"On Hold" for 2 Months on arXiv

Question

I submitted a Physics Education pre-print to arXiv more than two months ago. It has been "on hold" ever since. The pre-print has nothing controversial. It is simply a few simulations of relativistic phenomenon which may be helpful for undergraduate students. It has been under review at an AAPT journal. I am applying for my PhD and every pre-print helps. I am thus wondering which of the following I should do:

1. Delete this submission and re-submit the same pre-print. I did this earlier this year with another physics pre-print which had been on hold for two weeks, and it was published the next day. It sounds surprising, and indeed I was taken aback when this worked earlier this year, but I am hesitant to do it this time. Why? Well, I've already waited two months. If I delete and re-submit the pre-print, what if I have to wait another two months?
2. Ask arXiv what's going on. I've already done this twice, and they repeatedly respond by stating that they cannot provide comments on individual submissions.
3. Something else? I could contact the editor for Physics Education on arXiv, but I have heard that is not recommended for some reason. Is this true? Is there anything else I can do? I should note that I have three other pre-prints already published on arXiv.

Update: I appealed for an arXiv moderation decision. Here's what I received in response:

Dear arXiv user,

We have received your inquiry regarding the “on hold” status for your submission. Unfortunately we do not have the resources to provide submitters with continual status updates for their submissions. All submissions to arXiv go through moderation screening and dozens of papers per day have some delay. Your work has not been singled out in this regard.

Your submission is currently on hold pending a decision by our volunteer moderators. The "Hold" status indicates that our moderators need additional time to consider your article. We have reminded our moderators that a decision is needed regarding your submission.

Answer 1

Something similar happened to me back in December. I submitted a preprint and it was rejected, for the first time in my life. The reason given was that "Our moderators determined that your submission does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research and is not of interest to arXiv."

I've published over 30 papers and have put most of them on arXiv. My sense is that they had a change in how moderation is done and have started to reject more submissions. In this case, one issue is that my paper dealt with data that is four years old, because the paper was actually published back in 2021, and I only just now got around to putting it on arXiv (it had a double blind review, which is why I didn't upload it right away). Another factor that might have hurt me was uploading three papers all at once, for similar reasons: they had been double-blind reviewed and accepted.

Let me tell you how I changed their mind.

First, I don't think option (1) is wise. They will flag it again and it will probably make it harder to bring them around to eventually accepting your paper.

I went with option 2 and the official appeals process. I explained that the preprint I'm uploading was in fact already peer reviewed and published, and has already been cited 5 times, so it's hard to believe it "does not contain sufficient original or substantive scholarly research." Then I got the same message the OP got regarding being "on hold." Then, in March, I got another message saying they had reviewed the case and would agree to put the paper on arXiv but I had to change it to put our names on the front page (that was an oversight on my part, as I was uploading the version that was accepted, which was still "blinded").

Overall, I was left with the impression that the appeals process does work, and you just need to be patient. It's easy to get annoyed or upset, but it won't help. We are lucky to have arXiv and the free labor of the moderators. To be honest, all researchers are probably well-served by arXiv filtering out more crank papers. If this means that, once in a while, we have to go through an extra step to get a paper on arXiv, then probably that's a small price to pay.