Feedback Drive. (mini challenge. with INCENTIVE + REWARD)

[mockturtletale]

Okay so I know we're already in the middle of prep for the Halloween Challenge (and you should absolutely continue to leave / talk to one another about your prompt ideas here) but something that's become quite topical lately is feedback in hockey rpf fandom and the relative lack of it. One idea to encourage a more proactive attitude toward feedback

Comments

[zortified]

What about leaving comments or feedback on places other than AO3, where leaving kudos isn't possible? I read lots of stuff on tumblr and LJ, so commenting to those wouldn't count?

Also, I'm unclear on how authors are able to respond to kudos, and thus get a 'meaningful point of interaction' between writers and readers. If you want to encourage conversation between writers and readers over the stories, then encouraging kudos doesn't seem like it would make that happen.

[mockturtletale]

Well, AO3 is more central to this fandom than any one place is to any other fandom I've ever come across, so it's pretty safe to use AO3 as a base to work from, but comments left on LJ absolutely count too, those can be copy and pasted or screenshot just the same as anything done on AO3 can!

This is an area we've been talking through on home_ice and in this fandom in general for a really long now, and through the body of those discussions it's become clear that a lot of people want to show an author that they've read and enjoyed their work but aren't comfortable writing comments. So for the sake of including every single kind of interaction (which leaving kudos absolutely is, since it says to an author 'hi I was here and I read this') kudos are something we decided should be a part of this challenge.

[zortified]

But your rules say you can only ask for an incentive if you leave kudos, which means the challenge is only for AO3?

I mean, fair enough, there is nothing wrong with a "kudos drive." But practically speaking, leaving kudos doesn't lead to "interaction" between the author and reader any further than the leaving of the kudos.

But if someone only leaves actual comments and no kudos... it seems like that should get rewarded as well. Writing comments takes more effort, so shouldn't that get rewarded, too?

(Also, I can safely say that in twenty years, this is a problem that has never really been solved. Writers have always wanted more feedback and readers have always been uncomfortable writing feedback and as a writer you just get used to the idea that only 10% of the readers will ever even acknowledge that you wrote something, even if they loved it.)

So anyhow, I'm going to leave another comment, because I am willing to write for incentives, I just wanted to get some clarification.

[mockturtletale]

To put it super simply - kudos are the smallest form of feedback it's possible to give in hockey rpf fandom, they're a form of feedback that almost everyone in hockey rpf fandom uses, so we chose to use those as something that will get you a similarly small reward in this challenge.

If you read the entry, you get far more reward for comments - you get 500 words of fic for only 500 characters of commented feedback.

(We're not trying to solve the problem. We're just doing our best to 1) make people in this fandom realize how valuable their feedback is to writers, because it's been said time and time again that readers don't think their comments make a difference when that's not the case at all, and it's a crappy way for readers to feel and 2) do SOMETHING. Maybe you're satisfied with a situation in which readers don't feel like their contribution is valued, and where as a writer you just get used to the idea that only 10% of the readers will ever even acknowledge that you wrote something, even if they loved it, but some people aren'

[zortified]

If you read the entry, you get far more reward for comments

No, you say that if someone leaves only comments and no kudos, they get no incentives at all.

[mockturtletale]

Actually no, it says this:

If you do not want to leave kudos but do want to leave feedback, you forgo the chance to offer a prompt. The author will choose, but you still get to pick a pairing from their list and you'll still get a fic with a word count matching the characters of feedback you've compiled.

[zortified]

Sorry; I initially read that as not being able to request an incentive at all, for not leaving kudos.