"Thank You"?

[gnatkip]

I have a question. You post a fic / art / vid / other fan work, and in response, you receive a positive comment that includes the word "Thanks." Or "Thanks for sharing." I'm not talking about the recipients of gifts thanking you for crafting something expressly for them; I'm just talking about comments from people in general

Comments

[ratcreature]

What a weird take wrt tho the "thanks". I never felt awkward with that phrasing either way whether saying or responding (or rather, as you say, not more awkward thant usual). And I have never heard that complaint before, and I've seen some strange opinions (like people being annoyed with all positive fb... which really, wtf?) I mean, to have to reply to/thank for a thanks is really common, how is that awkward? I mean, there's set phrases even, like "you're welcome" for this very situation.

I want to slap all these people with obscure demands and narrow parameters for how they want their feedback with a dead fish, because IMO it just makes others neurotic about leaving feedback, and seriously I just want feedback -- short, long, eloquent, awkwardly phrased or even critical, as long as plain *obvious* politeness and common netiquette is there I'm not going to nag about details. (And with "polite" here I don't mean these byzantine guides that require telepathic precognition of preferences, just things like "no name calling", "don't randomly rant at others that their favorite pairing sucks and that they rather ought to do X/Y instead".)

[giandujakiss]

Yes, yes! The people who set weird parameters on fb are just ... bizarre and frankly I don't want their meticulous lists of preferences to inhibit people from feedbacking me! I'm much less picky!

[ratcreature]

Exactly. I've seen people post about how they felt unsure about responding or not "qualified" (that especially when it comes to art and vids), and so on, and I can't help but feel that this fear of doing fb "wrong" somehow is the fault of these feedback divas with really, really specific ideas about how they'd like their fb, when I'm not one of the people who only want the fb equivalent of the "decaf pumkin-spice soy milk latte without froth but with extra cinnamon sprinkles".

[gnatkip]

"I mean, there's set phrases even, like "you're welcome" for this very situation." Hahaha! Indeed.

I personally didn't find this particular post to be suppressive in that way, but yes, like you and giandujakiss said, I would really really prefer that other people's complaints about the quality of the comments they get did not have a negative impact on the comments I get. I like it when people talk to me me me.

[ratcreature]

Most of the "feedback guides" are claiming that they only want to support more feedback and make writing it easier, but I don't think that what happens, even with less prescriptive ones. Because there's always something in them like this "thank you" example, like some personal pet peeve or whatever, that mentions someone will be put off for some reason by something that the reader previously thought generic and harmless. I've seen pointers for writing fb mention all kinds of things.

Like some dislike if you tell something like "I don't normally read this pairing/genre/fandom but you made it really awesome!" which is clearly meant as a compliment, but some take it to diss the pairing/genre/whatever in general by making that story to be the huge exception (I don't get it, but I've seen that multiple times). Some dislike short squee as pointless, others don't want to hear anything else because they dislike if readers comment like editors remarking on details. Some are offended by pointing out even quickly fixable errors (like some minor canon gaffe) because they never fix anything after publishing, others are offended by not pointing that kind of thing out, because they find it embarrassing that noone tells them about something they could fix. And so on and so forth. It's no wonder some people say they feel too insecure to fb, because every "helpful" suggestion has some wanting the exact opposite until there's no options left anymore. And now apparently even the most innocuous safe option, a plain "thank you" is taken as a misstep by some?!?

[gnatkip]

I will express my agreement with this comment by quoting thelastgoodname: "fandom: never ceasing to teach you that you might be horribly wrong!"

XD