Meta thread (I never meta thread I didn't post to) - Feedback, please

[robkelk]

As of 7:25 pm Eastern on September 1, 2024:

• "Like Calls to Like": new, 18 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "Fuku'ing With His Head": new, 34 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "Thermal - er, Culture Shock": retcon re-work, 49 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "House Call": retcon re-work, 384 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "It's All Relative": retcon re-work, 355 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "A Little Slice of Heaven on the Gulf": retcon re-work (EDIT: and botched slightly in that the Firefly characters got nearly zero screen-time), 513 views, all of the in-thread comments are from pre-readers, no ratings
  
• "No Thanks, We've Already Got One": new, 228 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  
• "Tell me, what do you want?": new, 193 views, no in-thread comments, no ratings
  

* robkelk taps microphone

Is this thing on?

I was hoping to get some idea from reader feedback as to what to work on next, but there's no feedback. (Yes, I know the first two on the list are new enough that people might not have had time to form opinions of them yet.) I can't write stories that you want to read if nobody tells me what is and isn't working in the stories that I do tell. I don't even know whether you'd rather see new stories or re-works of pre-retcon stories... or if you even have a preference.

As Bob mentioned here, comments go in the stories' threads, please.

[robkelk]

The best that I can tell from how many people have read the stories is that people like the Pensacola residence... but is that because you're NGE fans, you're Firefly fans, or you like the Harley Waters character?

Hoping that I'm taking the right hint from the readership numbers, I'll do some work on the next story set there.

* robkelk pushes "Earth-That-Is" up the priority list

[Dartz]

Most of the commentators for this would've have their commentations in the production of the individual stories. The userbase of the forum is basically the writing circle. Although technically a public space- the public that come in here these days are mostly scraper bots.

One would think that maybe dripfeeding bits onto SB or SV might garner some interest or comments. Somewhere with large quantities of traffic.

I know my fic attempts get more comments there than anywhere else - if they get any.

---

Fandom has changed a great deal since projects like this got found by themselves. There're no webrings or mailling lists or the like anymore.

[Mamorien]

Let's look at the stats for the AO3 postings, current as these words emerge from my purple but smoking keyboard:

• My Apartment Manager Is Not an Isekai Character (story): 4 comments, 7 kudos, 1 bookmark, 641 hits
  
• Skein of Fools: 2 kudos, 102 hits
  
• Moving Days, Part I: 4 kudos, 111 hits
  
• Ah, Crepe: 6 kudos, 90 hits
  
• Strange Tides: 3 kudos, 1 bookmark, 152 hits
  
• Outriding: 1 kudo(s?), 65 hits
  
• Sailors on Foreign Shores: 3 kudos, 101 hits
  
• Where the Heart Is: 2 kudos, 72 hits
  
• One Night After Death: 1 kudo(s?), 44 hits
  
• A Little Slice of Heaven on the Gulf: 3 kudos, 1 bookmark, 76 hits
  
• No Thanks, We've Already Got One: 1 comment, 3 kudos, 204 hits
  
• Cuisine Clash: 1 comment, 3 kudos, 53 hits
  
• Home in the Maritimes: 4 kudos, 143 hits
  
• Moving Days, Part II: 2 comments, 2 kudos, 100 hits
  
• Time in the Woods: 4 kudos, 64 hits
  
• Adrift in Time: 2 comments, 9 kudos, 130 hits
  
• The Eyes in Her Fire: 5 kudos, 67 hits
  
• Kuroko's Casefile: 2 kudos, 107 hits
  
• Everyone's a Critic: 1 comment, 6 kudos, 1 bookmark, 187 hits
  
• Weekend Update: 3 kudos, 50 hits
  
• Tell Me, What Do You Want?: 3 kudos, 47 hits
  
• House Call: 4 comments, 3 kudos, 61 hits
  
• It's All Relative: 6 kudos, 95 hits
  
• Light and Heavy: 1 comment, 1 kudo(s?), 32 hits
  
• The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax: 4 comments, 3 kudos, 46 hits
  
• Thermal - er, Culture Shock: 2 kudos, 13 hits
  
• So You Just Arrived from a Parallel Universe: 13 comments, 5 kudos, 118 hits
  

Having compiled these stats, the closest thing I can see to a pattern may be that stories with large numbers of fandoms and/or moeblobs get higher engagement. It's so unreadable that I might as well have drawn in a chain of fox heads on sticks and seen if the word "death" started flashing.

[robkelk]

Analyzing the AO3 data, I see the same two names on almost all of the kudos lists. Somebody really likes us.

(And Merriam-Webster says "Kudos is one of a number of Greek-derived English nouns ending in -os; like pathos, kudos is a mass noun." So, yeah, one kudos.)