Hi again everyone,
Glad this topic had a positive impact and resonated well with so many of you. All the feedback is very much appreciated by everyone, and just wanted to answer a few of the standout questions and comments here. Hope everything is more clarified now. 
MindTransmission saidHello, I don’t know if this has been covered before, but I’m wondering if the reviewers work independently in their own studios (using their own monitoring setups) or is there a central office at which they all work?
Reviewers are spread out all over the globe, but they also work together in realtime.
LeatherwingStudios saidBut given how successful Envato has been I would love to see you add reviewers so borderline rejects would always be reviewed by a second person without that second person knowing it was already rejected. And it does not have to impact the queue if you simply absorb the additional cost of additional reviewers out of your ample profits!
Also, add a tiny bit of time on each reject to tell the author why the item is being rejected. Again, this will not slow down the queue if you simply add reviewers and absorb the additional cost out of profits! If a reviewer goes through a process to reject why can they not have a simple but complete form to check off the criteria for the author? Yes, I know it is not your job to teach, blah, blah. But these authors provide the means for Envato to succeed! They deserve the respect of knowing why their submission was rejected in my opinion!
Obviously you do not have to do either of these things because you are successful enough as it is. But these things would not cost a lot and would greatly improve the experience for your suppliers and the community in general!
That is asking for the company to make a very substantial investment of time and resources. It would be a lot more than you might think. Keep in mind that this used to be the approach in the past. Even though Hard Rejections have no “intrinsic” value, as they do not exist as items in the library, and cannot be sold, they used to get a lot of very specific feedback to attempt to steer or guide the rejected tracks into something more salvageable.
However, over the years, careful analysis has shown that the vast majority of hard rejected items, even when they receive substantial and detailed feedback are exceedingly less likely and unable to be reworked into an acceptance. This isn’t an anecdotal speculation. It’s what really happened over several years. So this is why today we have to reserve feedback for soft rejections only.
||+1250096|Sky-Productions said-|| Maybe the best thing to do Adrien is implement a new rule...any threads that are clearly a complaint against a hard rejection will be deleted or locked...just like self promotion or spam.
Well, at the outset we don’t really want to muzzle the community’s freedom to discuss item rejection topics so long as ideas not are brought forth in a discourteous or unmannerly way. We also appreciate to be able to monitor the discussions, as it helps us measure the quality of the work we’re doing. It would be a bit heavy-handed to formally forbid discussion of rejections, as MusicBox mentioned because of the values Envato strives to hold at its core. Whether or not any rejection chatter impacts the impressions people get of authors questioning or contesting their submission results, it’s probably something that can remain in the item discussion for now.
But yeah if posts do get out of hand, they’re certainly going to be addressed, case by case or otherwise.
FASSounds saidGreat info,it’s nice to know about the borderline things. So I think it’s still matter of luck if we just got a middle quality track
Mostly no, but a little bit of yes. That’s where the potential inconsistency stems from, inherently. As Andy mentioned, reviewers are not rolling dice. There is a concerted effort to minimize subjective decisions in the review process. But if a track is very, very borderline, i.e. really right in that theoretical middle area, then it can be either an acceptance or a rejection, potentially, depending on various factors. If it gets rejected, the types/number of issues that make it borderline will determine if it is a soft or a hard rejection.
SmartOwlMusic saidWhy are tracks in the grey or borderline “hard rejected” when a soft rejection sounds like it could be more appropriate? If a track could go either way, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to soft reject with a little detail to improve the track?
As above, it depends on the type/number of issues. E.g. If there are numerous smaller or subtle but important issues on a borderline track, deemed too diverse to explain individually, or due to considerable details needed to be conveyed separately, then it will more likely be hard rejected. On the other hand, a borderline track that has a single major issue, for example, it would be more prone to be sorted with a single directive, reliably, so that would be more likely to be soft rejected.
BrancoG saidWhen are we going to talk about the fact that non exclusive authors have no chance of getting trending or featured? That bothers me a lot more than hard reject from time to time…
That’s outside the scope of this post, but it’s the company’s prerogative to moreso feature content that is not found on other competing libraries or licensable elsewhere online.
Gorynich saidSo many words.There must be also a result, I hope.
We all hope so. The truth is, it also depends on you.
WorldBeyond saidYes, but will the item price increase follow? Good quality costs a lot of money for both this marketplace (more rejected items) and the authors (higher chance of rejected items). So, I think the item price increase is justified.
That’s a notion that may have conceptual merit, but it’s outside the capacity of Quality & Review Teams to comment or speculate on the matter, at this point.
lemega saidMy tracks are not borderline, they are histrionic. SCNR
You win, Lemega, you win. 