Observation on feedback

Well, I think it's natural with a decline in activity with the pay wall, even if it leaves almost everything of the site open. It's just something that I think go on people's mind, but I also understand that the pay function is absolutely necessary for the site survival. It's a tricky problem.

Activity also get hampered by the decreased circulation on site. It used to be weekly uploads but this year it has mostly been bi-weekly or every third week, meaning that many viewers might forget about it all when nothing seems to be going on. I however understand that this is difficult to resolve as it concerns the massive work load for the site owners. Would it be possible to let someone else in, with the adequate competence to edit and upload stories? More regular releases and the site activity might go up again.

So what do you think? I mean, are there no new spankos growing up or can they just not find this site? To me it would seem weird that fewer people would be into this kink or be prepared to show it, when we are constantly moving into more liberal and accepting times.

True - and it makes a serial harder to sustain - but I assume the long gaps between new batches of stories are due to writers not submitting as many (despite the noble efforts of Mj2001, Lisa Berry and yourself) - which in itself may be partly due to the decline in comments.

On the other hand, the dominance of the Latest Loaded page in determining what gets read has long been a source of irritation for administrators (see the early threads recently bumped by NjRick) and perhaps these long gaps do encourage members to explore some of the 28,726 stories not on that page, or to try the Lucky Dip.

Glagla
I think it would be enlightening to see if there are indeed fewer member visits to the site, and/or fewer items actually viewed. Among the voluminous statistics available here, those are not among them. My PERCEPTION is that there are fewer people here, but not enough fewer to explain a drop in comments to a third or a fourth of the earlier level.

I've often speculated whether the subscription fee has impacted comments, but not because it limits the access by non-subscribers as you suggested (because I think few of those non-invested members were likely to leave many comments anyway). I have often described comments as being the "currency" exchanged from reader to author for the author's work, and suspect that the fact that there us now real currency paid by members to the Library may affect how readers feel about the need to "pay" the authors with comments. Even this, though, cannot fully explain the reduction in comments, because that reduction had already started before the (perfectly voluntary) subscription fee was instituted..

I also think that the lower number of new stories being loaded may also affect commenting, but again think for a slightly different (or additional) reason than what you suggested. Authors have always been among the more prolific commenters. If there are fewer "active" authors submitting new stories, or as many new stories, then there are likely fear "author visits" during which they read other stories and comment at their higher rate. Buy again, the gradual reduction in comments started before there was a big drop off in New stories.

The other factor often mentioned is the loss of members (one way or another) who were high volume commenters. I think that is almost certainly a factor, but probably cannot explain the full drop. While there are high volume commenters no longer among us, others are still here and active, there are some new ones, and a significant portion if comments have always come from low-volume commenters.

Almost certainly there has been a change in the VCR (the views to comments ratio), whether it's due to the subscription effect mentioned or a fewer number of author-readers or something else. It's a little hard to gauge without actual statistics, but there certainly seem to be fewer total comments for stories on the front page of latest-loaded stories than there used to be, even though they stay there longer an seem to be viewed/read quite a lot. I try to compare using my own stories, but having submitted so few during and after the comments slide, I'm not sure the comparison provides much in the way of useful data. My own recent submittals, which have received both fewer comments overall and a lower ratio of comments to views, are parts of a serial (which affects comments), whereas earlier submittals were almost all stand-alone stories (while my submittals during the start of the slide were predominately songs, which generated fewer comments). And "back in the day," as a frequent submitted of stories, I suspect I was better known, which generated a "following" of people likely to comment because we had a bit of a dialogue going with an exchange of messages after the comments. None if that is true tiday.

I'm sure there are no fewer people today with a spanking interest. But there may more alternatives to reading stories in an online library as an outlet than there once were,and the gradual passing of a generation more inclined to read than subsequent ones.

One factor that is hard to quantify is "energy." There was definitely more energy early on, and a sense of community, than there is today - not only more frequent commenting, and more new stories, but also more participation on the Forum, more participation in the chat room, and likely more exchange if popup messages between members. I think that was generated by the newness of it all as both readers and authors found the site, and abetted by a stream of new features - the chat room, the Wellred Weekly, audio recordings, the jukebox and so forth. It's hard to maintain the initial enthusiasm for ANYthing, and the Library is no exception.

Even without that enthusiasm for the new, this Library us still by far the best place for what it offers - somewhere for spanking enthusiasts to go to read stories, and for authors to post them.

Oh wow, that was a gigantic comment, it'll take me ages to comment on it all. For a start though, I can mention that I agree with you to 99 %. I've always wondered how many active members there are, but I haven't dared to ask. I could of course go through the member list and make note of how many of the listed nicks that have logged on during the past 100 days or so, which I imagine can be a suitable limit for what is counted as active or not. But it would be a heck of a job. And we don't have any backlists, so we can't see how many that were on during the past hundred days a year ago and two years ago to see if the active body is stable or declining. There's nothing to compare to.

Times are always changing and what people did before don't go now. Just think of the toys we saved for our kids, only to find out that what we cherished is completely uninteresting nowadays. I just wonder what spankos do instead for reading these days. Watching those half-arsed spanking videos that the Net is flooded with?

About fewer releases, could it be that more and more author turn to commercial releases instead for dropping it on the site? I mean, there are plenty of e-books being pumped out, almost seeming to match in length what is released on site.

About the initial joy of something new, it still makes me wonder though, as there should be new members coming all the time, meaning that there should always be people who are new to these features.

It also puzzles me when any of my stories gets more favs than comments. Apparently someone found it above the rest, worth one of the limited number of favs we have to work with and it would seem reasonable that a few words could be scribbled down then. To me a simple thanks, or that the viewer quite liked it, is good enough, they don't have to give an in-depth analysis of the story.


They do indeed. After the initial week after a batch being released with all attention exclusively on my new story, the attention moves to my older stories and my back catalogue gets a massive amount of views. Until the next batch is released and once again people only read my latest release.

I usually comment on reading a story. When I don't it's usually because I want to think about it for awhile or I start to read a series but realize I'm not doing the work justice because I'm too down and come back to it later. As for writing, I have several in the works but I'm a slow writer and these new ones are rather large.

Generally if I like a story, I try to give it brief but positive feedback. If a writer responds positively to my comment, that makes me more likely to read and comment on more of their stuff. Makes it seem more like a two way conversation.

carlspanks
As an author, I also like the 2-way dialogue. Seldom, though, do I get a reply back when I respond to a reader's comment (which I invariably do). I'm not complaining - I'm still grateful for the initial feedback via comment.

I suspect this may be an artefact of the social media effect. It takes a single click to mark a story as a favourite, (analogous to 'liking' on social media), but it takes some thought and effort to make a comment. People have got used to expressing support with a single click, and if it takes more than that then that is just too expensive to use Rick's currency metaphor.

In other words, I've become an old fossil... I don't recognize the signals of today's society...

I enjoy the LSF, I try to comment on every story I read. I am trying to comment with more specifics but I may be in a rush. I am not concerned over the delays in posting stories, the people who run the site work hard to provide the information. We should have more conversation on helping the site, and one of these days I will offer my services to assist, I am a well known procrastinator. I think it is important that reader comment and writers respond, it will all work out, thanks.