Any point asking for a sweep, Manu?

SimonDoom said:

If you really feel this way then you shouldn't care about anonymous comments and votes. You should be completely indifferent, and not advocate for doing away with them. You are being inconsistent if on the one hand you say you write for yourself but on the other hand you want to impose heavy-handed controls on who can comment or vote, which affect the rest of us.

I am very clear in my mind about my writing purposes. I write because I like to write, and I write stories that please me and conform to my ideas about how stories ought to be. But I publish my stories here, as opposed to just saving them on my hard drive or shoving sheets of paper in a drawer, because I want people to read them. I want to connect with readers and I want to know how they react to them. This is a perfectly normal reaction, and it's the one that, I wager, most authors here have. I see no contradiction between the two positions, and I think those who suggest otherwise are proposing a false dichotomy.

If you don't like anonymous comments, suck it up and ignore them, or delete them, or set things so anonymous people can't comment on your stories. But don't dictate how things happen for the rest of us. I want anonymous comments and I would greatly regret if the system were set up to prevent them.

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gordo12 said:

Wow, don't know how I missed that one. It seemed like the vast majority of the commenters were on board, very few dissed the writing. It was an unexpected violent ending.

As someone said you gave the BTB crowd an orgasm with that one and they were there to applaud.

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Zeb_Carter said:

Interesting... now go take a look at the comments on one of mine. No need to read the story, unless you want to. But if I were you, I would read the comments first. Let me know what you think of the comments.

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Zeb_Carter said:

That's what I do, I delete those anonymous comments. Yes, I delete them before they can even be posted. So what's the difference again?

Connecting with readers? If a reader likes what I write they let me know. If they don't they still let me know. I still get anon comments via email as Lit doesn't validate the email addresses. Ever.

So what was your question?

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Jada59 said:

Same. I will try to read stories when the person asks for feedback unless the category is too far from what I'm interested in. I hate it when they don't give us the category in advance. Then I start reading to discover that it's sci fi or something else that I'm not into.

If that's the case, I will read at least a few paragraphs to check for grammar and if I see glaring errors, I will tell them, but I won't leave a comment at the story itself.

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Emirus said:

Unless the writer has turned off comments I assume they are interested in what the reader thought of their story. If I do leave a comment it will, as you know, be honest and if I have a negative criticism I make it constructive and also point out what I liked about the story. If I can’t find anything good to say I don’t say anything and I don’t score. In any event I never score less than three.

Sometimes a story is in the wrong category because Laurel has changed the category. This has happened twice to me. In both instances I’ve contacted Laurel and the category has been changed back to my original request. The last time was my story Charlie, William and Anna. I asked for it to go in Romance but Laurel took one look at the title and put it in Erotic Couplings. Perhaps other writers don’t go back to her and the story is left in the wrong category.

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Emirus said:

Unless the writer has turned off comments I assume they are interested in what the reader thought of their story.

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RubenR said:

I think, you case of your example.

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Emirus said:

I read the comments and then read the story for the second time. I say the second time because after the first few paragraphs I realised I had read it a long time ago. Before I registered as Emirus and at a time I didn’t leave comments. I enjoyed the story then and I enjoyed reading it this time. I like a twist at the end of a good story so this was right up my street. Definitely a five and worth much much more than it’s current rating. I would have been happy to have written it myself. I’ve read stories rated well above 4.5 that aren’t a patch on this story

A mixed bag of comments. Too many upon which to give an individual opinion but I disagree with all those that are negative in any way. The ending is understandable taking into account what has happened previously. Plus it’s fiction. If it was my story I would be disappointed in the rating and ignore all the negative non-constructive comments. But I wouldn’t delete any.

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Zeb_Carter said:

You want to know what would stop trolls? When they vote, they not only have to be logged in, but the system would also disallow alts and their ID would be made public with each vote.

No more anonymous voting, comments and no alts.

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SimonDoom said:

I was responding to your post earlier in this thread in which you appeared to advocate that anonymous voting should be disallowed. My point is that if you really don't care about others' opinions and only write for yourself you have no reason to take this position. You should ignore the opinions of others and let other authors who DO want anonymous input to get it. You shouldn't advocate messing things up for the rest of us who DO want to receive anonymous votes and comments. I think eliminating anonymous voting and comments is a terrible idea because it would drastically reduce the total amount of reader input at this site. That's a far greater negative than the negative of once and a while getting nasty anonymous comments. I've received some bad anonymous comments. But I've received far more good anonymous comments than bad, and I can't for the life of me figure out why some people want to get rid of anonymous voting and comments for everyone.

You're being logically inconsistent if you say on the one hand that you don't care what others think but you think anonymous voting and comments should be prevented.

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michie said:

I got:

"Didn't read it.

Left an appropriate rating."


Meaning a one star of course. I'm not sure how many trolls there are, or if it's just one really dedicated guy, but I tend to think it's the later. If I post something it starts in the 1's with many votes and then goes up from there. It just doesn't seem possible that there is a well organized group that catches stories before everyone else. He sends me emails too. All absurd in nature.

Also, his prose never changes. Even when talking to himself in the comments. All anonymous of course.

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