Wow, has it really been two months ...

[rodo]

First of all:



I could actually afford the membership because a few days ago my aunt sent me and my brother an obscene amount of money that she insisted our grandfather would have wanted us to have (he died six years ago), despite the fact that my mother and brother tried to argue that it really belongs to her and our cousins. Now I'm wondering which video game to spend money on ...

There's also comment meta going around, which ... urgh. Is the best way to keep me from commenting on anything.

1) My feelings about a story are almost never as simple as "I loved this!". And if they are, it generally takes me at least a few days to sort them out anyway. And then I forget to comment. Not to mention that I have huge social anxiety problems, so even a three word sentence takes a lot of spoons out of me. And it takes way more than three seconds. It takes minutes.

3) I feel a little disappointed when a comment isn't actually about the story, but on the other hand, it's someone who wants to talk to me about something. Which is awesome! Unless it's spam, but I guess we can all agree that spam is always bad.

4) Well, I suck at not criticising at least a bit in a comment. What am I supposed to do when I have to comment on something but am not allowed to say any of the things that I want to say? There are reasons why I hardly comment on fic at all, and this is one of them. Also: I love concrit.

Regarding the comments: Most people who read my fics do read them on archives with hit counts. I can count the number of journal comments that I received on my fics with my hands, and I've been posting for over five years. So my general experience with hit/comment statistics is this:

Good: > 2 comments/100 hits
Normal: 1 comment/100 hits to 1 comment/200 hits
Bad: < 1 comment/200 hits

I know a lot of LJ authors who just started using the AO3 are confused and/or hurt by this, but it's normal. There are bots, readers who don't finish, readers who prefer not to comment, and readers who open a story more than once. A hit does not equal a reader, and staying silent is not a bad thing! Authors who are new to archives or haven't used them in a while just aren't used to the culture. It's not unusual for people to lurk, they do it all the time, the only reason why you didn't notice it before has zero to do with the fact that archives discourage from commenting but with the fact that you don't notice the lurkers on journals!

Comments

[amaresu]

Heh. I went off for several paragraphs about why I don't want people commenting just because they finished my fic. And I wasn't the only one. Although the vast majority seem to think that the point of comments are to get them rather then to hear from people who actually enjoyed their fic.

But, then, I count things like favorites/bookmarks as equal to a comment.


Re: Hit counts

I know the past few years has seen a big decline in archive use. There are fandoms out there, big ones, without a central archive now. That makes me sad, but gives me good hopes for AO3 filling in that gap. I think the result of this though has been people forgetting things like hit counts and how that relates.

And every archive is different, I think AO3 is still going through a learning process as people figure out how things work. But, for me, the Teaspoon is about 1:10 or so, HLFiction is maybe 1:50, Wraithbait 1:100-150. It's not the ratio that matters to me so much as a consistency. Because as long as my ratio is consistent then I know that my writing is consistent. When my ratio gets out of wack then there's a problem.

I may go make another comment about this on the post. C/P here I come!

[rodo]

I'm kind of used to the shaming of lurkers (there's a German word for the bad people who don't comment, even), but that doesn't mean that I'm any less fed up with it.

But, then, I count things like favorites/bookmarks as equal to a comment.

I count them as well, because evidently someone was interested enough to read it again or to rec it to friends. And seriously, it isn't that much different from "I liked it."

I suspect the AO3 will be more on the 1:100-150 end of things, even though my Yuletide story has 1:50 so far. I'm used to stats from Animexx (stats now discontinued), ff.de and ff.net, all bigger and less specialised archives, and I think with big archives, chances are much better that someone just clicks on your story to see what it's about without any intention to read it. I know I do that.

[amaresu]

One of these days I have got to learn German.

I think I was lucky in that my first fannish interactions were very welcoming to the lurkers. I think if I'd been told I had to participate I'd have freaked out, ran away, and never gone back. People lurk for a variety of reasons.

I count them as well, because evidently someone was interested enough to read it again or to rec it to friends. And seriously, it isn't that much different from "I liked it."

I actually almost prefer it to an "I liked it" on sites that show other people the things you've favorited. I can't count the number of fics I found by looking at an authors favorites. Especially at FF.N where it was just an easier way of finding fic then digging through everything else.

I'm thinking 1:150 sounds about right. I feel kinda bad, I'm a tag wrangler over there, and sometimes I'm looking at a tag and I can't for the life of me figure out if it's an obscure character from the source or an unlabled crossover so I have to click on the fic. Yet another source of those no-comment-hits.

[rodo]

I'm a mod at ff.de and have to read through three chapters/stories a day. Most of them are incredibly cringeworthy (I only came across two that were worth reading, IMO, in the last five months), so I generate hits as well, even though I'd rather not read the stories.

[dingsi]

there's a German word for the bad people who don't comment, even

Wait, was that the one where reading-without-commenting is compared to an actual, illegal activity? ...

[rodo]

Schwarzleser? Yeah. At least it's the same type of illegal activity as filesharing and most people have done it at least once.

[dingsi]

Yes, Schwarzleser is what I remembered. Not enough headdesk in the world.