Anonymous comments

[NOIRTRASH]

Are you revealing something about your preferences/fantasies/kinks?

Youre not smart enough to interest me. Try PILOT.

 

[Initiate_me]

To be honest I agree with those saying that any comment is a win. It's quite rare that people bother.

 

[sbrooks103x]

Anonymous Feedback

The title of this thread was "Anonymous Feedback," but the opening post was about constructive feedback.

I would like to address "Anonymous Feedback." I'm usually in LW, and in my stories I ban anonymous comments. I have no issue with those who don't want to sign up, for whatever reason, and yes, I know that we are ALL anonymous.

My issue with anonymous is two-fold. First, at least in LW, most of the trolls are anonymous. You will rarely, if ever, get a comment like "fag, cuck shit" from a user, they are common from anons.

Second, it's hard to have a dialog when you need to respond to 1 of 10 anons, instead of "sbrooks103x." I usually will address a response to @Anonymous mm/dd/yy Re: "Title or first line of comment." This is obviously tedious.

All they need to do is put some sort of a "signature" at the end of the comment, then we can use that to respond to the comment.

REnd of rant.

 

[LI Kerwell]

I Don't Let It Bug Me

I had another pen name before and I had everything erased because of trolls. That was a mistake and I know that now.

My material is well written and I don't post until I'm happy with it.

I still get trolls.

Remember this:

You have the power to delete their comments if they upset you. I don't do it often as most times I let the trolls stuff stay but if it pisses me off enough..... delete.

I never give a troll the satisfaction of replying.

They read your story..... even though these people are slamming it, they read it o the end.


So don't let them bug you

 

[oggbashan]

...

They read your story..... even though these people are slamming it, they read it o the end.


...

I disagree about "they read it to the end".

I get anon messages saying "I didn't read five pages of your crap". They can open Page 1, go straight to the last page, and leave the comment.

 

[LI Kerwell]

I disagree about "they read it to the end".

I get anon messages saying "I didn't read five pages of your crap". They can open Page 1, go straight to the last page, and leave the comment.

Well that's based on the responses I get that contain tidbits from my stories. The rest of my thoughts still stand. Don't let them spoil your fun!

 

[oggbashan]

Well that's based on the responses I get that contain tidbits from my stories. The rest of my thoughts still stand. Don't let them spoil your fun!

Don't get me wrong. I get good and sometimes very helpful comments from anon.

I also get thoughtful and reasonable explanations why anon didn't like a particular story or part of the story.

But I have a few anon trolls who will leave an abusive comment on whatever I write. They don't care about the content, the quality or the category. They just want to abuse me. Those comments I usually delete. "This story is crap" - OK. That's an opinion. "Don't bother writing you [Insert racist or sexist abuse here] - that I delete.

 

[ChloeTzang]

I disagree about "they read it to the end".

I get anon messages saying "I didn't read five pages of your crap". They can open Page 1, go straight to the last page, and leave the comment.

Lol. I think that happens to most of us at some point. Goes with posting stories on a website. That's life.

 

[oggbashan]

Lol. I think that happens to most of us at some point. Goes with posting stories on a website. That's life.

And the more you post, the more anon rubbish you get.

I got abuse on another site for posting one of my stories inappropriately.

I hadn't posted it there. Someone else had stolen it, and posted it, leaving my copyright message in the text. The abuse should have been directed at the thief who was claiming my story as their own work.

 

[HandsInTheDark]

Look at it this way. Someone who has nothing better to do than heap abuse on stories they didn't pay for and writers they know nothing about... you're dealing with a moron with autism-grade social skills. Delete comments, set ignore on losers, and this place can be reasonably entertaining. Or take Chloe's approach and revel in the abuse. But on no account let them get to you in any way. They are lice on trailer trash.

 

[LI Kerwell]

Lice on trailer trash!

That's good.

 

[tomlitilia]

I disagree about "they read it to the end".

I get anon messages saying "I didn't read five pages of your crap". They can open Page 1, go straight to the last page, and leave the comment.

And then there's those Anons who say they couldn't even finish the first page, then complain about something that happens on page 4... #LovingWives

 

[Hypoxia]

To be honest I agree with those saying that any comment is a win. It's quite rare that people bother.

Any comment is evidence that your writing is strong enough to have provoked the response. Provocation is good. Means your audience isn't totally passive.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Any comment is evidence that your writing is strong enough to have provoked the response. Provocation is good. Means your audience isn't totally passive.

Lol. Definitely.....it's interesting tho, the different reactions the same story generates from different readers. But yeah, I'm with the any comment is good here. The main thing is not to be too sensitive about it. If they could do better, they'd be writing ....

 

[the_stoic]

I'm not persuaded that this is possible. I suppose if you doubled the number of categories, and established very clear and narrow guidelines for what was to be expected of stories in each one, you might do this, but there would be a big cost to doing so, I imagine, because the number of categories would become so great as to be bewildering to readers and writers alike, and effectively to Balkanize the site and its community into an excessive number of separate but increasingly small and isolated reader/writer communities.

I'm inclined to think that the solution is for writers simply to understand and accept that the anonymous comment community is what it is, and it's part of what you deal with when you publish stories here. Most of the "solutions" to the anonymous comment "problem" will, I think, simply create bigger problems.

I don't think it'll balloon if you structure the categories to fill out by design rather than by habit. By contrast, if there are no hard and fast rules, then everyone can operate by their own rules (and so feel empowered to police others based on those rules). And plus, I don't think it would be a bad idea to be listing stories across multiple categories, on the presumption the categories have some actual meat to them.

There actually is a solution to weeding out trolls and anonymous commentators . . . it's by getting rid of the capacity for people to leave anonymous comments. The fact that this is a website for erotic lit and not a professional newspaper, brand management enterprise, or book review website, which have all made the move away from anonymous commentators over the years, doesn't mean it won't have the desired impact. Simply accepting that toxic feedback is part of all feedback is no way to build creator/contributor intuition.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Someone who has nothing better to do than heap abuse on stories they didn't pay for and writers they know nothing about... you're dealing with a moron with autism-grade social skills.

Hi. Autistic person here. I can assure you that most of us work longer and harder on social skills than most neurotypical folk would ever dream of doing.

I'm also not aware of any correlation between autism and obnoxious online behaviour. Certainly autistic and non-autistic folk have a tendency to tread on one another's toes by accident, through not understanding one another's communication styles.

But autistic folk are pretty good at following rules when we know what those rules are (if anything, the problem is that we have difficulty understanding when to break them) and "don't randomly insult strangers" is a pretty simple rule.

It'd be nice if people applied that rule when talking about autistic folk too, eh?

 

[ElectricBlue]

There actually is a solution to weeding out trolls and anonymous commentators . . . it's by getting rid of the capacity for people to leave anonymous comments. The fact that this is a website for erotic lit and not a professional newspaper, brand management enterprise, or book review website, which have all made the move away from anonymous commentators over the years, doesn't mean it won't have the desired impact. Simply accepting that toxic feedback is part of all feedback is no way to build creator/contributor intuition.

Writers already have the control they need to protect their space - the power to "delete", the power to not allow anon comments in the first place, the power to not allow feedback, the power to not write in LW.

Comments are 1:1000 - 1:2000 if you're lucky. Anonymous comments are maybe 50% of that, for my stories at least. So comments are rare and occasional. It's not really that hard to do the housekeeping.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't think it'll balloon if you structure the categories to fill out by design rather than by habit. By contrast, if there are no hard and fast rules, then everyone can operate by their own rules (and so feel empowered to police others based on those rules).

There are areas where I'd like to see clearer category definition (e.g. the boundary between BDSM and non-con) and that might reduce the problem somewhat, but it's not going to end it. If you have a story where a woman ties up a man, gags him, and pegs him with his consent, it's very clear that BDSM is the correct category for it. Nevertheless that kind of story tends to do badly in BDSM and attract hostile comments, because a certain subset of BDSM readers take that kind of story as a threat to their masculinity.

You're always going to have issues like that, because readers are people and people are complicated. Site design choices can increase or reduce those problems, but don't expect to eliminate them that way.

And plus, I don't think it would be a bad idea to be listing stories across multiple categories, on the presumption the categories have some actual meat to them.

By my understanding, part of the Great Redesign involves strengthening the role of tags to serve pretty much that purpose.

There actually is a solution to weeding out trolls and anonymous commentators . . . it's by getting rid of the capacity for people to leave anonymous comments. The fact that this is a website for erotic lit and not a professional newspaper, brand management enterprise, or book review website, which have all made the move away from anonymous commentators over the years, doesn't mean it won't have the desired impact. Simply accepting that toxic feedback is part of all feedback is no way to build creator/contributor intuition.

Baby, bathwater, etc.

Around 99% of my anons are positive and they're a big part of why I write. There are plenty of nice people out there who just happen to have decided that they want a bit more anonymity on an erotica site than they would for a book review. Authors who are plagued by toxic anons already have the option to disable comments on a story-by-story basis, without needing to shut down anons for those of us who enjoy hearing from them.

 

[katiekins1803]

Ianother claimed that I had created the most hateful character in literary history

More hateful than Ramsey Bolton in A Song of Ice and Fire?? Wow, that's impressive! haha.

 

[Hypoxia]

I've a hateful player I dare not put onstage. "She awoke early, yawning. She signaled the servants to bring in the morning collection of kitten for her to crush underfoot. Then she had excess captives assembled for her throat-cutting pleasure. Then she called for a good strong Bloody Mary to top-off the morning. It's GOOD being FLOTUS."

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Since comment threads appear here regularly, couldn't AH use a FUCKED COMMENTS sub-forum? Also sub-forae for MY STORY WAS REJECTED and UNDERAGE CHARACTERS and NON-CON VS RAPE.

The same shit I say...every time one of these pops up.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I don't write in the Loving Wives section, but from what I've heard anything that draws the ire of readers there will result in some of the nastiest, most vitriolic comments one could imagine.

While many things appear to irritate them, it seems that stories about women who cheat without consequence attract the most angry comments. Stories about women who treat men badly, or who are even just strong willed or feminists seem to get LW readers riled up too.

I wrote a cheating story last year called 'Bridget the Bossy Bridezilla' in Erotic Couplings about an engaged yuppie couple called Bridget and Ben, set in the Australian city of Brisbane in the early 1990s. If I had posted this to Loving Wives, I think it might have set off a perfect storm of hatred if you consider the main female characters:

Bridget - Spoiled stuck-up Daddy's girl who treats her fiancée Ben like a cross between a doormat and a roll of toilet paper three weeks of the month, and 100 times worse every four weeks. When Ben stands up to her and calls her out on her bullshit, she at first tries to kick him in the groin, then cheats on him with his loser younger brother Craig (who she cannot stand, not least due to the wonderful advice Craig gave to her infertile sister) and allows him to perform sex acts on her she never allows Ben to do. This is all out of pure spite, Bridget is satisfied with her actions, and is never held to account for them.

Casey - Grunge chick university student, and Craig's former girlfriend. Although Craig is a loser, the way Casey dumps him is downright cold and heartless. Casey has already met a new boyfriend by the time she breaks up with Craig.

Charlene - Ben and Craig's foul-mouthed sister, who has three kids to three different father and is pregnant with her fourth. She constantly berates and belittles her partner Elvis, calling him terms of endearment such as 'you fucking dickhead', 'you fucking loser', 'you fucking lard ass' and 'you fucking retard'.

Tracy - Rich and opinionated cougar, married to a wealthy and powerful man. The client from Hell, Ben is assigned to her account after she drives Ben's male co-worker who previously worked with her to ill health, requiring a month's sick leave from work. Tracy is never held to account for her adultery either.

Somehow, I couldn't see Bridget, Casey, Charlene and Tracy being favorites of the LW Readers.

The fact that there's stories to read in tye section pisses them off. I am still trying to contrive a story to maybe cause a stroke or two...maybe that should be a contest; pissing off the most LW readers.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

This is interesting . . . and yet considerably preventable. Not on the part of the writer, but in terms of general site administration. Firmly realigning and defining the expectations (and parameters) of the categories would go a long way toward corralling readers, each with their own understanding of what constitutes a red line.

Nah, one of my stories is straight up all about the genre it's supossed to be, never deviates. It wouldn't fit anywhere else. Yet the single mention of the fact that some interacial sex is happening had one reader completely livid, telling me how much they hate interacial sex and how that's where it belongs. I think I responded and called them stupid. I think it was a transgender story, or fantasy.

 

[oggbashan]

I have just deleted two new comments from anonymous who doesn't like fetish and/or femdom.

Why he, presumably he, bothers to leave comments complaining about the illegality of actions of dommes in categories anonymous doesn't like?

It's a waste of time and effort. That particular anonymous keeps complaining about my stories of strong women. I'll keep deleting the comments because they are not relevant to the category.

If anonymous doesn't like my stories in those categories, why read them and leave comments?

 

[JaxRhapsody]

I simply disabled anon comments. (Wo)man the fuck up and use your account if you wanna comment. Don't have one, shut the fuck up and read something else.