Cultus Dispatches: Why people don't comment: Data and History from the Tolkien Fic Fandom

[daughterofshadows]

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.

You can read this month's article, "Why People Don't Comment: Data and History from the Tolkienfic Fandom," here.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

I'll add another one: the more privacy declines, the less inclined I become to leave tracks online, because people can and will use your data against you. I do still comment, but I'm more particular about it now.

[openidwouldwork]

... intense pressure to not leave anything that might be percieved as negative...