Another Article Moved Back to Hubpages

1. 96

   eugbugposted 11 months ago

   Reasons given were:
   
       Long walls of text
       Non-evergreen content
       Photos that are too small  (<700px wide)
       Photos without captions
   
   None of these apply, so I've asked for clarification. This is the article:
   
   https://discover.hubpages.com/sports/Ho … mple-Guide

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      SerenityHaloposted 11 months agoin reply to this

      I’m more concerned that this form letter has been rampant and the pro or basic HubPages editing seems to no longer be a thing.
      
      Also, I’ve had some articles that were completely changed from editors that are getting the demotion letters.
      
      It’s annoying, that’s for sure. I’d love for these niche sites to take themselves more seriously, but the news sections that are very long on the homepages are not news but clickbait nonsense… and in some niches they have predictable titles: “Man does this” or “Woman does this” …
      
      I find the “news” sections and the interrupting ads at HP make for a clogged up experience.

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         AliciaCposted 11 months agoin reply to this

         I had a hub demoted recently. I understood about the walls of text and corrected the situation. The article was then moved to a different niche site. I’m puzzled about why the editors are so concerned about individual articles, though. The “clickbait nonsense” on the homepages is far more serious!

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            SerenityHaloposted 11 months agoin reply to this

            The clickbait stuff definitely isn’t helpful. I feel like the writers they have for that could be trained in another direction to come up with something more sensible. I also don’t like how high up it is on the niche sites.
            
            A lot of it is just TikTok stuff and very word salad like. It appeals to a very limited social media crowd. This seems to be what HP wants, but I think it’s the wrong direction.
            
            The article that you did fix—did you submit it through the two week submission process or send an email?

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               AliciaCposted 11 months agoin reply to this

               I sent it through the two week submission process. I’ve just had another one removed from a niche site. I will be angry if I edit this one and they won’t let me submit it until two weeks are up. An editor thought it was good enough for a niche site when I first wrote it. I always try to create good articles.

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                  SerenityHaloposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                  That’s one of the annoying parts of the demoted articles. They pile up and you can’t do much about it for two weeks unless they give you wiggle room to quick submit it. Sometimes an editor tells you exactly what you need to know to fix it. I also wish there was a tier between Discover and the rest. I get that some articles don’t really fit a niche anymore, but some articles are higher quality than Discover.

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      WriterJanisposted 11 months agoin reply to this

      Just wondering, what is your word count?

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      1. 96

         eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

         709 words, but they could have mentioned that if that's the problem. On these sort of articles, I think it's better to keep them short and sweet. What's the point of adding lots of waffle when something can be explained simply in fewer words? I've asked Google and Danny Sullivan several times about word count and whether there's an exception for these sort of guides, but never got a reply. He has come back occasionally, but I've probably pissed him off with all the nagging and questions.

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2. 89

   Jodahposted 11 months ago

   I read your article, and none of those rerasons seem appropriate.

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3. 96

   Eurofileposted 11 months ago

   The only thing I have noticed is the overlaid text on your first illustration. It seems that HubPages are keen to get rid of this. I spent time, as a relative newbie on HubPages, folliwing a more experienced hubber's suggestion, adding title text to my opening illustrations. I was told that was how to generate interest on Pinterest. I am now going through gradually removing the inlaid text on my opening illustrations. At an editor's suggestion I have added a Pinterest friendly image at the end of articles. Other than that, I agree, I can not see where you are falling short and why your article has been moved.

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4. 96

   Rupert Taylorposted 11 months ago

   It's likely most of us have received that form letter when an article is demoted to Discover. That's all it is - a form letter, and often irrelevant to the content. I've had issues with editors over booting articles off network sites and, as I understand it, in someone's judgement the piece is not getting enough views. As always, it's all about the money.

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5. 96

   eugbugposted 11 months ago

   I moved the furniture around a bit and shifted some photos so there's the max of three in a row instead of four. I didn't add any more content. Then I resubmitted it to Dengarden this time instead of Skyaboveus. I think the real reason it was moved to Discover was because of the low traffic.

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   1. 89

      Jan Stepanposted 11 months agoin reply to this

      Demoting an article for low traffic is stupid since it won't pick up any more traffic on Discover. Or am I missing something?
      
      I think editors should have the freedom to adjust such articles in the promise of them being kept on niche sites.
      
      It would lower our worries about articles suddenly being demoted and give HP space to adjust them to their liking (which I have zero issues with as long as it's my name associated with the piece).

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6. 96

   eugbugposted 11 months ago

   The photos were low resolution because I took them with my older camera 11 years ago and cropped them so the section of interest fills the screen. However they're perfectly fine for what they're intended for. I checked the article on my phone too and they look fine there also. They're stretched to the width of paragraph text. They take a minute to load because of the slow network sites, but that's another issue. There's also lots of white space with no ads. What's all that about? My worry now is that there'll be a witch-hunt where editors move back articles because they stick to rules and don't consider whether the minimum resolution is really necessary (which it isn't if readers aren't going to zoom into an image because there's no detail to see anyway) Zoom doesn't work on the network sites anyway as far as I remember. It just stretches images without showing extra resolution. I can upscale the images to increase the pixel size and that may satisfy them (if they work to the rules and see the images have changed resolution to what they've been told is ok in their guidelines). However it's a waste of my time and it would take forever to retake all the photos, most of which I took myself. For instance in a troubleshooting guide, I might have to dismantle an engine to retake the photos.

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7. 96

   eugbugposted 11 months ago

   Here's an example of the whitespace.
   
   
   

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8. 95

   Glenn Stokposted 11 months ago

   Eugene, I see three problems with your main image that could be the reason for removing that article from the niche site.
   
   1. It’s only 548 pixels wide. The smallest they require is 700px, although 1200px is preferred.
   
   2. It’s not landscape, which is also a requirement for the niche sites. HubPages now wants the main images to be 16:9 aspect ratio, or close to that.
   
   3. Finally, the main image should not have text overlay.

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   1. 96

      eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

      A lot of the other images are around 535 pixels wide Glenn, but that's because they were cropped. There's nothing much I can do about it now except either retake the photos or upscale the pixel size. I think that may satisfy editors, but obviously it won't improve detail. I think editors are only interested in numbers though. Would they really evaluate the quality and sharpness of images on a large monitor? What annoys me though is the stock email with lots of possibilities about what could be wrong, instead of identifying the problem specifically. Only one of the four suggestions applies.

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      1. 95

         Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

         They all need to be at least 700 px. If you want, I will be glad to fix them for you.
         
         In addition, You also need to correct the formatting of the subtitles. The four main subtitles are H2, which is correct. But you made the individual steps (Step 1, Step 2, etc.) under each of the four Knot examples also H2. They should be H3.

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            eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

            Thanks, but I'm able to do that no problem. I'll fix those subtitles. I might sharpen the images too after upscaling to make it seem as though they have higher resolution. The thing is, the sites stretch the images anyway to the same size as paragraph text, if they're below a certain resolution, so I'm not sure why there's a problem?

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               Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

               When they stretch it, the resolution could be lost. Yes I know you can do it too.
               
               For the fun of it, I did this with your first one. Here is your "Overhand knot" I re-made as 1200px by 600px with high resolution.
               
               
               
               And better for landscape presentation...
               
               

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                  eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                  I've noticed that the images on Discover and presumably the other network sites are only 760 pixels wide. In the Hubpages editor in view mode, it's possible to view them at full resolution (1200 pixels wide for my uploaded images) by right clicking and opening in a new tab, then clicking to zoom. So I'm not sure why they want 1200 pixels wide images if they limit them to 760?

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                     Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                     What you see depends on the size of your screen. If one has a wide screen, 1200 px  is helpful to fill the same width as the text. But smaller images will not fill from left to right.
                     
                     To answer your other question about how to get the full size image, you can download the original image by going to your “photos” tab in your account. Click the image you want and then click the “here” link when you see: “The full-size original image is available here.”

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                        eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                        I'll try that. There's still an issue though with full pixel image resolution being shown on network sites. I have my screen set to 1920 wide, so my 1200 images in the knot  article should be 0.625 times the width of the screen. Instead, they're around 0.38 times the width. When I'm in the editor in view mode, the full image resolution is shown. (Option 5 in my list)

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                        1. 95

                           Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                           I’m not sure what you mean. 0.38 times the width means your images are displayed as roughly 1/3 the screen's width. That’s not what I’m experiencing. When I view any of the niche sites, my images expand to the same width as the text.
                           
                           In addition, I have experimented with dragging the width of the browser (Safari in my case), and the image size changes dynamically to fill the width.

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                              eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                              That doesn't happen for me with Firefox. I'll add a screenshot later.

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9. 93

   paolaenergyaposted 11 months ago

   I have had a bunch of hubs demoted, too. I wonder about word count, though, as the top right corner in drafts always suggests a minimum of 800 words. I've noticed that adding good captions to pictures really helps with word count when you don't want to use filler text in the main article.

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10. 96

    Gregory DeVictorposted 11 months ago

    During 2022, I had five articles moved from ToughNickel back to HP. Yes, each of the articles needed to be edited in order to bring them up to date. However, the primary reason for the demotion was probably because the articles were not receiving much traffic. I wonder how many daily, weekly, or monthly page views are needed to keep an article on a network site. Maybe that's an HP secret.

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11. 96

    eugbugposted 11 months ago

    Is there a way of determining the size of the original uploaded image? There are various resolutions, depending on how an image is viewed:
    
    1 In the editor in edit mode
    2 In the editor in view mode
    3 In the editor in view mode after clicking on an image
    4 In the editor in view mode after right clicking on the image and opening it in a new tab
    5 Clicking the image in the new tab to zoom it. This produces the greatest dimension of image. Is that the raw size?
    6 Viewing the image live on a network site.
    
    There's no option to click or tap and zoom on network sites and resolution is worse than in view mode in the editor. I've asked a few times in posts about new feature suggestions whether this can be changed, allowing readers to see more detail in an image, e.g. annotations. On a mobile device, doing the two finger thing only stretches the image, but doesn't show detail that was present in a higher resolution image that was originally uploaded.

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12. 96

    FatFreddysCatposted 11 months ago

    They moved at least a dozen of my old Spinditty articles back to Discover this past week. I'm not even gonna bother trying to re-edit them to get them back up, cuz they're old bread anyway. One of them was almost ten years old. I'd say it had a good run.

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       PaulGoodman67posted 11 months agoin reply to this

       Yes, I always make an assessment as to whether it's worth putting in the effort to try and get them back into a niche, and in many cases, I say nope!
       
       Over a dozen articles is a lot, though. I think they might be intensifying efforts as nothing's worked so far!

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          SerenityHaloposted 11 months agoin reply to this

          I think ultimately they don’t know what to do… and they’ll probably try everything before changing up the ads.

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       PaulGoodman67posted 11 months agoin reply to this

       Keith - There's a guy called Rui Alves who has a publication called Rock n Heavy over at Medium, if you ever wanted to try the heavy rock rejects over there...

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          FatFreddysCatposted 11 months agoin reply to this

          Thanks for the tip. I have a Medium account but I've never done much with it (mostly cuz I'm too cheap to pay for a "membership")...

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             PaulGoodman67posted 11 months agoin reply to this

             It wasn't necessary to be a member in the past in order to publish and earn.
             
             However, they're changing the rules (beginning Sept 1st, I believe), so that you have to be a member in order to earn.
             
             It may be worth publishing before the rule changes begin. The effort involved in copying and pasting and then deleting the original would be minimal. You're right in Rock n Heavy's ballpark.
             
             That said, I don't know if you're in the payment program and so able to earn, it depends on when you joined Medium as the rules keep changing. (Being in the payment program is a different thing to being a paid member).
             
             When I joined Medium, there were no restrictions on joining the payment program. I did choose to become a member too so that I could read what others were doing but I have always earned way more than $5/month fee.

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                Jan Stepanposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                I still have a feeling that Medium is a short-lived thing. I don't know exactly why, but it just doesn't feel like it's something that will stick and work in the future.
                
                Even though HubPages has its issues, I still feel like it's a place to be. I guess time will tell if putting effort into making it work here was worth it. I sincerely hope that it will.

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                   Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                   Jan, I feel the same as you about the comparison between Medium and HubPages.
                   
                   Medium requires continuous work publishing new content to keep earning since older content stops being seen by subscribers after a while unless you add new content to keep their attention.
                   
                   The benefit of HubPages is that old articles continue receiving earnings from organic traffic many years later.

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                      Jan Stepanposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                      Yes, that's exactly what I think as well, Glenn.
                      
                      HubPages provides the chance to earn passively if one creates stunning articles and has a bit of luck with ranking.
                      
                      Medium requires constant writing and active nurturing of one's fanbase to keep the earnings alive.

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                FatFreddysCatposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                I checked out that Rock N Heavy page on Medium, and if I understand it correctly, I need to be a paid "member" in order to submit pieces?
                
                If that's the case, then... pffft. Fugeddaboudit.

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                   Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                   Keith, You can submit articles on Medium even if you don't have a paid subscription. But you can't join that payment program to earn from your views unless you are a paying member. That new method replaces the old requirement of having at least 100 followers.

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                      FatFreddysCatposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                      Oookay... then I guess I am too dumb to understand how to submit to a "publication" there, cuz I just spent fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to submit to the "Rock N Heavy" pub mentioned above, and I got nowhere.
                      
                      Sooo, as a wise man once said, "f*ck it for now" because I'm outta patience and might have had a few too many beers this evening ...

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                         Glenn Stokposted 11 months agoin reply to this

                         I know you feel like giving up with submitting to a pub, but allow me to reply with some guidance anyway. To submit to any Medium publication you need to first be accepted as an author. Each pub has their own guidelines for that, and it can be a nuisance finding the method sometimes. Many pubs don’t put that in an area where it’s easy to find. You just need to look for it.
                         
                         Some pubs put a tab on top that stands out as being the guidelines for submissions. But others might have an article explaining how to sign up as an author that is lost way down in the list of content.
                         
                         I know it’s frustrating, especially since there is no common method to register as an author. But once you are accepted by any particular pub, you’ll see its name when you click the three dots on top while editing, and selecting “Add to publication.”

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13. 96

    FatFreddysCatposted 11 months ago

    Side note:
    While I've been responding to posts in this thread and putting up two new articles this evening, I've received at least a half dozen more of those dreaded "Heads up! Your Article Has Been Moved From a Network Site Back to HubPages" e-mails.
    
    (SIGH)
    
    Stuff like this kinda makes you wonder if it's even worth continuing with this platform, am I right?

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       PaulGoodman67posted 11 months agoin reply to this

       I had one article that was rejected by HP make a couple of hundred at Medium.
       
       I don't blame HP for rejecting it. I think the article was basically sound but just wasn't suitable for HP. Medium was a better fit for it.
       
       That was an extreme case and doesn't generally happen. But it shows that it's possible.
       
       Some of your writings about obscure heavy rock bands and albums aren't going to get much traffic at HP, so are destined to get kicked out of the niches. Just the subject matter alone makes them vulnerable given that HP now uses traffic as a criterion.
       
       It's possible that the rejected articles may do better at a publication that specializes in heavy rock was my thinking.
       
       I don't see these issues as HP vs. Medium. It's more about finding the best fit for individual pieces of work.
       
       Generally speaking, there are really only two viable options for writing success that I'm aware of:
       
       1. You cater your work entirely toward the requirements of a specific publication/platform.
       2. You write what you want and then try to find a suitable publication/platform.
       
       I generally do #1 but will sometimes skip to #2 when needs must. A rejected article is pretty much useless, as far as earnings go.

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          SerenityHaloposted 11 months agoin reply to this

          This is solid advice. I wish I had more to add, but I just wanted to note that this is smart and practical.

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14. 96

    eugbugposted 11 months ago

    I'm not getting this article moved back to a network site. There's a requirement that I have to add more knots and maybe videos. I think photos are better than videos for this sort of thing. There's another more recent article on Skyaboveus that has taken the knot tying position in SERPS, so I won't rank anyway. I think I might unpublish it and move it to my blog so it could bring in the 8c I've been waiting for for a couple of years to get Adsense payout.

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15. STAFF

    Angel Jenningsposted 11 months ago

    Hi eugbug,
    
    Thank you for bringing up these concerns. We’ll take another look at your article.
    
    The email you receive when an article is moved back to HubPages indicates the reason for the move is that the article either does not meet current site standards or receives low traffic. Long walls of content, photos that are too small, etc., are merely suggestions for potential improvements to consider and are not necessarily reasons why your article was removed from a network site.
    
    I understand that receiving an email that seems like it’s irrelevant to your article might be frustrating. I will take a look at the language in the email to see if there are any additional helpful or clarifying points we can add.
    
    Take care,
    Angel

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       eugbugposted 11 months agoin reply to this

       Thanks Angel. Hayley already contacted me about it yesterday and suggested the changes that should be made. I don't know whether you were aware of that? The Google Site Diversity thing however will likely prevent more than one result appearing in SERPS per domain and there are several new knot articles on Skyaboveus. That's why I suggested moving it to Dengarden where there are none. The knots explained are particularly of use for garden and tool applications.

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