This is taken from a thread going in another forum, and I wondered if we could all put our collective heads together, and brainstorm....?
 I love GCU, and think it's a great site, particularly because the Admin. have in the past shown they listen to artists and take on board their suggestions, so that we can grow and improve.
 
[quote/]I would like to try to come up with a workable solution to at least getting cards approved in the order they come in, it may not get them approved quicker due to the volume nowadays...but at least the people such as myself who don't have time to submit 20-50 cards a day could get their cards approved in sequence. I don't mind waiting a week for approval honestly if that 's the best they can do...but IMHO it isn't! There's always room for improvement. I don't know how many reviewers they have...it's a secret!
I also know they work very hard, and I wouldn't want their job for all the tea in China...my eyes would be bugging out of my head in one day!
So please know that I'm not slagging off the reviewers...they do a great job!  That said however, I think there can always be improvements made, and nothing changes if nothing changes.
 
So....I was thinking. (Smell wood burning?!)  What if.....(and I'm trying to visualize a room with reviewers in it all sitting glued to computer screens?).... there was one reviewer who's job it was to just approve cards from artists submitting say 10 cards or less. That's all they did all day...nice job, more variety, moving quicker through them etc. Then the rest of the reviewers, however many that is....handle all the bulk submissions....a more challenging job in the long term possibly, due to the sameness and sheer volume?  
(Maybe the 'express line person' would have to take a tea break now and then to allow the bulk people to catch up, I don't know how it would work in reality, but could be another perk to the job!)  
Then....the reviewers could switch about so that they each take turns at a different job....of course how many reviewers are devoted to the 1-10 cards would depend on how many workers they have total.
I have no idea as I'm just guessing.  
Are you getting my drift?  Sort of like in a supermarket....if you have 1-10 or 1-16 items you go to the express line, and move through quicker.  There are other cashiers...the bulk of them....dealing with people with truckloads of groceries!
 
This isn't to say that I don't want to wait in line behind a huge cart of groceries....I don't mind waiting my turn...not at all! They came first, and I'll wait.  
What really irks me is when all of the carts filled with multitudes of groceries...moves ahead of me, and me with my carton of milk and a dozen eggs gets pushed to the back of the line!
So....that is my theory on how to keep the small submissions in line properly in the queue with the bulk submissions.  Everyone gets attended to, no one gets forgotten, everybody's happy!
That's my ideal world...thanks for listening!
 
p.s. Maybe now I should go and post the idea in the Feedback and Suggestions forum?   [/quote]
 
That was written when I was irked...I'm not irked now, but still feel the same way.
Thanks for hearing me out with my feedback and suggestions...

Agreed a bigger gap than usual but in general there are many important reasons for cards to be reviewed out of order.  Most recently we had a new reviewer in training and it is often easier to have them jump around and pick off some "easy ones" leaving the more challenging ones for the seasoned reviewers.
 
As for your interesting suggestion, unfortunately introducing an express checkout for smaller submits will make matters worse.  We only have a handful of reviewers and they typically work at different times, not in parallel like a grocery store checkout.  This means that if one reviewer is assigned to smaller submits then the larger submits may be waiting much longer than usual (until the next reviewer is online which could be a few to many hours).  I have a vision of shoppers with full carts in limbo at the checkout line, all with melting ice cream.
 
Artists should not be punished for submitting a large batch of cards nor rewarded for submitting a small batch of cards.  There are many reasons and patterns behind the size of new cards an artist submits.
 
Consider this.  Multiple artists are submitting new cards at the same time.  An artist submitting cards although clicking as fast as they can, submits multiple cards all within a 1 hour window for example. This artist's cards will most likely have pid#'s spread out across a very wide range of pid#'s, they would not be sequential.  
 
When these pending cards are part of a near identical collection and reviewed at the same time they are not really jumping the queue.  Based on their FIRST card in the queue we are just collecting the like cards that were submitted at the same time for more effective processing.  To use your grocery store analogy, if they are standing in line in front of you we're collecting all of their apples for example so they can be weighed at the same time.  After their like collection is reviewed we step back to the original queue and attend to the next person or card in line.
 
So...all near identical card collections do NOT get "pulled" like this...only those that happened to have a card submitted before you.
 
Hope that makes things a bit more clear.
 
 
PS: big Tom Petty fan

Not to blow a hole in Avis' suggestion but if it were to go that way there is a way around that too....If say I were an artist who submitted 100 cards in one go a week then I would then just submit 10 cards per day over a week or so just to have them reviewed quicker.... sneaky but it would work. The current way it is works for me no matter how long it takes, changing it will still not make it any quicker. I don't even count the days anymore.  
 
Cheryl

Hi Avis
 
I often get the wrong idea   LOL
 
You did put a lot of thought into you suggestion and it sure was worthwhile mentioning I just don't feel with the ratio of cards being uploaded to the number of reviewers that no matter which way they get through them it is going to be a wait of a week for everyone.  
 
Cheryl

Quote from Avis_134613 on Jun 10^th, 2010, 8:47pm:

 
It was a clever and appreciated idea  
 
The 3,000 gap was out of the norm.
 
Loosely related, we are having some real issues with artists submitting cards that are using 3rd party images that they do not have the proper rights/permission to use.  Not sure how to more clearly communicate the importance of this fundamental guideline.  Not only are there important legal issues involved but ethical issues of making money off of creative that is not your own.    PLUS it slows the review process down for all artists.    

not to be the fly in the ointment but what exactly is the situation with fast tracked cards?  I experienced a mess getting my three fast tracked cards submitted after making a correction right away.  I'm reading others experiencing long delays too with fast tracked cards too.  No, I wouldn't want the reviewer's jobs either but then again I don't think any artist wants to have their fast tracked cards delayed when there is an awaiting customer and the possibility of being seen and possibly to make a sale.  Is there a way to correct that so delays don't happen again?
 
I learned and will again strongly apologize that my continued issues now are due to a technical problem which is being looked into.  And I do thank the staff for taking care of this... my deepest apologies for ranting... but please understand the frustration from someone who isn't able to punch out cards all that often.  For general cards, I have no problem waiting for the reviewers... but don't agree that it take days to get fast tracked cards reviewed and submitted - or when issues with fast tracked cards are corrected by the artist to have it take days to be reviewed again... those should go immediately to the top of the queue again.  When an artist clicks to resubmit and having to send an email to notify the reviewers that a change was made (and we all know how completely reliable email can be or how easily an email can be overlooked when one is swamped with requests) can we have a button to able to click fast track again when we resubmit corrected cards?  
 
Again, my apologies... I certainly hope my rants didn't spoil the fun...

thanks so much for looking into it, Mindy, and again, my deepest apologies for ranting too... I'm glad it's fixed at least...

I wish that the reviewers would just assume I'm an idiot and write what each card needs to get reviewed rather than see comments on card number such and such.  Sometimes that card has been resubmitted and I can't find the comments.......so here I am looking like DUH  which is pretty accurate but a little embarrasing!
 
 
Love ya,
GCU!