I've been on this site for a few years and seen its changes and recently started noticing a few things. Back in the day, Qidian had a system where there were a few trial novels, and you voted on them each week, then depending on which had the most votes, one was picked to be continued and translated.
However, now I'm seeing that the voting pool seems to have times where there is an abundance to vote on and times when there is only 1 option to vote on. They also implemented the "picked" status to books that were pilots and weren't yet selected by editors to be in the voting pool. At first the "picked" status depended on people adding those books to their library and reading them, and depending on how many people, and the time in the "picked" status, it would get chosen to be added to the voting pool.
Recently though, this has not been happening at all. I have been seeing novels without even having the "picked" status going straight to translations or some novels being stuck in "picked limbo". There was even a novel that was "dropped" before it even started to get translated because I'm guessing someone's check bounced and their novel was removed from the "picked" list after over a month and a half of being "picked". And despite it being "picked" for well over a month, many novels who were either only "picked" for a few days, or some even without the "picked" status went straight to the voting pool. And this is all without mentioning the issue of the voting pool where they seem to now ignore the amount of votes a novel gets and just choose at random. A novel was recently in the voting pool for at least 3-4 weeks and had the highest number of votes the entire time. And throughout that time, many other novels with very few votes, or some without votes (straight from being "picked") went straight to translation.
TLDR; Qidian is ignoring their own systems and just choosing novels that aren't voted/picked because I'm guessing some middle of the road manager got a small "gift"
I’ve always spent quite a good amount of money here but ever since last year the “improvements” have made me less inclined to use Webnovel, which is sad because I’m practically begging them to take my money. It’s stupid things like these that have made Webnovel go downhill.
