Overly critical feedback from non-authors

[fantaseeboy]

Does anyone else get irritated by overly critical feedback from non-authors? It compares to food critics who can't cook. I feel the voting/comments system should be altered. One should have the choice of allowing everyone vote/comment on their works. Or allow only fellow published authors to vote/comment.

 

[AwkwardMD]

You have the option to turn off anonymous feedback. Technically, then only users with an account could comment and not 'authors', but it does eliminate some responses.

It's on your author control panel, under My Options.

 

[oggbashan]

As with most identities on Literotica, we do not know who are authors and who are not. They could be authors who post under one name and leave comments under another.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Actually I don't think you even have to be a member at all in order to comment and vote. (Could somebody confirm that?)

I've pondered the same issue too, and I've decided to accept the "Hello World!" open access weirdness. If I get critical comments I may "spar" with the person and explain my thinking. Once in a while I concede that the critic has made a good point. I only deleted one comment that was gibberish.

Many of these people are not writers themselves but they are our audience.

 

[Hypoxia]

Uncivilized apes throw feces at authors here. We learn to duck and shrug.

 

[GroverLang]

As with most identities on Literotica, we do not know who are authors and who are not. They could be authors who post under one name and leave comments under another.

On the button as usual Ogg. There may be many different reasons why writers want to keep their comments and their stories separate. I do. But that’s up to me and as long as I attach my pseudonym to my comments, either at the end of the story or on here, I don’t see a problem.

Comments on here have to be by members and the opportunity to leave an anonymous comment is only available at the end of the story itself. Switch off and don’t allow them to comment or delete. That’s your only option.

 

[GroverLang]

You have the option to turn off anonymous feedback. Technically, then only users with an account could comment and not 'authors', but it does eliminate some responses.

It's on your author control panel, under My Options.

There’s far more genuine positive feedback by anonymous than the gutter crap from a handful. Stopping the minority from commenting won’t stop them from voting the story down. I accept all comments. I just ignore the negative ones.

 

[KeithD]

Actually I don't think you even have to be a member at all in order to comment and vote. (Could somebody confirm that?)

True.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I generally find that comments are left if your story is well-written and your readers are moved enough to say something about it, or if your story is poorly written and your readers are telling you something.

To subvert the traditional rule of three - if one person says something, it's an opinion; if two people say it, it's a trend; but if three people say the same thing , pay attention, because you know, they might just be right.

The common denominator isn't the readers, coz they''re all different, the common denominator is what you're giving them to read. Some folk need to think about that; if readers are all saying negative stuff, are they all wrong? Possibly not.

 

[gunhilltrain]

Does anyone else get irritated by overly critical feedback from non-authors? It compares to food critics who can't cook. I feel the voting/comments system should be altered. One should have the choice of allowing everyone vote/comment on their works. Or allow only fellow published authors to vote/comment.

If I counted correctly, you have fourteen red H's on thirty-two submissions, which indicates you must be pleasing a lot of readers. That is a significant accomplishment here. (I'm certainly impressed.)

I have only glanced at a few comments. There is an anonymous comment on "After the Annulment" which seems to criticize the behavior of a character. That may or may not be interpreted as a criticism of the you as the author too.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Does anyone else get irritated by overly critical feedback from non-authors? It compares to food critics who can't cook. I feel the voting/comments system should be altered. One should have the choice of allowing everyone vote/comment on their works. Or allow only fellow published authors to vote/comment.

You already can switch off voting altogether. But cherry-picking who gets to vote would make the scores even harder to interpret than they currently are - how do you compare between two stories in the same category where one is scored by all readers and the other only by registered accounts/authors?

Also, and apologies to those who've heard me say this a dozen times before: the fewer people voting on a story, the more noise there is in the scores and the more vulnerable they are to a single bad actor gaming the scores.

 

[8letters]

Does anyone else get irritated by overly critical feedback from non-authors? It compares to food critics who can't cook.

Yeah. Happens all the time. There is an you-can't-please-all-the-people element to some of the comments, but sometimes I just want to tell the commenter to get a clue.

My favorite such comment is:

Very Good,But....
Soon after starting,I realized that I'd read this story awhile back. The sex is hot though so I read it again. Three things bother me a little bit. 1) It's too long.4 pages,Max would have been enough,especially if you 2)eliminated some of the psychological stuff. After awhile the two of them seemed a tad coo coo what with all the intellectual and educational aspects of their relationship being talked about to death. 3)When the story ended,it left me with a little bit of an icky feeling,what with it being mentioned by Todd that the sex was wrong,and toward the end with the towel taking a real beating with the description of all the bodily fluids all over the place. ~ To sum it up,could have been better if shorter with a lot less serious conversation.

This is a comment to a story with a 4.81 rating. This comment was the 158th comment, and the vast majority of the preceding comments were people saying how much the loved the story.

I always leave comments like that, because they seem to prompt other people to leave a comment saying that they disagree with the negative comment.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I always leave comments like that, because they seem to prompt other people to leave a comment saying that they disagree with the negative comment.

It was a peanut-brain kind of a comment, too, because the guy read the story twice, but then remembered he didn't like the psychological stuff or body fluids on a towel. And thought it was too long at four pages?? Pretty obvious what he was there for; to leave his own body fluids on a towel, I'd say .

 

[Hypoxia]

I always leave comments like that, because they seem to prompt other people to leave a comment saying that they disagree with the negative comment.

For fun, anonymously post a nasty negatory comment on your own story, then await your loyal fans' reactions. If any. Uh oh, rude awakening time...

 

[SimonDoom]

It doesn't bother me at all that non-authors make critical comments. It bothers me a little if the criticism is stupid, but it's irrelevant to me whether the comment is by an author or not.

The reality in the real world "out there" as well as in Literotica is that most readers are not authors. But they're just as entitled as anyone else to give their opinions, and if as an author you want to connect with readers, you ought to be open to what they have to say regardless whether they write stories or not. Being a Literotica author doesn't make you an expert of any kind, as anyone who's read a fair sampling of Literotica stories well knows.

 

[GroverLang]

The reality in the real world "out there" as well as in Literotica is that most readers are not authors. But they're just as entitled as anyone else to give their opinions.

I couldn’t paint a portrait or a landscape but I can still tell whether or not it’s a good painting.

 

[storyteller19]

Good and bad feedback

The positive comments are great and make me want to keep on writing and shows me what works, but the negative ones show me what I can be doing better so that in the future I will get more positive feedback. Sometimes I don’t agree with the negative feedback at first, but when I go back for another round of edits I try to keep it in mind. Sometimes it can be frustrating but it is also nice seeing how different stories are received.

 

[KeithD]

The validity of critique is based on the ability of the critiquer. Comments put on stories anonymously (and account names are anonymous in most cases) isn't valid just because it was appended to the story. If you want good comment ask for it directly from others you've gained in respect in.

 

[gordo12]

Does anyone else get irritated by overly critical feedback from non-authors? It compares to food critics who can't cook. I feel the voting/comments system should be altered. One should have the choice of allowing everyone vote/comment on their works. Or allow only fellow published authors to vote/comment.

I'm going with no.

You can set feedback to eliminate anons but there is no way to tell if a registered member is an author.

Like someone else said the vast majority of readers aren't authors. They know what they like and what they don't. I've gotten some good feedback from them that's improved my efforts!

They're the ones that shell out money for books. Frankly you could stick author opinions (no offense) where the sun don't shine as long as the readers LOVE what they see.

If anyone has any future hope of being a PAID author then it's the readers that matter. I listen to them

 

[8letters]

It was a peanut-brain kind of a comment, too, because the guy read the story twice, but then remembered he didn't like the psychological stuff or body fluids on a towel. And thought it was too long at four pages?? Pretty obvious what he was there for; to leave his own body fluids on a towel, I'd say .

I think the commenter might be a SPCT member (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Towels).

 

[8letters]

For fun, anonymously post a nasty negatory comment on your own story, then await your loyal fans' reactions. If any. Uh oh, rude awakening time...

Even my highest rated stories have plenty of negative comments.

 

[KeithD]

I
They're the ones that shell out money for books.

They are here reading for free (and some are here just to troll). What evidence is there that they shell out money for books?

 

[ChuckWolf]

A story I posted in the Lesbian category, received a few harsh comments mostly having problems with the non-consensual content and it later occurred to me that if I had posted it in the Non-Consensual section with a Lesbian keyword-tag, it might have been better received there.

However it's currently my highest-rated story, so go figure.

Overall, most of the comments have been positive & encouraging and I think posting your story in the most appropriate genre-category can make a big difference.

 

[gordo12]

They are here reading for free (and some are here just to troll). What evidence is there that they shell out money for books?

Do people not shell out money for your books Keith?

I did say "If anyone has any future hope of being a PAID author"

I read here for free and a quick check of my Kindle shows:

2017 - 107 book orders
2018 - 270 book orders
2019 - 75 book orders (to date)

Readers are readers and will buy books. Their opinion means a lot more to me.

 

[KeithD]

Do people not shell out money for your books Keith?

I did say "If anyone has any future hope of being a PAID author"

I read here for free and a quick check of my Kindle shows:

2017 - 107 book orders
2018 - 270 book orders
2019 - 75 book orders (to date)

Readers are readers and will buy books. Their opinion means a lot more to me.

The topic of this thread is criticism and reading of stories posted to Literotica.

And I continue to point out that there is no evidence that all readers here are buying any books. They are reading here for free. "Readers are readers and will buy books" just is a non sequitur. If you want to satisfy paying readers you have to make sure the readers you are listening too are actually paying readers. there's no ipso facto connection between Literotica readers and paying readers.