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isozymeso i read some meta about how kudos devalue reader interaction with fan work. fan work is being taken for granted, these essays posited. possibly, even, readers were lazy and entitled. an idea was floated: instead of letting people click an I Liked That button, maybe getting rid of the junk food version of feedback would force encourage people to eat healthy and leave long, thoughtful comments.
setting aside the question of would removing kudos on AO3 lead to more comments (no, it would not), i'd like to talk about the value of my hit counter and my kudos number for me. and i'm going to start with a digression.
when i was in College, i hung my senior art thesis in the Smith Gallery, which was a small room right by the entrance to the cafeteria. the show was eight big charcoal drawings (6 feet high, more or less) and a handful of smaller ones. they represented a huge amount of work. i remember locking myself in the semi-private studio for eight hour stretches, blasting ceremonials by florence and the machine, working until my hands were covered wrist to fingertip with black. the concrete floor underneath where i was drawing would collect a pile of broken charcoal pieces and bits of eraser and fine black dust. it was freezing in there. i put soul into that project.
an absolute maximum of 1,500 people walked through the gallery while my show was up; probably significantly fewer, but that's how many it would have been if every student had come to visit. it was, and is, one of the most important things i've done with my art.
5,000 copies is a respectable number of sales for a debut novel. 10,000 is a very good sign for your career.
videogames aren't considered a success until sales cap 5,000,000.
it's hard to keep large numbers straight. it's very easy to look at 1,500 compared to 5,000,000 and think, good grief, 1,500 is nothing! practically zero! but -- 1,500 is every person at my school.
my fanfiction isn't a big deal, certainly not by BNF standards. i've got a couple fics with more than 5,000 hits; more hovering between one and two thousand. i get about a 100:10:1 hits:kudos:comments ratio, which gives me a warm feeling of accomplishment. i love the comments! i go back and re-read them when i'm sad; i do an embarrassing wiggle of excitement when i see [AO3] Comment on... in my inbox; I show them to my wife all "look, look, someone liked the fingerbanging one!" but the hits and kudos are important to me too, because i imagine the 1,500 students, or the 5,000 books, and i think "my fic has been seen by so many people."
maybe it feels different if you are more fandom famous than i am. maybe the less personal quantitative feedback becomes a dull background roar. but i know what it's like to publish stories into the void where you don't see how many people clicked on and quietly enjoyed your story. professional short story markets don't have kudos or hit counters, and tell you what, i convince myself every time that the only people who've read the story are the people who've commented on it. so i don't get to imagine the auditorium full of 300 people and think "i got a chance to talk to all those folks for 4,000 words." i imagine the dude who writes reviews for rocket stack rank sitting in an empty cafe, rolling his eyes and putting me down for another three out of five stars.
frankly, the fandom feedback experience is better now than it was a decade and a half ago. still no money, granted, and it's still easy to forget that 2,500 isn't zero even when 250,000 exists, but better.
setting aside the question of would removing kudos on AO3 lead to more comments (no, it would not), i'd like to talk about the value of my hit counter and my kudos number for me. and i'm going to start with a digression.
when i was in College, i hung my senior art thesis in the Smith Gallery, which was a small room right by the entrance to the cafeteria. the show was eight big charcoal drawings (6 feet high, more or less) and a handful of smaller ones. they represented a huge amount of work. i remember locking myself in the semi-private studio for eight hour stretches, blasting ceremonials by florence and the machine, working until my hands were covered wrist to fingertip with black. the concrete floor underneath where i was drawing would collect a pile of broken charcoal pieces and bits of eraser and fine black dust. it was freezing in there. i put soul into that project.
an absolute maximum of 1,500 people walked through the gallery while my show was up; probably significantly fewer, but that's how many it would have been if every student had come to visit. it was, and is, one of the most important things i've done with my art.
5,000 copies is a respectable number of sales for a debut novel. 10,000 is a very good sign for your career.
videogames aren't considered a success until sales cap 5,000,000.
it's hard to keep large numbers straight. it's very easy to look at 1,500 compared to 5,000,000 and think, good grief, 1,500 is nothing! practically zero! but -- 1,500 is every person at my school.
my fanfiction isn't a big deal, certainly not by BNF standards. i've got a couple fics with more than 5,000 hits; more hovering between one and two thousand. i get about a 100:10:1 hits:kudos:comments ratio, which gives me a warm feeling of accomplishment. i love the comments! i go back and re-read them when i'm sad; i do an embarrassing wiggle of excitement when i see [AO3] Comment on... in my inbox; I show them to my wife all "look, look, someone liked the fingerbanging one!" but the hits and kudos are important to me too, because i imagine the 1,500 students, or the 5,000 books, and i think "my fic has been seen by so many people."
maybe it feels different if you are more fandom famous than i am. maybe the less personal quantitative feedback becomes a dull background roar. but i know what it's like to publish stories into the void where you don't see how many people clicked on and quietly enjoyed your story. professional short story markets don't have kudos or hit counters, and tell you what, i convince myself every time that the only people who've read the story are the people who've commented on it. so i don't get to imagine the auditorium full of 300 people and think "i got a chance to talk to all those folks for 4,000 words." i imagine the dude who writes reviews for rocket stack rank sitting in an empty cafe, rolling his eyes and putting me down for another three out of five stars.
frankly, the fandom feedback experience is better now than it was a decade and a half ago. still no money, granted, and it's still easy to forget that 2,500 isn't zero even when 250,000 exists, but better.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 07:30 am (UTC)As a writer and a reader and a basically shy person -- leaving a comment is fraught. I've been in fandom for almost 20 years. In that time, I've seen so many expectations of commenting...
-- you should leave concrit, specific and helpful, so that the author knows how / what to improve.
-- you should only leave a positive critique, to boost the author and encourage her to write more.
-- you should leave a comment at least a couple of lines long, preferably mentioning 1 or 2 specific things in the story that you really liked. One- and two-word comments (like, "Beautiful!" or "Loved it!") are lazy and don't really give the author any helpful information about what was good.
-- one- and two-word comments are perfectly okay; at least the author knows you liked her story, and it didn't fall into a void.
... and there are some other iterations I'm forgetting. The thing is, if someone has been in fandom any time at all, they're aware of all these expectations, and a kind of paralysis may set in. They don't know what or how or how much to comment, so they default to kudos.
OR
The reader is so overwhelmed by the wonderfulness of the story that their brain kind of goes white-out and !*^$)%#@(%^$&!, and they can't express it, so default to kudos.
OR
The reader thought it was a nice story, that left them with happy feels, but nothing big or deep to comment about, but they want to let the author know they appreciate it, so kudos.
= = = = =
I think I've wandered from the question you asked, which was do you have any experience with encouraging repeat readers who leave kudos to leave short and simple comments?
The point I'm trying to make is -- everyone does fandom interaction at their individual comfort level, which changes with fandom experience / their real-life health and/or stresses, how much time they can squeeze out between home/work/kids, etc, and other factors that I'm too tired to think of. (It's midnight, here.) If they leave kudos, it's because they don't feel capable of offering anything more.
The thing is, your idea of "short and simple comment" may be 20 minutes of wracking their brain, worrying if they're doing it "right", or feeling that they're leaving themselves incredibly exposed and liable to be chastised for committing some horrible faux pax. Seriously, I've seen people say that leaving comments used to be a panic-inducing event for them. Obviously, those particular people worked through it, but there are probably many readers who are just beginning that journey into comfort.
Long story short (too late!) I don't think there's any gracious way to encourage kudos-leavers to leave comments instead. However gently you think you're sending the message, the receiver is likely to hear, "Kudos aren't GOOD ENOUGH!!! Why don't you express your appreciation PROPERLY and leave a decent COMMENT?!?!?" If it was me (back in the day), I'd have crawled deeper into my shell, and would never again leave a kudos on any of your stories.
For the suggestion 'if you'd like to, let's talk about what you like about the ship and characters in the comments -- if it was aimed directly at me, I'd probably panic, IE "Oh my god, what can I say, what if she doesn't agree, I don't want to make her feel bad, what if I was wrong when I thought the story meant xxxx?" Talk about being put on the spot; I'd never make a similar suggest to any specific commenter.
So that 'encouragement' left under a specific someone's comment would probably be very off-putting. BUT!!! If you put a similar encouragement in the Author's Notes that's a general invitation -- something like, "I love to chat about the characters and the ship; if you're interested, leave a comment and we'll go to town!" (or however you'd express enthusiasm) -- nobody feels put on the spot, and you might get some takers. But quite possibly not, because of all the points above.
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no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 08:18 am (UTC)I also wish there's a way to reassure readers that even if some misunderstanding happens, I won't call them out on committing a faux pas or passive-aggressively vagueblog about them off AO3 (another deterrent to commenting to add to your long list). Commenting is stressful and can be a tricky skill to learn, yet I can't help wonder about the missed opportunities for building a rapport with like-minded fans.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 09:15 pm (UTC)...building a rapport with like-minded fans
I think part of the problem may be that a lot of longer-term fans may not view AO3 as a good platform for discussion. Comments and answers, yes. But a free-wheeling exchange where anyone can jump in seems to be easier in LJ or DW -- partly because, if we're interested, we can track all comments on a post. I don't think AO3 has that feature; I know when someone responds directly to my comment, but won't see other comments/responses unless I go back to the original story.
Many long-term fans had LJ and/or DW before AO3 was available, so there was an automatic division when AO3 showed up -- LJ/DW for conversations, AO3 for stories and thank-you comments. No, probably not everyone, but that's certainly how I see the split.
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no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 08:09 pm (UTC)+1 to everything.
Another consideration for me is if I read a lot of the person's fic I'm less likely to leave a comment. Because if I left a comment on this fic I suddenly feel obligated to leave a comment on the next fic and the one after that. Which is a fun and exciting anxiety spiral waiting to happen.
So, paradoxically, the more I like an author the less likely I am to leave a comment. I'll hit the kudos ever time, but you won't hear peep from me in the comments.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-02 09:02 pm (UTC)<g> I expect we all have our idiosyncrasies. I'll leave a comment every 4 or 5 fics, and kudos the other times. If I comment more often, I start to feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over. So, yeah, it's a tricky proposition.
.
no subject
Date: 2019-02-03 01:08 am (UTC)Kudos might replace comments for the more borderline cases between "I am too nervous to comment ever" and "I comment on everything ever, try stopping me." If your comment was going to be just "Cool fic, loved it" you might decide the button is more efficient, and maybe those are the cases that people would like to steer toward commenting instead of kudos. It probably won't push the "don't want to comment" group of readers to make comments, though, and is likelier to make them go silent instead. And even if it does push the in-betweens to comment, their comments are unlikely to be much more than "I liked this, thanks." Is that really worth making the non-commenters go silent for? As for the "will always comment" group, they won't be affected either way--kudos is just an extra feature for me, I comment on AO3 just as I do on FFN or DW. So kudos are mostly about calibrating the reactions of the "won't comment" and "might or might not comment" groups, and I think on balance they generate more interactions, not less.