Story angst

[rivkat]

Briefly:

1. OK, fess up: which one of you was driving the red car in my neighborhood with the license plate “FANFIC”?

2. My husband sends notes to our kids, for future reference. Recently: “Dear Rivkid, It was very progressive of you to request ‘King & King,’ the same-sex-marriage fairy tale, for your bedtime story tonight. It would have been even more progressive had you not referred to the book as ‘The Two Queens.’”

But most importantly: I love feedback. I want to make it as likely as possible that people will leave feedback on my stories. So, what to do about crossposting? This is my first use of DW's poll feature, for a Very Important Poll.

Poll #368 Maximizing comments

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 69

View Respondents

Should I consolidate comments on story posts?

View Answers

Stay unconsolidated! For me, that creates the lowest psychological barrier to commenting on a story.
16 (23.2%)

Comment counts matter to whether I read a story post; thus, consolidation would be a good idea.
6 (8.7%)

Comment counts matter to whether I read a story post but I’m not reading on DW; thus, don’t consolidate to DW until the crossposter can display the number of comments.
3 (4.3%)

I like reading other people’s comments; thus, consolidation would be a good idea.
49 (71.0%)

I like reading other people’s comments but I’m not reading on DW; thus, don’t consolidate to DW until the crossposter can display the number of comments.
3 (4.3%)

Some other thing that I will tell you in (presently unconsolidated, though you have to answer the poll on DW) comments.
5 (7.2%)

Comments

[logovo]

While I sometimes enjoy reading comments and having them in one place is dandy, I believe that making people comment in only in one service will decrease the number of comments.

[rivkat]

I'm totally afraid of that! And yet the countervailing fear is that my story will "look" worse than it used to based on # of comments. Why so difficult? It's enough to make one long for the days of emailed comments.

[copracat]

I'd love to hear quantitative info on this. Not because I don't believe you, I just like numbers. I'm consolidating on dreamwidth, but 1) I'm naturally a commenter, not a commented on and 2) as many of the people I spoke to most on my flist are also active on my circle, there's no barrier to them commenting at all, so my data is not very informative. I find myself commenting more 1) on LJ so my LJ friends don't feel that I've 'abandoned' them and 2) on DW because I want it to have an active conversation.

I'd love it if people who are used to getting huge discussions in their LJs would provide some data!

Of course, Rivka, that mostly relates to discussion, not to feedback, which is what you were asking about. That I don't know. I try to comment wherever the writer makes commenting available. It's easier if that's on the story. I'd post the story once where comments were collected and every other thing would be a pointer to that post or website page. People have been signing on to website pages and forums to leave feedback all this time. DW isn't making anything different there. Do people leave feedback at ffnet, at AO3, at Yuletide? Sure they do. If you want to get every possible comment then you need a thorough strategy. It's marketing, after all; if it were easy I'd be well rich.

[copracat]

I meant to add, people are used to seeing no comments on the pointer post, such as those at fiction announcement communities.

[logovo]

I'm going by feeling here and several posts of people saying they don't want to comment on DW, which to be honest I still don't get. I'm hoping they're really a tiny percentage of readers. Also, this attitude I've seen outside of my flist, which tends to have been around longer than LJ has existed.