The "Invisible" Favorites.

[Voyeurkenneth]

First off, when a reader favorites your story, your story will show up on either their Favorites list (obviously) or a public Reading List. An author does not receive a notification if a reader adds one's story to a private Reading List.

So why then, does a story that gets favorited NOT show up on either the reader's Favorites list or public Reading List?

I'm thinking that some readers "temporarily" favorite a story to trigger a notification for themselves, so that their "My Activity" keeps a record of stories they've read. Otherwise, what other reason could there be?

 

[Bamagan]

First off, when a reader favorites your story, your story will show up on either their Favorites list (obviously) or a public Reading List. An author does not receive a notification if a reader adds one's story to a private Reading List.

So why then, does a story that gets favorited NOT show up on either the reader's Favorites list or public Reading List?

I'm thinking that some readers "temporarily" favorite a story to trigger a notification for themselves, so that their "My Activity" keeps a record of stories they've read. Otherwise, what other reason could there be?

I believe some people use them as simple bookmarks to return if they don't finish them right away, then clear the bookmark when they are either done reading or have given up on it. That's more or less the same thing you described, although I don't know if their activity log necessarily factors into the process.
That being said, I've also noticed that updates on the activity log can sometimes be a day ahead of things showing up elsewhere. You may want to check back in a day or two and see if the reader's lists have changed to include whatever your activity log suggested might have been missing.
I'm also not entirely certain we don't get alerts about supposedly private lists. The downloadable story stats show that they conflate some of the data before displaying it, so it's not impossible that the alerts system is buggy.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm thinking that some readers "temporarily" favorite a story to trigger a notification for themselves, so that their "My Activity" keeps a record of stories they've read. Otherwise, what other reason could there be?

Back when I joined Lit, the Favorites list was the only way of bookmarking stories. It kept breaking everybody's heart when they got a broken heart on a story, so the site stopped doing that. I suspect most readers don't even know about reader's lists. Favorites mean just about nothing to me, they're a ripple in the noise.