Cultus Dispatches: Why People Don't Comment
It is one thing to document that, yes, the vast majority of creators love comments on their work. But the big question that hangs over any discussion of commenting remains: What about the dozens upon dozens of readers who read a story but do not comment?
Authors have been angsting over the disparity between their click and comment counts since those data became available to them. In this month's Cultus Dispatches column, Dawn dusts off a 2018 article that she wrote for the Project Long Live Feedback, which dug into the 2015 Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data and what it showed about comments ... or why people don't comment. Using data from the 2020 survey, she's updated the article this month, but the takeaways remain the same: Commenting is a skill and its own unique type of writing. A lack of confidence as writers can hold people back from commenting. And feeling part of a community is an essential component of easing the way from becoming readers to commenters. In the Tolkien fanfiction fandom, which has been around a lot long (both online and offline) than most fic fandoms, platform shifts at least partly account for the rise and fall of comment counts.
Posted on 21 September 2024 (updated 21 September 2024) by SWG Moderators
