fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2749 ]

[ SECRET POST #2749 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2749 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 073 secrets from Secret Submission Post #393.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I'm over being disappointed at the lack of feedback, because it will soon lead to a lack of me bothering to post what I write.

Yep, this. I enjoy writing, but if nobody cares enough to comment I tend to think well crap, no one liked it so I guess I'll just keep this to myself next time. :(

Sooo...your story gets 50000 hits but no comments and you won't write anything else? Um, wow. So the only readers worth anything to either of the above two anons are those who leave feedback. How awesome is that? (Wish I know who y'all were, cus then I'd make sure to never read anything you wrote.)

If your story gets 50k hits and no comments or kudos, I'd suspect most of the hits are from a bot. SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE is going to comments/kudos/etc if they have that many hits from actual people.

Seconded what previous comment said about a bot. Hits are nice, but all it means is that someone (or a bot!) clicked. If nobody left any comments, maybe they didn't like the fic and back-buttoned right away. If that's the case, then I'm not sure why you'd think I still need to post fic that nobody seems to like.

(Wish I know who y'all were, cus then I'd make sure to never read anything you wrote.)

Wow. Yeah, that's exactly what writers who get discouraged by lack of any positive feedback deserve.

They obviously don't want me to read it if I don't leave a comment, so why would I bother wasting my time, since I generally don't want to leave comments? I leave kudos but apparently that's just not good enough for them, so...yeah. I'd rather not waste my time even giving them a hit.

I don't see anywhere in this thread that says "don't read my fic if you're not going to comment". Nowhere. I'm really confused.

What I'm inferring from comments about not posting if there's no feedback and discontinuing a series because of poor reception, etc, is that those writers prefer people to not visit their story and leave a hit (or even a kudos) because they only want feedback. (Hits seeming to not be a good gauge of a story being enjoyed).

I am not someone who generally gives feedback (I will give kudos). Therefore, I would assume that those people who require feedback to keep writing and posting would not want me to merely leave a hit on their story and thus, it would be a waste of my time to bother reading their works (if I knew who they were).

Okay, as a writer, hit counts are relatively useless to me, because plenty of people click on a story and never finish it. The only times I consider hit counts interesting are the hit counts that are super high and put my fic relatively high up when sorting by hit count. These fics tend to also have a lot of kudos, and a fair number of people who tell me they have read the fic more than once, so that's kind of neat! But for most stories, hit count is 100% irrelevant to me.

However, I don't see why you wouldn't click on an author's fics because hit counts aren't good enough as feedback? When I'm reading a fic, I read for my own enjoyment. It benefits me to click on a fic that might be of interest, because I read fic for fun...

Because to me, saying that you won't post more fic, won't finish a series unless you have written feedback is an attempt to blackmail the reader.

If the only form of feedback an author will consider valid is a written comment, then I honestly am contrary enough that I wouldn't even click through to their story. If they're going to be petty than I can be too. But given I don't know who these particular ones are, the point, in this case is moot.

It's not blackmail for a writer to say "seriously guys, is anyone interested in this fic at all? 'Cause if not I'm going to just drop it." If I posted three chapters of a fic to a deafening "meh", WHY would I bother to continue it? I know if I see an author say "hey, is anyone still interested?" on a fic I like, I'll comment and let them know that at least one person is still interested in what they're writing. I don't consider myself "blackmailed" - the author let me know they had a need and I fulfilled it.

I wouldn't have a problem with that, but it is really annoying when authors who ARE getting comments say they won't update a fic until they have X number of comments on the previous chapter. That kind of thing is blackmail, and I stop reading authors who do it.

I agree. But that's not the scenario here, so it's a bit odd to bring it up when the discussion is about something else entirely.

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(Anonymous) - 2014-07-14 20:09 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2014-07-14 21:41 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2014-07-14 20:11 (UTC) - Expand

It's only blackmail if you actually make that threat to your readers. Merely stopping because you're under the impression that nobody wants to see any more? Yeah, not blackmail. As a reader, you don't have to review if you don't think it's worthwhile. But as a writer, I don't have to keep writing if I don't feel it's worthwhile. You cannot claim the privilege of doing the first and also claim that writers are obligated to keep writing when they no longer want to, for whatever reason.

I'm a writer and while hit counts are interesting, they're not a very reliable indicator of interest. There's the whole bot issue for one thing. And a hit is just a hit. I have no way of knowing whether it's a bot, someone who clicked by accident, someone who's rereading a lot, or someone who took a look but didn't like it.

So yes, in terms of figuring out who likes a fic and how many people like a fic, reviews are far more helpful. I learn if people like it. I learn if people didn't like it (Something that absence of a hit won't tell you, incidentally) and here's a key point-- I learn WHY. Hits are a nice statistic, but they don't tell the whole story, or even part of the story.

If the original scenario (50,000 hits and no reviews) happened to me, I'd likely think the hit count was a bug or computer error because that seems far more likely than the possibility that 50,000 people (or close to that number) read my fic, enjoyed it, but then didn't leave any comment whatsoever.

Also as a writer you're always putting a part of yourself out there emotionally. If you're looking at lots of hits and no actual feedback your mind is more often going to imagine the shitty scenario that most people clicked but then closed the tab because they didn't like it. I also imagine this to be the case because of the number of times I quit reading something. But I leave at least kudos on stories I liked enough to read to the end.

I dunno, it seems pretty implied by the attitude. Especially "if people won't express their gratitude the way I want them to, I just won't post anything at all!" They don't want their stories to be read unless someone comments.

Coming from tiny fandoms that don't have much activity, I don't get that attitude at all. I don't have the luxury of getting tons of hits or comments on my stories because my fandoms are small. I write for those fandoms because I love them and because I want to write for them.

If someone else likes what I wrote, that's awesome! But it's just sort of a bonus, not a necessity.

DA. I don't know where you're getting this 'implied attitude' from. I didn't read any of the above thread as "I don't want people reading if they won't comment". Rather, it seemed more, "If I get no feedback, no reaction at all to anything I post, why would I bother posting?"

And I totally get that sentiment. There are plenty of things that I write for myself that never get posted. If there's no audience (or none that I am aware of), why bother?

If a fic of mine had a ton of hits (not touching the 50k 'cause yeah, sounds like a bot) but no comments, I'd assume everybody hated it and probably wouldn't post more.

As a reader, I wouldn't touch a fic with a lot of hits and no comments or kudos for the same reason. That looks like a bad fic with a good summary or premise.

Whereas I almost never look to see how many comments/hits/kudos a fic has before I read it because I realize that my taste is not the same as other peoples. Because I've read some pretty fucking crap fics that had lots of comments and kudos (I'm assuming written by a BNF who never hears bad shit about their works) and read some wicked awesome stuff by fics with low counts.

As the secret the other day said regarding authors who churn out fics, (paraphrasing) quantity does not ensure quality. I'd say that's even truer of comments/kudos.

Absolutely. If you sort by kudos in any AO3 fandom, at least half of the first page will be crappy fics that have tons of kudos/comments because they were posted early, posted as a WIP, or written by a BNF...

Oh, you're right, I guess it does change if you're in a niche of some sort.

Yeah. I filter by kudos on AO3, because hits only tell you how good the summary is and relative comment numbers can be thrown seriously off by whether the author replies to reader comments.

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