Does the new system work?

It seems that now when I submit some news it just sits in the pending section a few days and slowly gets approved.  Recently I posted a news article about the Ready to Rumble game coming out again and it failed approval, don't know why.  It was new and no one has posted information about it yet.  I submited an interview on an upcoming game, Frontlines: Fuel of War it sat there for nearly a week with only four approvals and eventually it failed submission.  So does this system work?  For what ever reason news is not being posted be it biased or just plain people not doing their job.  If a news article fails then it should be noted why it failed or whoever is doing the approving should have a reason for failing or approving articles.

The one thing I know is that it was working better for me before the site was updated. 

[BrotherSic]

I agree that the approval system does not always work perfectly and unless the story is controversial, it is difficult to get 5 approvals.

I think its time we see some users upgraded to N4G Editors so news can be approved faster.

I also think that there is still too much news on the front page. Articles soon get replaced on the main page and forgotten about by lesser stories which never reach 100 degrees.

[Neutral Gamer]

Things definitely have to change, and change soon. It seems to me that NewsBot is the source for most articles being approved - a lot of articles get zero or one approvals and have a very low temperature and yet NewsBot will still come along and give it the full five votes!

We need, proven, unbiased contributors to be promoted to Editors so that they can quickly approve worthwhile stories.

Also, stories shouldn't make the front page unless they've got at least 50 degrees, but most importantly stop NewsBot approving dull stories that no one's even viewing!

[BrotherSic]

well i like the fact that poor stories are approved and go to the section page rather than the front page as some people will read them.

I agree that Newsbot is usualy the only reason things get approved but this would change with editors. I can imagine that it will be difficult to choose users though.

[Neutral Gamer]

Sodslawgy, I wasn't criticising that poor stories are approved, just that they end up on the front page and this is happening because of the 30 degrees threshold. The front page should be for only the most popular stories.

I've submitted many a story where the temperature has jumped to 30 degrees after a couple of people have made comments. Yet a week later the temperature hasn't gone much higher and I'd be the first to admit that the story shouldn't have made the front page so quickly.

Either the threshold needs to go higher or the algorithm for working out temperatures needs to change.

As for more Editors, you're right it is very hard to decide who to promote to these positions. You can't simply promote those who've submitted the most stories. You need to look at the approvals and reports they've made and the quality of stories they submitted.

Maybe they could also offer an advanced Editors' Test after you've done an x amount of submittals, approvals and reports. It's a hard problem to solve but hopefully the N4G folks will think up a good solution and soon!

[BrotherSic]

agreed :)