Comments on: Guest Post: Surveying Webfiction Feedback

By: Karen

Karen — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:57:42 +0000

I don't know how I missed this, considering that I filled out the survey, except that my summer has been insane. Thank you so much, Isa, for doing this excellent research. It confirms many things that I have been thinking and noticing myself.

By: Isa K

Isa K — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:39:30 +0000

Whoops… this isn't so much a typo as it is my faily-fail ~lol~

By: Isa K

Isa K — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:39:30 +0000

Whoops… this isn't so much a typo as it is my faily-fail ~lol~

By: Isa K

Isa K — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 19:38:43 +0000

I also noticed this myself. Many people wrote in responses about privacy, but as soon as you separated out the original fic people from the fanfic people the frequency of this response went way down. So it still *is* a concern, but it's much less of a concern for original fic readers/writers.

It will be interesting to see how online publishing reacts to the shifts in internet development that social networking is pushing. I get comments all the time about why the original fluffy-seme integrated with livejournal but not Facebook, why FS will NEVER integrate with FB (lol). Many developers and tech people do not understand that people have different groups of friends and are not willing to share the same information equally among them.

By: anna

anna — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:30:25 +0000

Hm, yes, good point. What you say ties in neatly with previous comments about email forms being a popular form of feedback — people might prefer keeping not only their identity but their comments hidden from the general public.

Although on many sites it's possible to leave a comment without using your real name or even real email, so readers could easily create another identity for themselves.

By: stick_poker

stick_poker — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:12:52 +0000

This is a fascinating piece of research, thanks for doing it and sharing it. I think there's one more aspect to the problems of lurking and commenting that's not covered here, which is anonymity. I'm a long-term user of LJ and I have two accounts. One is personal, and for years, with the one account, I would read fanfic and only very occasionally comment; only when I thought a piece of work was so good that I'd be happy to admit to anyone who came across my comment and recognised my username that I'd read it. Then I started writing and posting fic with a second account, that's not casually recognisable as me, and that one leaves comments much more readily, is networking and generally putting itself about. I think anonymous feedback mechanisms could be an important factor in the feedback writers get – witness the difference on anonymous kinkmemes and the like. Could be an interesting subject for a further study?

By: anna

anna — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 11:58:05 +0000

LOL. Good on you for spotting the typo. Will fix now. :-)

By: Meg

Meg — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:16:14 +0000

This is an awesome article; thanks for taking the time to compile the data and coax it into a useful bit of information! I had a good time filling out the survey and really enjoyed the breakdown you present here.

(psst... it's "by and large." See here: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=by )

And yes, I'm an original fic writer who points out errors and typos. :D

By: Reactions wanted! : : Adventures in Text

Reactions wanted! : : Adventures in Text — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 05:11:07 +0000

[...] it happens, one weblit author did a survey into exactly that, and her results are interesting. Not entirely unexpected, but it does have some great insights [...]

By: MeiLin Miranda

MeiLin Miranda — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:36:48 +0000

One of the voting modules–there are thousands–might work. I'm looking into this myself.