Soft Rejection/Rejection with Appeals#412

Sometimes, a place will be rejected that actually is unique, special, wondrous, or otherwise befitting Atlas Obscura as per the FAQ without explanation or feedback. Some places may be rejected, only for another user to write the entry slightly differently and have it accepted (my own entry, here https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/james-dean-museum-and-garfield-museum was an inadvertant duplicate of a rejected entry, here https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-james-dean-museum).
Since the problem is in the writeup and not the place itself, as evidenced by rewrites of the same place being accepted when they were previously rejected, it would be beneficial for AO to have a way to reject places with an opportunity for editing and revision.

I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. Your article was not slightly different from the earlier one. It was very different. You actually wrote a few paragraphs, not just one sentence. I think many people misunderstand the purpose of the submission page, thinking it’s a place to suggest new places for AO to write, rather than a place to submit your own writing.

I’ve seen places given a “This needs work” label, instead of outright rejection. Here is an earlier submission of Pinkerton Hot Springs, which was eventually published with a full article by me. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/pinkerton-hot-springs-2

So I think this is more a question of consistent application, rather than creating a new method of rejection. In any case, I don’t think many of the people who submit one-sentence places will even notice that their place was rejected, much less take the time to actually write an article.

Mike, thanks for your response! I have never seen an article get a “this needs work” tag but it’s exactly what I had in mind. I know the other copy of the James Dean museum was significantly underdeveloped compared to mine, but my point was that the place itself was not a bad fit for this website

A few comments for Scott Forsythe about this.

First, most of the articles about individual places on Atlas Obscura are written by individual website users who are not paid by Atlas Obscura. The system is not really set up for a situation where a user asks Atlas Obscura staff to write articles about locations. Other non-staff contributors could expand the articles, but from my experience, I don’t think this necessarily happens very often with published stubs. Personally, I will only rewrite an article about a place that i have visited, and I have problems getting motivated to do so. Also, see the other comments below.

Second, at the moment, the Atlas Obscura staff is having difficulty keeping up with all of the submissions. Some of the regular contributors who write complete articles have sometimes needed to wait 1-2 months to see their articles published. One way to cut the workload that I have suggested would be to force contributions to meet a minimum word limit. This would in turn lead to a lot of stubs (like yours) being rejected outright, which I know you would not like, but it does mean that the Atlas Obscura staff can clear their inbox more easily.

Third, because the Atlas Obscura people are frequently overloaded, it has been difficult sometimes to get edits added to the webpages for individual places. This means that it is less likely that an incomplete article that needs work is going to eventually be updated at some point. This would be a severe problem for a one-line article like yours on the James Dean Museum.

Fourth, I have actually submitted articles for a lot of places that other people had previously submitted articles for. The rejected articles, which were often just one or two sentences, were not really that good and often failed to describe the significance of a location. (Some of the articles labelled as stubs that have been published have this same problem.) Keep in mind that many people (like me) are trying to use Atlas Obscura as a travel guide, so if its articles have little useful information on its travel locations, it will turn people off from the website. At the very least, people won’t be interested in visiting those locations.

I think your choices of places to submit to Atlas Obscura are very good, but I would actually encourage you to try writing three or more paragraphs describing your locations on a consistent basis and adding an extra paragraph under “Know before you go” to describe visitor information (like how to get to the location, when is it open, does it charge a fee, is it wheelchair-accessible, etc.). You yourself have presumably visited these places, so you would know much more than even some of the prolific contributors or the Atlas Obscura staff, and you should really share what you know with the rest of us.

Hey @Dark Nebula Deluxe,
I think you misunderstood my post. Mine was the accepted entry, I was made aware of the stub submission later by its author. I understand why stubs are rejected; the issue is that the stub was rejected with the generic “see the FAQ” explanation, leaving it vague as to whether the place itself was the problem or whether the problem was the fact that it’s a stub. Rejecting articles for being stubs is doubly confusing when there already is also an existing format to handle such cases, as plenty of stubs have been accepted (see a list here: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places?page=95&sort=stub). Stubs have a message encouraging users to edit them, and I have amended a few stub articles myself to include enough detail to stop being stubs. The original James Dean Museum article by lewdinih could have received such a flag, if that was the problem. Instead, it was rejected outright, leaving them with the impression that the place itself was not a fit for Atlas Obscura - an impression contradicted by the later acceptance of my own article on the same place. @Mike Walker‘s suggestion to broaden the use of the little-applied “requires further work” response would actually satisfy what I was hoping for.

First of all, my apologies for misunderstanding your position. I thought you were the author of the stub and not the author of the replacement article.

Just to re-iterate, it seems like it’s hard to get people to expand the stubs, and it would also be harder to get people to expand articles labelled “required further work”. This is partly from a motivational standpoint, partly from getting the changes implemented by the editors at Atlas Obscura (who are overloaded), and partly because even if people have the motivation and time to do this, they may not know the site well enough to expand the article. For example, I still plan on expanding the article on Bethlehem in Ghajnsielem (https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/bethlehem-in-ghajnsielem
), but even though I’ve been there, I still need to research the location to understand it well enough to write about it.

Having said that, I think part of your feedback is related to an issue that I brought up a while ago that the feedback on rejected places in general is vague (see https://atlas-obscura-digital-product.nolt.io/widget/320). This is not limited to stubs. I’ve been good enough (or lucky enough) to only have two articles rejected, and I still don’t quite know why, but it was not because the articles were too short.

I also think that requiring a minimum number of words or characters for an entry would be appropriate. This would stop stubs and incomplete submissions appearing in the first place.

No problem on the confusion, just wanted to clarify. While you’re absolutely right to point out that some people are less motivated to improve stubs, I’ve also seen a feedback item that often edits to stubs take longer to approve than other issues - which is its own can of worms. I’ve already upvoted your proposal for better feedback, and I think that in tandem with the underused “this needs work” tag would actually completely address my complaint as well!