[Allen Tice]

Originally Posted by Stephen Collington

Aaargh. If posting a poem here means rendering it ineligible for publication or prizes elsewhere down the road, then people will simply stop participating. The better the poem, the more the poet will hesitate to share it. That's got it exactly backwards, no?

This is a direct bounce from Golias's important thread "Avoiding Spiders." I apologize for the new thread, but think the question merits that prominence. Also, please look at Maryann Corbett's GT thread "Requests to delete poem threads." (My emphases.)

Quote from Golias:
... In the recent past I've had four poems declined, with apologies, because of their prior appearance online. G/W
Quotes from Maryann Corbett:
...it's also important that you not put the real title of the poem in the title field. If you do, the bots will find that.....
If anyone else's post refers to the poem's real title without protecting it with tags, that too will mess things up....
....And as an example of how long things stay in the cache, consider this. My poem "Rose Catalogue in January" was pruned at whatever time I got the January pruning to work correctly, at least a couple of weeks ago. It still shows up on a Google search.

Please pardon the emphasis below. It may be justified.

There are sure to be Eratosphere members who want to learn which other journals search the net and reject on the basis of Eratosphere trials. I know I am one of them. Would others share their experiences, or at least name the problem publications?

Allen