WIP Challenge Check-in -- Day 12

[linaewen]

Greetings, fellow writers!  How goes it today?  Is it an awesome day for you, or are you thinking of going back to bed (or going to bed early, depending on your time zone)?

What writing-related pursuit did you engage in today?

• Writing
• Editing
• Sent to beta
• Posted
• Procrastinating
• Planning/Researching
• Something else I will describe in comments

For those who got some writing in, what was your word count?

I thought it might be interesting to discuss the following topic, brought to us by the ever-insightful Fanfic Flamingo:

 

For discussion:  How do you feel about reviews (or the lack thereof)?  Do you mind if you don't get any -- even when you know without doubt your fic is awesome?  Does the lack of reviews affect your inspiration or willingness to continue writing? 

Comments

[anyssia]

I wonder if we have learn to deal with posting fics and not getting reviews, because there are less and less people reviewing. Or, only the old people/people that have been in fandom for years are actually reviewing?

I find the kudo feature on AO3 really interesting, because people can use it so easily, they don't hesitate. On the other site, I wonder if people won't get used to leave a kudo and just skip the comment part of the review...

[snowynight]

For me, I think kudos gives me a mean of commenting when I'm really tired, and there's an interesting article with hard statistics that total number of comment actually increases after the kudos feature.

[anyssia]

Good thing! I love the kudos feature too, but I was worried. Maybe the fact that it has a lot of kudos attracts readers?

[lexicalcrow]

I rather like the AO3 kudos too. As someone who rarely gets comments/reviews, kudos at least to me suggest someone took the time to read my fic, whereas hits don't necessarily mean that to me. I've had comments too, though, and both make me smile anyway. Perhaps because getting comments on my work isn't really the norm for me, so it's a nice change. Someone appreciates my work. That sort of thing.

[anyssia]

It helps appreciate the small gesture that much more, when you weren't waiting for them ^^

Also, were the hit counts aren't public, the number of kudos is and it might attract people, a bit like a ranking with stars or something ^^

[lexicalcrow]

The first time I got a kudos, I admit I grinned rather a lot at the email notification. XD N'aww, anon, ILU. <3

Oh yeah, certainly I use it as an unofficial rec system. It's not the only reason I'd read fic on AO3, but it helps. Like, several people have left kudos on this fic, maybe I should check it out.

[anyssia]

Another thing I like with AO3 is that the pages are clean and light. No distractions. I think about it a bit like a mix of FFnet and eFiction archives ^^

A 'problem' with the kudos/recs system is that old fics (meaning, from before the installation of the feature) don't always have the kudos they deserve, because everybody already read them. I realized than while reading a SPN fic that I knew should have a lot of kudos but contented itself with a couple of them despite a large bunch of reviews.

[lexicalcrow]

Yeah, I like that too. And the little horizontal line breaks are adorable. XD If I wasn't so lazy, I'd code them into my fics when I'm posting on DW. :P

Yeah, that is an issue, but to be fair, the kudos system wasn't around when the Archive started, so it's got some catching up to do. I figure it'll even out eventually as people discover the older fics? At least I hope so. IDK, I think it depends on what people are searching for. I got kudos on an old fic of mine, but it was for a very small RPS fandom, so yes. It does happen.

[anyssia]

The horizontal line break is love ^^ Funny how such a simple thing can be interesting ;)

Whatever happens, the kudos feature was a good idea and like you said, I hope it will be a good alternative to the rec system. ^^

Anyway, I was happily surprised to see that AO3 had took off and thrived in the last years.

When I first heard about it, I thought it would fizzled out like most multi-fandom archive, because let's face it, despite all its flaws, FFnet is still one of the only archive that's still constantly updated.

So, GO FANDOM \O/ ^^