A comment on comments

Beth's "will give me a warm fuzzy." Did perk my ears up. And stop poking fun you guys!!!!!

There is a lot more visibility today to the importance of comments for the authors and a number of high volume commentators and reviewers have really helped. Sebastian, canadianspankee, CK, Guy, and others have carried the banner. To take it to the next level we need to encourage the high volume readers who rarely comment. Obviously they like what they are reading. To them I'd say this: we don't care what you say as long as you say something. Don't be afraid to express yourself. We appreciate any and all feedback. As long as it complies with site policy, you need not be erudite, witty or particularly insightful.Basically it boils down to this-- We'd just like to know if you liked the story.

"The Fuzz" is of course English slang for the police. A warm fuzzy is a warm, or warmed, police officer. So get commenting, you lot, and authors will have warm-bottomed police officers of their desire delivered.

Some additional stats I've prepared for an article in the next Wellred Weekly, due out shortly, will show that the ones doing most of the commenting are other authors rather than the average reader.

Somehow we need to encourage the readers who read hundreds of stories, get frozen out, then grudgingly comment on something just to start the clicker running again. I saw this happen and I got curious so I kept looking and sure enough this reader was going through my author page, one story at a time over the space of a week and saying nothing. I figure, he must like what he's reading, but hell, without any commentary how would I know? Then he got to 499. Bingo. He has to comment. Now how do we tell a guy like this that it's not only ok to say something more than once every 500 reads, it's highly encouraged?

Rollin

I wonder what would have happened Rollin, if you had sent a pop-up message to the reader asking which story they liked the most? If they responded perhaps we can encourage them to put their response in the comment section.

Maybe this tactic might scare a few away but what do we lose? The other option is to increase the ante from 1/500 to 1/100 but I don't know if I like that idea.

Not advisable, cs. I have had a couple of people complaining because that has actually happened. People don't like to feel their every action is being observed and monitored. It puts them off. It would certainly put me off as a reader if the author of the stories I was looking at sent me popups soliciting comments.

But I do agree that it can be frustrating for an author when they see someone reading all their stories and making not one comment. We don't expect people to comment on everything they read - but if they left a comment on the stories they particularly enjoyed, that would be great feedback for the author.

The bottom line is that this is a free site. Members are not asked for a penny, just the occasional comment to show their appreciation to the authors who make their work available.

The problem with changing the requirement to comment in this way (e.g one comment per 100 stories viewed) is that people will simply make meaningless comments to get round it so the quality of comment will be adversely affected. It's a difficult balancing act.

I think overall we've done pretty well in improving the number of comments that get made, it was originally abysmal but as Rollin points out it could still be better. Part of the problem, with the internet in general and spanking sites in particular, is that the majority of sites, such as the many spanking blogs, indirectly facilitate the electronic equivalent of the couch potato mentality so it probably comes as something of a shock when people encounter a site that expects them to say something once in a while.

Don't think I haven't thought about it. But like flopsy says, this could be startling at best. How would you like to be reading Moby Dick and then Melville's ghost pops up out of nowhere and says, "how about them whales?"
So I made it my policy not to do this, but boy, I still get an itchy trigger finger from time to time. It happens quite often.

I rarely comment because my life is actually busy enough that I can't devote much time to reading stories here. But I love to write, and every comment I get is a joy to read because it tells me that someone has actually read what I have written. More than that, sometimes a reader comes across an old story of mine nobody noticed, and comments, and that prompts others to read the story, which is all the better. So thanks, thanks, to all those who comment. May you be suitably punished.