Sugarcane:
But, the witch was extremely sexy and I really really want to meet her again. Should I wrote something and save my ass or wait for her and risk my tail?
Sugarcane, I've got three suggestions for you:
1) write it
2) write it
3) write it
I'm dying to read your witch story!
njrick:
Or we can just accept the fact that 90% of the members will do little but read
Oh, if it was that well. According to my recent commenting ratio it's about 99.2 % of the readers that do little but read.
Eric:
my comments are held until somebody approves them, and some are not posted at all.
Yes, it's a bother, but probably necessary to avoid the threat of a troll invasion as happens to most web pages. About one out of five of my comments goes astray as well and not often long ones. I think it's more often technical problems than the comment being erased. Such things happens and I go through the effort of writing a new comment, it's no big deal and it does a whole lot for the author. I'm sorry to hear that some comments not appearing has discouraged you from commenting. And you don't have to be a paying member to have access to the library. The $10 is just for extra features.
Ishmael:
When I first joined I read the guidelines carefully. What I got was (1) don't say something banal like "good story" or the like (2) say something original not redundant (3) if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.
Well, criticism can be positive as long as it's dished out the right way. I find comments like, "I wish it had been like..." or "I found it strange that he did that after..." or "there seems to be a glitch between..." and so on, it helps to improve the next story the author write. It's a huge difference to writing "This was the worst piece of shit I've ever read!" which I assume is what the manual refers to. But no matter how bad a story is, I can always find something positive about it, the idea if nothing else and give some kind advice for the author how to carry on. I dearly want to hear both what is good and what is bad.
I don't know if comments is a silly author thing, but it is after all the only confirmation we have and a way of interacting with the readers. It has given me some of my best ideas for sequels and new stories, so it works both ways. If we get something, it enables us to give so much more in return. I'd love if a few more readers could walk that extra mile (or yard it's more like) and write a quick comment. We're not talking scientific, in-depth reviews here.