What gains comments?

IMHO it all comes down to this....read lots, write lots and comment more.

I read therefore I comment, it is a rule for me made up by me. Commenting makes me happy because firstly I feel I am showing appreciation for the work done by the writer and secondly because is some very minor way I feel I contribute to this site.

I write and hope for viewers and comments however I would still write regardless. I used to write stories and delete them a week later and write another story and then delete that one. This process went on and on. No one but me read my stories and I still wrote. I will continue to write if this site is willing to publish them, if others read and comment on them that is great.

I cannot say I write now only for me but I write what I like. I do have a few of my stories marked as favourites by others, which is great and I usually get comments on every story which is nice. I have tried a story or two switching genres and they were interesting but not me, so I will stick to my genre of F/M and my loyal band of followers (I think I have 2 but maybe only 1) will continue to read and hopefully enloy my writing.

Would I like more comments on my stories, the answer is a solid YES. Would I like more comments on my stories even if they said the basic same thing as a previous commenter, again the answer is YES. Will I quit writing if I don't get comments on my stories, the answer is NO.

So in conclusion ( I did not want to have a longer comment then NJ...LOL) I say and always will say.....read lots, write lots and comment more.

This sounds more like recipes to avoid too many further comments.

I should repeat that by 'papering', Mati, I meant, of course, WALL-papering!!! I treasure all comments and find they keep me regular, both as a writer and corporeally.

njrick, the Marlowe man, seems to have given the most thorough and exhaustive explanation of it all thus far (and who better?), but I also see truth in Alef's observation about how different kinds of readers opt for favourites as against comments. And CS's mantra belongs as a banner over the Library entrance! Perhaps we could organise a Latin translation of that, to give the place more of a Classical feel?

Wow--njrick has written a treatise on this. I'll just add an observation or two.
1. I don't think readers pay much attention to the plugboard.
2. Although serials don't seem to get as many comments as stand-alones, you have to add all the comments to parts together to get a true picture, because readers may choose to comment on just one part.
3. You can tell if you are being read even if comments are few, by scanning the "last read". It is not uncommon to see someone reading story after story of yours (for hours) and NEVER commenting. I'd have to presume he/she liked what they were reading. BTW--if this is you, drop a comment every now and then, ok?
4. Authors do have followings--it's only natural. Whether because of genre, theme or style, your fan base will read most anything you write (unless you, ahem, flip-flop across genres, orientations, styles, POV's and everything else. Oh, well).

Here is a little comment from a read only user. I select the stories to read based on the title of the story, then on the short story line description and then in some cases on the the implement used and then again who uses them (F/F or F/f...). Serial stories must be very promising before I tried to read them as I am not so good to read in English, but even worse to write in English ie it takes me lots of time. If I like a story, I try to leave a comment - but if I do not like a story I do not leave any comments. I do not use the Favorite button very much - but in some cases I try to save a copy of the story on my computer for my own personal use only. I hope that these informations perhaps can be of interests to some of the authors, so they can get an idea of why the readers choose to read the stories.

I personally think as we get more and more stories and further strain our wonderful validators they stay on the front page less often and really that seems to be what gets the most attention. I think my last story got less comments than I thought it may have because it was hardly there long enough for anyone to see it.

mefromdenmark really shows what I've said earlier about the stories.

Quote:

I select the stories to read based on the title of the story, then on the short story line description and then in some cases on the the implement used and then again who uses them (F/F or F/f...).

Unquote

It just goes to show us that they do select and read stories according to orientation. I'm not saying every reader does, but I believe for the most part that's a big plus.

I think that it is the modus operandi of at least a good part of the readers. I also look at the gender because ma preference goes from M/f to F/f to F/m to M/m and I'll read first to last in that order. The only thing that interferes is the author. I'll read the favorite author first, but if there are several stories, I'll order them in the gender preference.

Another thing that makes me chose is the size of the story. In that I'm different from most. The long stories have my preference. Anyhow, I read almost 5 thousand stories in the Library and commented on 10% of them. The ones that I didn't read are divided in four groups: 1) I already read them on other sites. 2) M/M or F/M stories, not my coup of tea. 3) Limericks and poems that are not my preference because of my poor domain of English and 4) The ones I didn't get there yet, but very soon now...

Everyone who posted has lots of good points. The only one I hesitate to agree on is that unusual stories tend to attract more comments than traditional ones. I recently wrote what I considered to be an unusual story - both for me, and for the library in general - and I got a total of 4 comments, and 2 favs. Now maybe this story wasn't very good, but I'm pretty sure it was unusual, especially stylistically. Or, maybe all the other non-comment reasons people have given in this thread just superseded the unusual nature.

On another note, I'm going to throw something out there which may be wrong. Heck, it probably is, since no one else has raised it. It sometimes seems that female authors get more comments than male authors. I don't know if this is true, and if so, why it would be true - do women write more M/F stories than F/M stories, (I think THIS may be true) and since M/F is a preferred genre, do they automatically get more comments b/c of that? Or, if they DO write more M/F than they do F/M, do the men who read them feel more of a reason to comment on it than they would if a male wrote the same story? I really don't know. But I just looked at the latest story list, and saw that Linda wrote a story which had 13 comments, Katie B wrote a story which had 13 comments, and flopsy wrote two stories, listed one after the other, one with 6 comments, and one with 8 comments. The closest male on the latest page list is TEM, with 8 comments.

I realize this is a very small and likely skewed sample, but I would be interested to see the ratio of female to male authors, followed by the same ratio of comments. If the ratio of male to female authors is say, 3 to 1, do male authors also gain 3 times as many comments?

As I said, I'm probably wrong. Though if I'm right, all us males who are looking for more comments might want to look into having a gender change. Or, if that is too drastic, use a feminine non-d-plume!

A very interesting theory smeple. You could do some further research and write an article on your findings for the WellRed Weekly.

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