Kudos For Kudos

[andraste]

Hanging around the internet as I do, I've seen grumbling in various places about the AO3's Kudos button. This is mainly because some people feel that it discourages readers from leaving actual comments. I just felt moved to say that that this is not true for my work - I get more kudos than I ever got comments on things, and the kudos keeps turning up. It's always been rare for me to get comments or e-mail about a story or vid I posted years ago, but kudos never seems to stop coming. Both from people I know have been reading my work for a long time (you know who you are - and thanks!) and from people who, as far as I can tell, have never communicated with me before in any way. (Also from people who either don't have accounts or don't post logged in, so I cannot tell who they might be. Thank you, mysterious internet strangers.) People who have something to say other than 'I liked this!' still seem to comment, as well.

This came to mind today because, as some of you already know, I've been having kind of a rough time lately. It's just really nice that every afternoon I get an e-mail amounting to 'hey, people like that thing you made!' Even though I've barely posted fic in ages, it reminds me that there are still readers out there.

Reading on the AO3 has also got me sending way more feedback than I have in years. I used to be pretty good back in the mailing list days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth ...) but became terrible after everything moved to livejournal. Now I can bookmark things and go back later, and if I can't think of anything to say I can just hit the kudos button to express my general positive feelings.

So, y'know, I am grateful for the attention and encourage you to continue pressing the button if you feel moved to do so *g*.

Comments

[katta]

I've noticed that I miss kudos when reading on journals. "Oh, this story is pretty nice, but I don't have much to say about it. I should leave kudos. Oh wait, journal. Never mind then." I don't tend to comment on those stories, unless I very much want the author to know that the story is appreciated (because it's a rare pairing or whatever.) So the kudos are a plus, not an instead-of, where I'm concerned.

[lizbee]

There's a person on my flist who puts a poll with a radio button on her fics now -- "I would like to leave kudos for this story". I really like the idea, but am much too lazy to implement it.

[katta]

I really like the idea, but am much too lazy to implement it.

Same here, on both counts!

[andraste]

That is a great idea, although I suspect I am also too lazy to actually do it *g*.

Someone should probably suggest to Dreamwidth that they could put some kind of optiona 'like' function on posts. Given the percentage of the community that consists of writers, artists, vidders, etc. it could be handy. (Especially with the option to turn it on and off for individual posts.)

[andraste]

Yeah, this is one of the reasons I got so bad at leaving feedback on livejournal. I often feel I don't have anything to say beyond 'I like this!' which hardly seems worth opening a comment to say. Having a button to push that conveys this without having to type anything is great.