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So, people like my story! Yay!
Though, my half-baked theory that the more plot = the less comments seems... pretty correct, actually. Hahaha...haaah... <-- somewhat exhausted laughter because I heart feedback but omg writing porn is GRUELLING.
ETA: okay, writing the above makes me SO PARANOID because it's this THING again where if you talk about what it's like to receive feedback then you are being precious. And yet that site of engagement is such a complex one that I wish wish WISH fandom as a whole was more open to meta'ing and being frank about it (I know, I have said this before, but then I get - hah - paranoid, and lose my nerve and delete after all). But I am trying to be brave, and not think about being silently judged. CAN WE PLEASE, AS A COMMUNITY, JUST TALK ABOUT IT?
Ahem.
Anyway. Speaking of writing stuff, I am going to re-do the Nerdy PSA into a v.2, seeing as lots of people are still using it and I think I could tidy it up a bit and integrate a bunch of stuff left in the comments. If you have anything to add/weigh in on wrt accessibility and casual coding that isn't covered there, drop me a comment/PM/pigeon?
omg productivity!
Though, my half-baked theory that the more plot = the less comments seems... pretty correct, actually. Hahaha...haaah... <-- somewhat exhausted laughter because I heart feedback but omg writing porn is GRUELLING.
ETA: okay, writing the above makes me SO PARANOID because it's this THING again where if you talk about what it's like to receive feedback then you are being precious. And yet that site of engagement is such a complex one that I wish wish WISH fandom as a whole was more open to meta'ing and being frank about it (I know, I have said this before, but then I get - hah - paranoid, and lose my nerve and delete after all). But I am trying to be brave, and not think about being silently judged. CAN WE PLEASE, AS A COMMUNITY, JUST TALK ABOUT IT?
Ahem.
Anyway. Speaking of writing stuff, I am going to re-do the Nerdy PSA into a v.2, seeing as lots of people are still using it and I think I could tidy it up a bit and integrate a bunch of stuff left in the comments. If you have anything to add/weigh in on wrt accessibility and casual coding that isn't covered there, drop me a comment/PM/pigeon?
omg productivity!
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Have you posted it on jackxianto? Lots of readers there.
Comment numbers are weird. Sometimes I'm fairly surprised if anyone likes something and sometimes I'm surprised few people like a story. There are just so many factors - the summary, porn content, time of day, what people are in the mood for reading that week, etc., but many many people read stories (and blogs and other content) and never comment at all.
One of my stories came up on twgenrefinders or twstoryfinder - one of those - and several people mentioned it or said they liked it, and they've never commented. :D So, you know, people do mem or like things and forget to tell you.
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TEAL DEER HERE
There are a billion factors which affect which thing gets comments and which doesn't.
Even when it comes to porn. I think in some cases, people are shy about their kinks, for example. There are probably stories which a LOT of people read but don't comment on because of this -- they don't want to air their kinks. I don't care if people know what I think is uber hot, but some others may. In some cases, readers may feel the comment would come months or years after the last comment, so maybe they think the author has moved on. (And a lot of readers don't write fic, so may not realize how much writers squee over a random "that was hot!" :) ) On the other hand, when there are TONS of comments on something, a reader figures commenting is the thing you do on this story. And some people have social anxiety about commenting at all on stories when they haven't interacted with the person in other ways.
It's like getting your hair styled and colored. You walk out of the salon and you feel FABULOUS. But you go to work and maybe nobody comments. Maybe they're preoccupied or didn't notice or they think it's inappropriate to compliment people's appearance because the last person they said something to took it weird. But that doesn't mean your hair looks awful.
In short, comment numbers do not indicate a story's "value" or how well it may be written. The bestselling books on the NYT list are not necessarily the most awesome books, but you know that. :D
Re: TEAL DEER HERE
Oh, absolutely. That's what kind of wants to make me talk about it more; the myriad of factors that all come together differently depending on the fandom/author/climate/whatever.
What I find kind of ironic is that when it comes to a couple of things you've used as examples above, the reason for not commenting is so... illogical, i suppose. Like, everyone knows that 90% of the time the author will love getting a comment, will love even MORE to know that someone's reading and enjoying it months later. So what's with the reluctance to comment months later? It's not like a topical issue blog post where the conversation has ceased/moved on.
And the kink thing, too - I mean, yeah, I totally get the self-consciousness of admitting kinks when it comes to responding to idfic. But I find it a bit ironic (in a different sort of way to the above, I know it's a different kind of dynamic) - that it's hard to admit to enjoying something to someone who's just *written* and publicly posted it. WTF, do you expect that they will judge you?
Anyway...
Re: TEAL DEER HERE
THEN there's the archive effect: Put something on Teaspoon or AO3 and it's like a static webpage to most people. They'll read it but rarely comment at all.
There are so many good writers who don't get comments and become discouraged, and there are sometimes mediocre writers who receive lots of comments. There are too many factors.
I work in a field in which we measure these things, so I'm interested in the dynamics of lurking versus participation in the abstract. :D
Re: TEAL DEER HERE
For a while I decided to post things to my website and link back to LJ for comments, mainly because I weighed up statistics-capturing with the amount of comments I got - I kind of thought that well, seeing as I prob wouldn't get many comments anyway, at least on my website I can see how many people are visiting, not to mention reccing - where I can look up referrers.
*shrug*
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And don't even get me started about people who comment on recs telling the reccer how much they enjoyed the story, and not the actual author... *g*
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But it's internet behaviour in general, as one finds with blog posts. I really do think it's often down to publish dates appearing on stories versus stories appearing to be in an undated archive.
It's easier to stop assigning weight to comment numbers than to worry too much about it, I think.
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Yep, it's fun to revisit old favorites, too. I spend a lot of time thinking about how stories have changed over the growth of the fandom. You'd probably get a big kick out of it.
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I like that idea of arranging it with the author beforehand. There has been occasion when I've left a thinky comment, hoping to talk about it, and have not got a response from the author.