No Articles Grandfathered
This happens: An author who submitted an article 1-2 years ago will update his/her article (most likely they are changing something in the resource box) and then the article gets rejected by one of our editors because the standards that we review with today have risen since the original acceptance.
I wanted to explain why we don’t grandfather old articles: You can reasonably predict that every month the quality standards rise on what we’re able to accept and rather than going back retro to reject previous articles we’ve accepted because they no longer meet a newly updated editorial standard, we apply the new standards to all new submissions and any articles that are edited post-original-acceptance.
Is it fair? Probably not. Are there some gray areas where our editors have a very difficult time being hyper consistent, yes. Do we hear about it every day? Yes, members remind us consistently when they think their article rejection (I prefer non-acceptance) happens… quick to point out prior articles that are similar that we accepted (perhaps even one of their competitors).
For the greater majority, this is a non-issue. Standards will always rise on a very frequent basis and because we re-review every article that is edited as if it were a new article submission…the current standards of the day will be applied.
It actually sounds very fair to me and also a great way to continually improve the overall quality of the site, without having to invest a huge amount of time going back and re-reviewing everything.
I’d have no problems with it if it happened to me, because if I’m a true professional, I’d want my copy to be as perfect as it can be – and if you guys help to improve that, I should be grateful, right?
As for consistency, people are human – different days, different moods, different focuses – it happens, but EzineArticles has been mostly consistent from what I’ve seen.
No complaints here.
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