Oh_Enough_Already: Meh, I've seen REDLIT links go green later on when 40 submitted them (with no improvement whatsoever on the headline) proof positive that the rules get bent for him. (Once RED things are supposed to STAY RED).

Hell, it's their site they can do what they wish but allowing everybody to falsely believe that the link approval process is an even-handed one is fundamentally dishonest.

Yeah, he's got 10,000 greens but lets see if he could do the same starting fresh today with a new login that has no clout and a non-TF account.

Don't hold your breath . . . .

/not impressed by Barry Bonds either.

Normally, I just let this sort of nonsense go, but I'm going to respond because you're speaking as some kind of authority on a matter that you have no real knowledge of.

On some occasions, a link that was redlit is later green. This has nothing at all to do with who submitted it, but rather it's a link that got a lot of +1 votes and another admin liked it and decided it was overlooked by accident. There is no consideration made for who submitted it. Not sure where you're coming from when you say, "Once RED, things are supposed to STAY RED." It smacks of an authoritarianism that really doesn't exist from Drew or any of the admins/mods, and I've met every one of them.

Hell, it's their site they can do what they wish but allowing everybody to falsely believe that the link approval process is an even-handed one is fundamentally dishonest.

It is. I know because I do it. I have to pass up some great headlines sometimes because they're repeats, or I miss some great headlines because I miss the cultural reference. I select links if the headline is funny or if the link is sufficiently interesting. That's it. No more, no less. Your assertion of "fundamental dishonesty" would be irritating if it weren't so easy for me to dismiss.

Hey, Drew, can I have a thread when I hit 10,000 rejected submissions next year?

Oh_Enough_Already: In Fark parlance I've "gotten over it" it just bothers me that the green approval process is not what they lead people to believe it is.

Please explain for me exactly what the greenlighting approval process is. I'm eager for you to explain to me how I pick links.

I have a question:

Why you mods see the headlines, do you see the submitter behind them?

*when

treesloth: Unfreakable, is the name of the submitter readily visible when you're deciding what to approve?

Not "readily" but I can see it if I look for it. The information is available to me, but I don't really have time to bother looking for that when I'm trying to read through 150-300 headlines.

GoSurfing: I have a question:

Why you mods see the headlines, do you see the submitter behind them?

I'm able to find that out, yeah.

Unfreakable: treesloth: Unfreakable, is the name of the submitter readily visible when you're deciding what to approve?

Not "readily" but I can see it if I look for it. The information is available to me, but I don't really have time to bother looking for that when I'm trying to read through 150-300 headlines.

What about whether it comes from a liter or TFer? Just curious, since approval processes are being detailed.

Unfreakable: GoSurfing: I have a question:

Why you mods see the headlines, do you see the submitter behind them?

I'm able to find that out, yeah.

So are you able to see how that might not be fair---how you might be partial to give the green to a totalFarker rather than a liter?

How you might be partial to give the green to the popular ones around here?...

Now it is really a joke to me, it really is just a big circle jerk.

Broz_Tito: Get a life 40below.

This

Plus could you do something about the headline font in the threads? It's too small and I can't read it.....

When Jeff was an admin he said he knew when scanning the queue which submissions were from TFers and used that as a tiebreaker. I think the username is listed too, but I don't recall for sure.

Oh_Enough_Already: How/why/etc when a few days later the same freaking story goes green (even though it's statistically impossible that the now green story was the original redlit one being "rediscovered" rather than merely being from a favored submitter) is proof positive that the fix is on.

Drew said in an interview earlier this year that he is happy with a minority of users generating the majority of the content and he lets some people resubmit rejected links with better headlines.

Not that it's hard to get around the duplicate filter in most cases. To some degree it's a speed bump to prevent queue flooding by users who don't know everything that's been submitted this week.

I usually consider it poaching to submit a story I wouldn't have found elsewhere before the admins have redlit the first link I saw. After that it's fair game.

Me: What was the last bid?

Bob Barker: 40below

Me: I'll bid 41below, Bob!

/I'm not jealous
//is proud of mah 2 greens
///need more greens ...
////I has a sad ...
//but teh slashies make me happy!

Oh_Enough_Already: Then do away with the "was submitted on such and such date and was NOT listed" prompt when submitting links.

It infers, quite motherfarking clearly, that a submission will not be accepted as it was already rejected, hence a REDLIT link.

How/why/etc when a few days later the same freaking story goes green (even though it's statistically impossible that the now green story was the original redlit one being "rediscovered" rather than merely being from a favored submitter) is proof positive that the fix is on.

You simply can't argue otherwise.

Furthermore, as another poster mentioned, the fact that some people get their submissions INSTANLY and I mean INSTANTLY non-approved is also proof positive that there is some automation involved in the rejection process.

If/when automation exists in the rejection process then so to it is likely it exists in the acceptance process, i.e. "When From 40Below = Green."

Show us a list of his 500,000 REDLIT submissions and you might have a point.

But, calculating how many he has per day being a percentage of the total he must submit to get that number and the time it would take to do that it's quite obvious that he doesn't face the same measure of screening (if any) before his links are greened.

Argue against it all you like, sir but it's all simple math plains as the nose on your face.

The evidence, both anecdotal as well as statistical that things are not what they seem is simply too overwhelming to be dismissed however ardently you may try to do so . . . .

The filter against repeat submissions was originally implemented to cut down on people submitting the same links over and over. It's useful when the link's been greenlit, but with so many different new outlets, it's usually not difficult to find the same story elsewhere. Some tech-savvy submitters occasionally find ways to get around that. It's frowned upon. I can and will argue otherwise, because before I was an admin I was a regular submitter, and I discovered a way to do it.

There is no automated process for redlighting and greenlighting links. It is always done manually by one of the link-picking admins. Cling to your conspiracy theory if you must, but know that it's wrong. If there was an automated process, the queue would never get huge like it does on occasion when an admin isn't available. And all of the links would be picked as they came in. It would be convenient, frankly. I don't know why the other poster's headline was redlit, but the odds are good that it was either a previously greenlit story or the headline just wasn't quite good enough. It happens to everybody who submits.

I won't bother you or anybody else with an exhaustive list of anybody's redlit submissions, but when I did well I got about 5 greenlights out of 30 submissions, which is an approval rate of about 17%. I did a bit better on weekends because fewer people submitted, but it was workable, and when I was on a roll I could get 7-8 greenlights. Any regular submitter here will tell you that it's a numbers game. You put a lot of links out there, and you get into a rhythm. Regular submitters have a few advantages over other people submitting here. First and foremost is numbers: they put more out there, and that increases their chances. Also, regular submitters tend to read through the previous day's headlines so that they don't waste time submitting a story that was already greenlit. There's also a certain rhythm with anybody that submits a lot. Google news alerts make it easy to find obscure stories that aren't on the main page of any websites. Five greenlights a day is nearly 2000 links in a year. That's not an impossible number to achieve at all, it just takes dedication.

Then again, if you won't listen to me--and I do this every day--I have a feeling that you're much more comfortable with your belief, wrong as it is. And you're welcome to it, for as long as you wish to fool yourself.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: What about whether it comes from a liter or TFer? Just curious, since approval processes are being detailed.

I am also able to look that up if I want to bother.

GoSurfing: So are you able to see how that might not be fair---how you might be partial to give the green to a totalFarker rather than a liter?

How you might be partial to give the green to the popular ones around here?...

Now it is really a joke to me, it really is just a big circle jerk.

I answered the question honestly. I'm able to look it up. I also stated that I didn't bother. I don't pick links based on the submitter.

2) What's with the insta-reject? I explained higher up what happened to me.

When I see that I figure the headline caught an admin's eye for whatever reason. Once the admin is looking at the link he might as well green or red it right away to save work.

chimp_ninja: It's all clear now.

Denying the obvious conflict of interest is obvious.

tricycleracer
Of the top 100 submitters all-time:

Mean = 1178.44
Std. Dev = 1171.28

40Below is over 7 standard deviations above the mean.

It's highly-doubtful that this is the handiwork of one person.

/Amateur skeptic & statistician.
//I have no idea what I'm talking about.

That's only the case if you assume a normal distribution, whereas I suspect (although we only have 100 data points which were not randomly sampled.) It is much more likely that the data is exponentially distributed, i.e. the percentage of submitters who have achieved some cutoff number of greenlights decreases exponentially as that cutoff is increased. That's also far from favoritism; even once I had accumulated a large number of greenlights, I was barely doing any better than when I was a liter with only a handful of greenlights. I was slightly more successful only because I got better at figuring out what admins wanted.

Oh_Enough_Already

Since you're so big on anecdotal evidence, here's some for you. I started submitting as a liter and I had about a 15% approval ratio from day one. Back when I used to submit large numbers of links on a regular basis, I got up to about a 20% chance of getting a given link greenlit. That's far from auto-approval. If I was a baseball player, I'd be sent to the minors with a batting average like that.

Furthermore, the idea that some people get there links automatically redlit is nonsense. TotalFarkers can see every submitted link. When no admin has been through in a while, there's a list of about 100-200 headlines that are neither red nor green, because they haven't been evaluated yet. If some people's submissions were automatically rejected, there would be one or two redlit submissions sprinkled in there, but that's not the case. Yes, sometimes links go red/green within a few minutes of being submitted. That means that the link was submitted right before the admin started going through the queue, so he saw it right away.

bobbarker02: Why are people under the impression that you have to spend your entire life on a computer to average 5.5 submissions a day?

5.5 greens. If he's twice as good as I am he has to submit 20 links to get those greens.

The impressive thing about him is that he's obviously very witty, and has the style of humor we all want to see on Fark down to an exact science.

There's no "we all want." I dislike some of the cliches that get greens. Maybe some are 40below's. Maybe not.

It helps that he works in media and sees a whole lot of news in his job. My job has me seeing stuff like the relative cost of memory barrier operations on different microprocessors, which is a lot less greenworthy.

treesloth: 1) It seems impossible that there isn't some form of favoritism, whether it be to particular subbies, or to TF members (which I see alleged quite often but can't prove), etc. My reasoning is probably sort of naive-- there are a lot of greenlit headlines that are, to be blunt, rather crappy, and there are a lot of redlit ones that are quality-- funny, provocative, etc-- and are linked to topics that aren't greenlit. How does that work? Why does it seem that certain people (and, if my fellow complainers are to be believed, certain groups) that appear to be favored. I don't mean to hold you accountable for our delusions; rather, is there anything behind the scenes that might explain that perception?

2) What's with the insta-reject? I explained higher up what happened to me.

It's a tough call. Sometimes a story is new, and my temptation is to greenlight it right away, but I want to give it time for more headlines to come in that are better quality, so I'll redlight it or leave it alone while I see if there's a better headline down the queue. I've left some headlines alone for over an hour (to the TF submitters who can see it and know it's not red, but not green, I apologize. I know it's torture) with the hopes that a better headline will come in. Sometimes a better one does, sometimes it doesn't. It's a risk to pass on a good Farkworthy story in hopes of getting a better headline. Sometimes a lesser headline gets through. Some of the most brilliant headlines I've seen have been redlit, because they came in a day after we already ran the story. Other times, a better headline didn't come along. Since there are different admins, we each have our own sense of humor, our own likes and dislikes in a headline. If you gave the same queue to each of us, we'd each have a slightly different selection. Even during the Headline of the Year contests, people argue about which headlines are awesome and can't believe that the best headline (their favorite) isn't getting more votes. That's the best explanation I can offer.

I don't know why your previous headline was redlit very soon after it was submitted. No idea.

Okay, gotta leave the thread so I can help get dinner started and get a haircut. Probably not in that order.

I'll be happy to further discuss by email if any of you have questions, if I'm not back in this thread later.