Hey there everybody, I'm a starting brony youtuber/blogger/author and I have been recently alerted of a more unprofessional side to EqD, the fandom's apparent star website. (According to popularity.)

This came soon after my first video, and I would like to make a video on this, but there is one problem.

I can't find hardly anything!

And that's where you come in. I need some evidence to look at and mull over while I myself prepare to ask a few questions of my own, but such proof of misconduct is scarce. If you have any concrete evidence of misconduct on EqD's part, post it here. Even though picture evidence is encouraged, any reports are welcome.

Thanks for the help, and when I get the video done and posted, I'll post the link!

1038245 it's fucking elitist. I look through the reviews that they give various authors when they reject them, and they hardly hold up to one another. Meanwhile, the more popular authors are let in without a second though. Keep in mind, these are popular authors that got popular through EqD, not Fimfic or anywhere else. EqD wants to keep their babies close.

1038260
This. And as for my own two cents: They don't accept Humanized fics, which is about as insulting as it gets to me, considering some of them are more in-character than the pony fics around here.

1038245
For the sake of equity, I'll throw my hat into the ring as an on-and-off pre-reader for the site.

What kind of questions do you/other people have?

1038277

Ackwa, no, you're too young to die.

Their system for judging fanfics is inconsistent and arbitrary. They break their own rules (such as when they made a rule against shipping Spike, and then one of the admins posted a shipfic starring Spike).

They base judgements on their own biased preferences (notably by genre) and reject anything even a little unconventional (I note how my own fic, Stone and Secrets, was rejected because I do not use the word "said" to indicate a character speaking. Apparently implied speech nomination that readers easily understand is beyond EqD.)

They also pass around fics and insult them, and are insulting when they hand something back. One of the EqD reviewers told me to "stop using big words for the sake of them" and to stop "using a thesaurus", which I find to be an irritating and false assumption. Others have had worse.

1038283 I disagree; he's at the perfect age to die!

1038290
Which Spike fic are you referring to, specifically? We established a rule against shipping underage children in the interest of keeping foalcon off the site, but that fic may not have been what we considered to be objectionable treatment of an underage character. I'd really have to look at it myself to make sure.

Also, the overuse/underuse of dialogue modifiers/so-called "saidisms" and excessively complex diction are both valid issues an editor might find with the construction of a story. Granted, each case is unique and subject to personal interpretation, but in general we're fairly consistent with things of that nature, and usually willing to explain our rationale behind counting them as enough to warrant a strike out of three.

1038277

WOW. 7 comments just like that. Did not expect much today.

Anyway, I was referring to questions that I would be asking EqD and its staff, which I would follow up with evidence examples.

1038260
Surely, being the intelligent and well composed person you are, you have proof or examples of this, right? And don't be afraid to ask me about any rejections or acceptances; I have pre-reader emails in my inbox from the date it was started.

1038328
You'll generally find that this sort of group is mostly frequented by people who are either annoyed by EqD's admittedly flawed design and administrative decisions, or by people soured by the way stories are treated. There's really no "proof" for the latter. I'm not saying that our decisions are always correct or perfect, but a lot of story editing is subjective, despite our efforts to keep things as objective as possible. Obviously, people are going to disagree with us on these points. Those people have my respect and I see their opinions as justified.

Other people just try to find things that are wrong because their foalcon gorefic got rejected. Such is the internet.

1038349 I don't have them off hand, but if I felt so inclined I could waste time finding them.

being the intelligent and well composed person you are,

pls alex
alex pls

1038260
In what ways did you notice inconsistency in our review process? We're in the process of improving our communication and infrastructure, so any advice you have to give us there would be much appreciated.

With regard to, as you said, "more popular authors" getting on EqD more quickly: popularity is often (though certainly not always) an indication of previously established quality and adherence to our guidelines. If an author has been published on EqD before, we do tend to give them precedence in the queue, much like a temp agency might be more willing to send out an employee they've worked with successfully in the past. Bear in mind that doesn't make it impossible or even significantly difficult to work your way into that lineup, though.

1038272
For a long time, we've considered humanized fics as being too divergent from established show canon to be commonly accepted as exemplary MLP fanworks. The initial intent was, I believe, to avoid situations like the Twilight fandom, which is pretty famously inundated with fics written about perfectly normal people who only share names and perhaps physical resemblance with their canon counterparts, but in light of Equestria Girls looming on the horizon, we may have to adjust that policy. As it stands, both the established precedent and the survey we put out a few weeks ago indicate that humanized fics don't have a larger enough audience to justify changing our position on them right now.

1038365
You're nonetheless avoiding the challenge to your statement. If you're going to make a pretty assertive remark, at least have the backbone to support it. If you can't, then it would be advised not to make said remarks to begin with, especially if you dismiss it with laziness.

1038351

The purpose of my video is really just to see what's wrong and right with EqD, and why. Anything I can get on EqD is good.

I never really knew until recently about all this stuff that EqD is caught up with. You don't really hear dissent against EqD just out in the open... (At least I didn't)

1038351
Also, I'd like to second this by saying that we're always willing and quite happy to discuss the final points of our verdicts with authors who take the time to bring up their objections. We obviously prefer those objections be phrased in a civil manner, but sometimes that doesn't quite work out. Either way, we do the best we can to identify where we may have been inconsistent and what kinds of things certain pre-readers are more prone to finding objectionable than others.

1038277

Woah, had a brain derp. Didn't catch the last part until now. Don't have any good questions on hand except for one, I'll come back to ya when I've got my stuff together. Didn't expect a EqD Pre-reader to be here!

Question 1: Would you consider at least some EqD pre-readers to be unfairly biased towards submitted fics at times?

1038365

If you do have proof, I would be grateful if you gave some time to find them. It's not waste if it goes to a good cause! (In my humble opinion.)

1038245
Err, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but this entire forum is dedicated to cataloging events and accounts that people see is as reasons to hate Equestria Daily. You could just browse the comments and find a lot of what you need.

1038370

With regard to, as you said, "more popular authors" getting on EqD more quickly: popularity is often (though certainly not always) an indication of previously established quality and adherence to our guidelines. If an author has been published on EqD before, we do tend to give them precedence in the queue, much like a temp agency might be more willing to send out an employee they've worked with successfully in the past. Bear in mind that doesn't make it impossible or even significantly difficult to work your way into that lineup, though

I had a feeling you'd say something like that. While it most certainly is an indicator of previous workability with the site, it still shouldn't be used as a way to push them through the que so easily. It holds a feeling of personal favoritism in my eyes, and the current set up does leave a sort of "well I like it so it goes through and I don't like it so fuck you" type of set up, which I do have several proofs of that happening. Once I get the people who have been sent them to let me use them, I'll post.

1038384>>1038349
You guys too, once I get people to fork over their rejection letters I'll compare them. I already have Dennis the Menace's.

1038428

I'm looking at that too, I just want to get all I can. Sorry if I'm being a nusance!

1038417 refer to 1038433

1038413
Well, I know I'm certainly not a fan of random fics nor shipping, and I'm definitely hard on crossovers moreso than other fics. Because of that, though, I let other pre-readers who are more open to those genres take care of the first two, and it's often been the case that we ask for second opinions on a story if we're not sure our reading was effective enough or remained unbiased. This is far from claiming perfection on anyone's part, of course, but we do try to sort things towards unbiased pre-readers, if such factors do play into the review process.

1038445

Gotcha! Thanks a lot!

1038433
While "favoritism" is a somewhat hyperbolic way of putting it, I won't deny that it's much easier and much less stressful to post work from established writers than it is to dig through all of our new submitters. So yeah, we do like doing that, but excepting a few regrettable slip-ups in communication, we maintain a polite front with any author we reject or accept. And as we've said before, anyone who has a problem with the way their story was reviewed is encouraged to contact us in the moment to get some clarification. Bottling that up and ranting about it here or in a blog post without making any effort to open up a dialogue with the people responsible doesn't help anybody, least of all the people who hate us purely from anecdotal evidence despite never having any experience with us themselves.

1038470 True, I have noticed a fault on the side of the rejectees: They never DO anything about it. Mostly they sit around and bitch about the site and never bother to send feedback with ways to improve the site, mostly because they want a scapegoat to hate. I won't lie, it's fun to hate the establishment, but I plan on making a stronger case then "Oh, well, I just hate you guys."

1038345 makes a fabulous point that no one has adressed at the time of me writing this. The general attitude of EqD also puts me off. I can understand your NSFW rule (even though I still think you should ditch drek like Cupcakes, because "grandfathering" something is a load of crap), and I think that EqD should be a bit more representative of the brony fandom, because they are the so-called leaders of the fandom. EqD is well known and rather popular, and should be willing to encompass the fandom as a whole.

I don't have too much of a problem with EqD, since the one fic I submitted to them was pretty poorly written. I've since rebooted it, tried to keep consistent grammar, and make things a bit more interesting, and I'll be submitting it soon.

What I don't really like about their process is that they don't give much in the way of specific advice when they give you a rejection. I can't give a specific example from my own rejected fic, but I remember it was pretty vague.

Of course, this is understandable, seeing as they don't really have time to give each and every submission an in-depth review of the plot, grammar and flow of the story. I just think that they could put a bit more effort into their advice, if they really care about the quality of the fics they receive.

There are my two bits, for both 1038245 and 1038277

1038413
Well, you've got 3 pre-readers listening now, and I suspect there will be more.

As to your question on bias:
Our queue is open. Any pre-reader can choose any story to review. Obviously, the predominant practice will be for us to choose types of stories that we enjoy. It'll be rare for a pre-reader to take on a story with tags he tends not to like. I don't want to spend my day slogging through a bunch of stories I suspect I won't like, so I'll pick ones I think I'll potentially enjoy, or at least that I can point out to the author how to get them there. That said, we're fully capable of recognizing good writing in stories we don't like. I've supported posting stories that I didn't personally like.

1038315
The diction was not excessively complex, and the "saidisms" were not underused. I know very well that every character is clearly denoted as saying the lines which they speak, in one way or another. If there are several well-known literary masterpieces that find it worthy, then no doubt a simple fanfic should well. I will not deny here that it can be a valid issue, and there is very little anyone can do to make logical arguments anything so subjective, but I will say that after finding a consensus of many individuals that is to the contrary, I do not believe a statement on a subjective matter can rightly be spoken as if it is obvious fact.
And no, I was not actually given any rationale whatsoever on the second-most subjective comment that was made.

Further, overly complex diction is an entirely subjective matter; one of taste, not of fact. I think it would add a great deal if EqD accepted a variety of styles, rather than the limited scope I have seen. Some people like very complex diction, others like very simple, and by allowing everything, you would have something for everyone.

I maintain that it is unfair to call upon me or anyone else to produce the exact example they are referring to when no one keeps track of this (not knowing that it would be relevant is only one reason why it would hardly ever be remembered), particularly when such things have been so abundantly noted.

However, in this case, you have found an exception, in that I am the sort of person who happened to have remembered the example, somehow. I will be the first to admit that I seem to have been wrong in who it was that submitted it. My apologies on that account.

Here's the link to the story: Story: How to Woo Your Lady in Nine Easy Steps

Here's the description:

Story: How to Woo Your Lady in Nine Easy Steps (Update Complete!)

[Shipping] [Comedy]

Author: paleowriter

Description: Spike orders a How-To guide book to win Rarity's heart. Will Spike be able to follow all the steps like a true gentlecolt? Will any of the steps actually work? And just what is Rarity looking for in her friendship with Spike, anyway?

How to Woo Your Lady in Nine Easy Steps (New Chapter 10!)

Additional Tags: Friendship, Romance, Super Confused Rarity

Additionally, the other points which I stated have been left unaddressed.

Here's another story on EqD by the same author, also shipping Spike: Story: Of Age

It's not a challenge to find more of them.

Here's the story that got rejected for shipping Spike (one of many, I should suspect): Spike's Rainbow Dash

Just for kicks, here's the blog post that told me about this, months ago: EQUESTRIA DAILY AGAINST "MINOR" SHIP FICS?

You've also left all the other comments made on this thread totally unanswered. I should expect a better defense when the reviewers nonchalantly debase the hard work of so many authors and ask them to mutilate their creations for the purpose of fitting a slot that will bring their pieces to a broad audience.

P.S.
If anyone is going to do that thing where they make assumptions on my writing based on this comment, I will preemptively say that my tone here is vastly different from the one I use in my fiction writing.

1038444
It's OK this time, sir, since you're making a thread about an upcoming episode of your show. However, when there are at least two other threads on the same forum page with similar titles it would help if you were to rename it. People who would take a look at this normally may pass it over because they think it's a discussion about something they've already gone over before.

For instance, I've already gone into detail about why I don't like EqD in another thread, and don't feel like rehashing the whole sordid story again here, and copy & pasting seems cheap . . . However, I will say, for the record, that them denying All-American Girl because "Nobody wants to read about a 30-something pony mother who was raised by humans and is married to a sailor in 2047" was quite irksome since, you know, apparently me and a few thousand others are "Nobody."

1038351
Eenope, that's not getting by. Not here, not now.

A sweeping truism such as the fact that subjective matters cannot be proven is no argument. Nor is the statement that "people are going to disagree."

It is logically impossible to prove that a story should have been treated differently in an absolute sense, but there comes a line where one must either follow reasonability or throw it aside.
I'm not talking about my fic here, because anyone who has ripped into the thing will tell you that I don't get upset about that.

And if people are soured about a fic that was genuinely mistreated, then they have a right to be soured, and you cannot sweep them under a blanket implication of disagreeability and/or bias.

Hardly anyone ever expects perfection, but if the quality that should be there truly was there, you'd see all sorts of people saying "No, that might have been a mistake, but they're generally good." Thing is, you never do. I literally have only ever seen agreement, and most of it not on this group.

Passing a fic around and telling people beforehand what you think of it is anything but subjective, and it is certainly not professional. When people truly make an effort to be objective, it's visible, in a lot of ways. Those people are defended by others who look for such things.
But the EqD reviewers show none of this.

Oh, and by the way, if you saw these people's opinions as justified, then you wouldn't be speaking the way you are about the matter.

The fact that this group exists among a fandom that prides itself of love, tolerance, and acceptance is evidence of consensus among a large portion of the community as to this discussion, which is the closest you can get to fact in a discussion which is by its nature subjective and which runs rampant with overwhelming potential for bias.

1038527

The diction was not excessively complex, and the "saidisms" were not underused.

This is a perfect demonstration of the subjectivity of literary criticism. It is entirely possible your fic that was deemed perfectly fine by many of your peers was not seen as satisfactory by the pre-readers, and in that case there's really not much me reading your fic would do to change that. The thing is, we operate much like a publishing company does; in other words, there are admittedly certain things we're looking for in stories that other people who aren't in our positions may not be looking for. Us rejecting you for something you and perhaps even many other people don't see as being a problem is not inherently elitist; we hold our submissions to high standards purely because of the sheer volume of them we receive, and the best we can do as far as eliminating bias is employ a wide-ranging team of people with proven expertise and skill with writing and editing stories. There's a point where we can try to determine whether we're being inconsistent, but there's also a fact where the fact may just be that a story doesn't match up to our standards and won't ever without extensive work. There are plenty of subjectively deserving manuscripts rejected from publishing houses for very similar reasons, because it is, for lack of any better method, the way the game works.

I think it would add a great deal if EqD accepted a variety of styles, rather than the limited scope I have seen.

And we love to do that when we can find varying styles to post. However, something like complex diction does not alone define a unique style; rather, a unique and well-executed style may or may not feature something like that as a component of its construction. In general, most fanfic writers are amateurs, so their styles are often very basic and similar due to the fact that they aren't at the level of skill necessary to have developed their own trademark style yet, let alone to pull it off in a aesthetically pleasing way.

I maintain that it is unfair to call upon me or anyone else to produce the exact example they are referring to when no one keeps track of this (not knowing that it would be relevant is only one reason why it would hardly ever be remembered), particularly when such things have been so abundantly noted.

Well, with all due respect, when you're the one making claims such as that one, the burden of proof is most assuredly on you, regardless of how difficult it may be to obtain it. I can't do much with something you can't even prove to me is a real thing.

Thankfully, you seem to have come through in that regard, so I'll address them as best I can. With regard to Spike shipping stories, the key factor is the level of escalation. The two stories that made it onto EqD may have incorporated elements of a Spike/Rarity relationship in it, but to my knowledge those relationships were not fully reciprocal, or at the very least were never made physical. The rejected story, again to the best of my knowledge, depicted a reciprocal relationship between an adult and a minor, and as such was not suitable for posting on EqD.

I apologize for not being able to respond to every comment here (although honestly, I can't see many that no pre-reader has addressed here at the moment); admittedly, it takes a while to thoroughly respond to those comments I can make it to, and I've got a few other things on my plate right now, one of which is actually about to drag me away from this thread for the night. However, I'm sure the other pre-readers in here can answer any follow-up questions you have, or you can PM me at your leisure and I'll get back to you in due time.

1038572
Please stay on topic. If you'd care to provide evidence of such in response to the OP, then do so. This isn't the thread to conduct an ongoing debate on a point you've already expressed.

1038500

even though I still think you should ditch drek like Cupcakes, because "grandfathering" something is a load of crap

Do people still not know we've removed Cupcakes?

It's a privately run blog, not a fandom run blog.

What were you all expecting? Democracy?

Yes, there's favoritism. Yes, there's a touch of elitism. But what do you expect? Perfection? If so please leave.

Bottom line is that EQD is not a finished project it's a constant work in progress. It's been a WIP since Seth first started it as his personal pony blog.

Honestly, I don't mind the pre-readers and Admins much. It's their site not mine. Plus I only joined this group to get critiques explained after I got a rejection notice on a fic.

EDIT: Though I will say a few of the EQD staff can be ponces about clop, but whatever.

1038632 Did you also remove "Spidereseses"?

1038685
Why would we remove the best fic on the site?

1038712
And that's why you're favorite.

1038712 Alex 1, Regi 0

1038712 I do have a legitimate concern if that fic is still up; if not disregard the next paragraph.

That fic shows that EqD goes back on its standards, because last time I checked poorly written trollfics were not allowed. Hell, my edited trollfics were rejected, so I can't imagine for a single lick of time that Spidereses wasn't added upon anything other then a bad joke.

1038804
Wasn't that part of an April Fool's Day bit?

1038840 was it? I had no idea. Shows what I know.

1038804
It wasn't part of April Fools day; it was just a joke we decided to play. Spiderses was a funny mess that was literally unanimously decided upon to get posted. We wanted to have some fun and we did, and since then we've been staying serious about things. It wasn't us "going back on our standards" it was us asking Seth if he wanted to help us have a laugh, and he agreed.

My gripe is the fact that they don't really help people improve in any way after their stories get rejected.

"Many severe errors remain, and this story cannot be forwarded to the pre-readers."

Gee thanks, that will definitely help me improve my writing and try again. I'm not saying I'm miss perfect and I know I have many issues that I'm learning to fix but you could at least tell me where is the problem and what it is.

1038345

I wanted to post my semi-popular story on their site, but couldn't because it had a brony in it and apparently thats not allowed!

We have the "no BiE" rule because the vast majority of BiE fics are very poorly written. It's also one of those rules that can be bent if the fic is really that good, but as far as know, we've never gotten one good enough to merit a post.

oh no you cant do that because its against one of our hundred of ridiculous rules we made up

There are exactly six rules, and only the third one branches out into the content we don't accept.

Their site doesn't allow creative freedom and it thinks itself all high and mighty without the need for any further support.

I think you'll find that the only content we truly censor are those with excessive sexual or violent acts, along with a select few crossovers that are over-saturated. We allow plenty of creative freedom, but you just happened to run into one of the few things we don't allow. Sorry.

They don't apologize

We have, on more than one occasion.

they don't take the potential of a creators work into consideration

Actually, everything we do when reviewing is to make a creator's work better, and polish it into something truly great. We wouldn't be leaving reviews if we didn't want people to improve, so when you say we don't consider a story's potential, not only is it insulting, but it's wrong.

and they don't care for anything but their over inflated egos.

I've yet to hear about a situation where a pre-reader acted as if they were "above" someone because they were a pre-reader.

For as long as I've known about EQD (about a year), I have heard that it is a place that is so strict that nobody can get in unless they kiss some serious ass

If by "kiss some serious ass" you mean "really put effort into their stories" then I can agree with that.

and I will not become a part of that just to validate myself, nor should anyone else for that matter

And no one is forcing you or anyone else to submit your fics to us and be reviewed. Some people are perfectly content with the success they've garnered just from posting on fimfiction, and that's fine. EQD is merely a place to get more traffic to your work.

1038916 Again, though, refer to the "shows what I know" comment.

1039055

There shouldn't be rules that prohibit something to be posted just because the majority is poorly written, it should be read before being blocked if it is something like that...

They are looked at, and if they aren't incredibly good on the first pass, they're rejected.

Why is there a rule of no OC's for art but not videos?

I don't know where you're getting your info from, but this is also untrue. In Drawfriend 816, there are five images of non-canon characters. In Drawfriend 815, there are another five. So uh... there's no rule against OCs being in drawfriends. And, no offense, but the image you linked wasn't posted because it's an OC, it was posted because it doesn't meet the quality standard.

I have never received an apology and neither have any of my friends.

Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. Just because you haven't gotten an apology doesn't mean other people haven't. And what are you even expecting an apology for? We're not going to apologize for rejecting something. That's our job.

You would let them on, see how well they would do, and then take them down if they bombed. Nothing flourishes unless you give it a chance.

That's not how a spotlight website works, sorry.

When I spoke of your 'over inflated egos' I was talking about how you only let 'perfect' material on your site and dont let anything else on.

That is not an over-inflated ego; that is "quality assurance."

Because unless you have supernatural skill in your craft, it is nearly impossible to get on.

Supernatural? No. Above average? Yes. Last I checked, fanfiction had an acceptance rate of around 13%, so whenever someone submits, they have about a 1/10 chance of being accepted. Why is this? Our standards are high. Why are they high? Because we want to post the cream of the crop. Not everyone can be cream of the crop, and that's just how it is.

If there is a group that is specifically out to say they don't like the site, something needs to change or the fandom will suffer.

This group has existed for... months and months, possibly over a year, and I don't see any fandoms suffering. What I do see are people who are upset that they didn't meet the standard of EQD, and they need some way to vent about it.

1039055

EQD is a place that was supposed to be 4chan for bronies after they were banned from posting pony images.

I believe you're thinking of Ponychan.