
To maintain a high level of quality on SkyAboveUs, we routinely look through articles and assess if they still meet site standards and receive organic search traffic. We have reviewed your article, 5 Winter Sports That You May Not Have Heard Of, and, unfortunately, the article does not meet these criteria. It is incredibly important to the health of our Network Sites that all articles are high quality and receive organic search traffic. Therefore, we are moving your article back to the HubPages domain.
However, don't fret; your article has the opportunity to move back to a Network Site with significant improvements. If you'd like your article considered for a Network Site, we recommend editing it and resubmitting it for consideration. Before you begin editing, we also recommend that you visit the editorial policy of the Network Site where you wish your article to live. You can also take a look at our Hubpages Help articles on creating great content and increasing traffic.
Thanks for writing on HubPages, and let us know if you have any questions!
Kindly,
The HubPages Editorial Team
I'm not sure why that happened... If they say it's due to a lack of traffic, I'm wondering how many people search for winter sports in the summer
I feel editors should think twice before making such moves, as my article was ranking on the first page of Google.
Best wishes to you!!
Same happened to one of mine . I'm not on here a lot due to personal reasons but my work is my work. And when I'm told that something's going back to her pages because it's not up to par I need to know exactly what you're talking about. And that doesn't happen. I've been on her pages for a lot of years. And as I said I don't come back here as much as I would like to because I just can't. I think it's a great way to share ideas and make friends with other people that enjoy sharing their ideas with writing but I also feel like I'm being chased away because somebody new comes in with some new way to say something. Not a slam. Just that's how it is these days. It's like my voice can't be my voice it has to be the voice or the perception or the new way of looking at things of somebody else. I maintain if it ain't broke don't fix it.
The editors clearly need to take drastic action, given the site's problems with Google, which means a lot of editing and some articles being moved out of the niches.
That said, it can be difficult to understand why certain decisions are/were taken. The process is often opaque and that's where the frustration tends to be, certainly in my case.
Since the Penguin update, the standards have become more and more difficult to meet, but the direct explanations/instructions given by HP are often vague, or even non-existent (a generic, general explanation for a rejection is good for nothing).
I rely mainly on looking at what's made it to the niches to figure out what's required nowadays, as HP advice via Help, Official Announcements, newsletters, forum comments etc. can be thin on the ground.
I am consistently get my new articles into the niches at the moment, but I've been through patches where I was getting rejected and had articles moved and it's very disillusioning. It takes a lot of work to write and maintain articles and I just wish the system was less opaque.
That's my main frustration nowadays, really, there's less meaningful communication happening.
I just read this comment from HP staff on Rupert's thread 'Owlcation Edits,' and I'm posting the link here. Hoping that folks on this forum may find it helpful. However, the response from the staff did not satisfy me enough; maybe we can discuss it further.
https://hubpages.com/forum/post/4251545
I saw it and responded. I totally get what they are saying, and in most cases I agree with them. But not when they remove articles from the niche sites.
That was informative giving a hint what they are doing with somewhat of a why. Thanks for sharing.
You have posted an issue I had always wanted to voice out (here on forum or send an email to the editorial team). I had three articles moved from two niche sites. I was told that I should update an article so it can remain current with the present political situation in my country. I was given 60 days. I didn't edit it because I was defeated how to make it remain current. So it was moved. That was understandable. With the current political status in my country, I know which areas to update to make it remain current.
However, two articles were moved from a niche site. I was provided with probable reasons why they're demoted to Hubpages. Like you said, I didn't know what they lacked that resulted in them being moved from the niche site. Did they contain grammatical errors? Misspelled words? I had to do my research to find out. I learned they're were moved back to Hubpages because they received less than 10 views monthly. I agree they should specify the reasons why an article was moved from a niche site so it can be easier to work on the article to meet the editorial standards of a particular niche site. Saying it doesn't meet editorial standards doesn't make sense nor saying we should refer to the editorial standards of a vertical site. Reading through the editoria won't disclose to a hubber why an article was moved.
And like you said, I have had a warm relationship with the editorial team. In 2017, an editor told me an article of mine had the capability of gaining more views. She worked on the article by adding content which could translate to writing a new article. I was impressed with the lot of work she put on the article. Since then, the article has been receiving more than 500 views a day.
The automaticity of editor feedback is frustrating. On more than one occasion, I have a bullet point saying the word count needs to be 800 or more. Each article was well over 1500!!!! I call them on it by sending an email, and it does no good, superficial at best, nada.
It seemed more personal and willing to make it better in the past, "How can we fix this?"
It seems the teamwork is gone. With that, I wonder who the customer is and who is the owner? Are the writers the customer? TAG is making money off our articles. It's as if we are paying them for a service, and the service sucks.
It also seems that Matt says how they can only do so much, blah, blah. What about service? What about respect?
Or HP needs to be more transparent. So we have a better understanding of what is happening.
by Cholee Clay 6 years ago
I'm curious if anyone knows if the new editors that were hired have completed the training and are on their own now, or if article standards have changed for some reason? The last few months I've had some very old and not updated articles moved to niche sites. I'm happy more of my articles are...
by Sarah Spradlin 7 years ago
I pretty much have the same amount of traffic everyday but last week 5 of my hubs were moved to niche sites and since then I've has less half the traffic as normal. What could cause that?
by Glenn Stok 7 years ago
I noticed that hubs in niche sites no longer include the "More by this author" section below the hub. Is this just an oversight or was it a decision to drop it on niche sites?
by Misbah Sheikh 2 years ago
Hello Beautiful souls,I currently have 161 featured articles on HP. The majority of them are already on Network sites. A few of them have been in the editors' queue for about 9/10 months. Actually, there were more than 161 articles. Over the course of two months, I deleted nearly ten of my...
by Michael Kismet 3 years ago
I already have a number of hubs moved to the Hubpages network sites, but haven't really seen a drastic traffic change in said hubs. So, is it worth the risk to submit one of my hubs that already receives a decent amount of daily views to a vertical site?I'd hate to see aforementioned hub drop in...
by Cholee Clay 6 years ago
I have an article that an editor has made substantial changes too. Including adding a bio that they wrote themselves. I have not seen an edit this bad in quite some time on one of my articles, and I do not want to go through the whole article and rewrite half of it. I've already spent countless...
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