Listen up, silent majority!

Alef, I agree if someone has bothered to read 500 stories they definitely belong here, comments or no comments. Of course comments are appreciated when they arrive but my attitude is if you want to comment, fine, if not that is fine also! It is nice to have people who contribute but the way of the world is that everyone will not! I have no idea why some people don't wish to comment or contribute to the forum but I don't feel bothered by it. Perhaps its because I already feel that we authors enjoy so much feedback on this site compared to others. Some of the stories I write get comments into double figures, I am sure that its not just me!! I think it's great we get that huge amount of encouragement! A few of my stories are on the ASSTR! See how many comments you get on that site!! Not many I can assure you. At the end of the day I think we are lucky and should find something else to get worked up about!! Like how many packets of crisps did Her Pinkness get through yesterday!!!?Now that is something worth worrying about!!

I agree with you Blimp that this is a free country (almost) and people should feel free to comment or not. However it is a little frustrating to look at the stats part of the author's page and see the number of people reading one's stories without ever making a comment.

A comment saying "a load of rubbish" is better than no comment at all. So why don't people comment? Is it shyness? Perhaps the non-commenters who are reading this forum could let us know.

I agree with Rollin's , Alef's, and Blimp's sentiments.
However I have grave doubts about 'forcing' shy readers to comment.
I am quite widely read but my ratio of comments to readers is low. Since the introduction of the stats button I am aware of a number of regular readers who don't comment.
If readers don't want to openly comment for some reason best known only to themselves then would they consider commenting privately to the author. This may be a solution.
Sometimes I have been so frustrated when I've watched a reader read a whole long serial and maybe a couple of others I've been tempted to send them a pop-up asking them what they thought, but I don't want to frighten anyone away so I've refrained.
However it's worth remembering that when I wrote on the late Alex's site then only the same six to ten readers ever commented but some of my stories gained quite a respectable number of reads.
I would suggest to Februs that he reconsiders his decision.
I'd rather know that I was being read and providing some enjoyment than not being read at all!
I realise that I myself am a fairly sparse commenter but if I comment then the author knows that I've both enjoyed and admired their story.

One other comment-I regularly read another story library that has no feedback. I often wish that I could say just how much a I enjoyed a story, so I cannot really understand why a reader who really enjoys a story doesn't say so. Perhaps people think that they have to make perceptive comments - I would be happy with- 'I really enjoyed that.'

I believe that the average reader of spanking stories is a very shy and closeted person. One reason I believe this is that it took me years of reading stories to get over my own fear of leaving indelible tracks somewhere in cyberspace. Even today, few of us post under our real names or real e-mail addys.

From my own story site, I have discovered that the "natural" rate of comments for spanking stories is less than i/1000. In fact, with hundreds of "readers" per day, I net only one or two comments per month! Sounds tiny, but it's probably comparable to the comment rate we had here at LSF before the "500-rule".

The stats prove that the "500-rule" has been wildly successful. I don't think we really need to intrude further on our readers.

I have been taught: If you cannot say something nice, then shut up. In my mind it is now: If I cannot write anything worth reading, then I shalll not write. But I have this to say to all the writers that I have pased in silence: THANKS FOR ALL THE GOOD WORK!

Well I do not like forcing people to comment either, however this is a FREE site to anyone who wants to join. The requirements for membership is that one enroll and occasionally comment. Those are not hard requirements to meet by anyone standards.

If one chooses not to meet the minimum requirements on many websites, they are usually booted off the site. Our admin's never boot anyone off the site for lack of comments however have chosen to restrict the access for those not meeting the minimum requirements.

Any member who comes under the restrictions can easily get them removed by making a comment on a regular bases under the "1 in 500" rule. That is not a hard thing to do. A shy person or one who has no idea of what to say can look at thousands of comments on all the stories and pick up one or two lines that are seen on the comment section. They can copy and post such wording the first few times until they are brave enough to write their own comments. If they copy 4 comments and post them, that gives them access to 2000 stories. Seems like a very fair deal to me.

Any member can use the Contact button and ask why things do not work if they never read or understood the "1 in 500" rule, so ignorance of the rule is not an excuse as far as I am concerned.

It all breaks down to this. Either a member meets the minimum requirements of the site or not, if they chose not to meet that requirement then they suffer the consequences. No different then any other website I know or life in the real world.

I am not arguing against that I just questioned the seemingly obsessive obsession with comments! I mean are we not in danger of being obsessively obsessive? How many comments do you actually want on your stories? Are hundreds of people saying that is the most wonderful fabulous story anyone ever wrote going to be enough!? It's just a thought! Do you ever sit down and think I am actually spoiled rotten by both the quantity and quality of the comments I already get for my stories? Anyway carry on! I can see as usual I have the minority viewpoint!!!:

Unfortunately this is true, on Rollin's part. I don't think many readers come to the forum. My own stories have had few comments as well. Maybe I'm doing something wrong these days, who knows. My thoughts are: I read... I comment. The authors are all deserving of it.

B

I agree, it's depressing to scan the members' pages and see all those zeros in the 'comments left' column - often from members who have read hundreds, even sometimes thousands, of items. I did once succumb to the temptation that jimisim mentions: I noticed one particular member who was steadily working his way through my stories without leaving a single comment, and sent him a pop-up saying, "Hi, hope you're enjoying them?" Never got a reply.

Even so, I think I agree with jimisim and blimp on this one: nice as it is to get comments, it's good just to know that I'm being read. If people don't want to comment, well that's a shame but I don't feel they should be in any way coerced.