The Perils Of A Vocal Creator

Introduction

Still relevant, maybe even more so

This might sound like a moan, and in some ways it is, but on top of this, I still maintain that Vocal is an excellent if flawed platform, and is my own preferred platform of choice.

When I first started on Vocal, there were manual reviews of every story (I think) and often stories were rejected with a ridiculously nebulous message "Story Does Not Meet Quality Standards" which was basically basically a lazy coverall.

There was no explanation of why the story had been rejected and often a simple resubmission would see it published, which begged the question "Why was It Rejected In The First Place?". Vocak would never answer, and that attitude is still prevalent today.

Over a year back I pointed out a major fault in Vocal's reporting in this piece, Vocal refused to acknowledge this and told me that I must be doing something wrong.

That Was Then, But This Is Now

While we have issues with Vocal on many points, it is still a relatively robust platform and allows creators to publish and share their works and actually make a little money from reads, bonuses and challenge wins.

The problem is the insidious spread of plagiarism and the use of AI-generated text. We have seen work by plagiarists and AI be awarded Top Stories, which does damage Vocal's credibility, although usually they are then removed.

The problem is more, and more, creators are having to police the submissions. Two of the biggest champions of this are Judey Kalchik

and Cendrine Marrouat

Check them out for many articles on how to protect your creations from plagiarism and how to spot and report AI creations.

This is Vocal's Plagiarism report page if you find anything of yours and your friends that has been stolen. I think it could be used to include unacknowledged AI content.

While I am ok with people using AI as a tool AI content should not be allowed as a main story.

It could be used as an aid, but it should not appear as a story in itself and certainly should never be deemed to be Top Story worthy.

I have been accused of plagiarism for quoting sources, and for the images I generate for my stories where I need one.

The thing is creators just want to write and share their work, not spending their creation time checking for plagiarism and unacknowledged AI.

While I meet and get to know people on Facebook, new Vocal users I often check their stories for AI or plagiarism if they look suspicious, and especially if they have published twenty stories in the last day.

I do feel that we are under attack on two fronts and we can only protect ourselves if we work together.

I just want to write and share my work, but I know every word that I put on Vocal or Amazon can be picked up by unscrupulous lowlives for whatever purpose they want. We have to hope that we can spot them and take them down and that Vocal will back us up when we report plagiarists and AI cheats.

In Conclusion

Keep vigilant and maintain close Vocal Facebook friends so you can all look out for each other. I know this is extra work for us all, but that is the nature of the domain that we now create in.

I believe that we can achieve victory in this, because we are consistent in our creative approach, and the plagiarists and AI cheats are fly-by-night opportunists.

We must have faith in ourselves and must report every instance of theft of our intellectual property that occurs.

Thank you for reading