Q4 comments number-crunching

Jan 09, 2019 15:54

I have finally had the time to put together the random facts and dubious statistics gleaned from the last three months' worth of comments on my fanworks archived at AO3. I admit it's mostly navel-gazing, but some of my conclusions may be of interest to those of you who wonder about things like readership and feedback in general on new and older stories. Bonus, I've been doing this for a year now, so I have even more dodgy conclusions! (This past quarter I also tracked kudos, which I started doing in July, but that will be in a separate post.)

Total comments: 78 threads/commenters, 95 total comments, an increase over last quarter’s 63/70. I posted 13 stories this quarter, all but one as part of festathons, bringing my total AO3 work count to 267. Also (as happened last quarter) a new fandom friend went on a reading and commenting spree (♥)
Number of individual works commented on: 42 (up only a little from 40 last quarter, so this suggests more comments per story).
Comments (threads) on recent stories: 48 comment threads on the 13 stories posted this quarter which is about 62% of comments received during the quarter. However, 5 of the comments on my two Femslashex stories were made in December, well after the stories went live in mid-October, so only 43 (55%) comments were received within a month of posting.
Comments (threads) on exchange stories during anon periods: 36 on 12 stories - hey, that averages 3 comments per story, woohoo!

Comments on stories over one month old: 35 threads, 29 works (3rd Q: 32/30)
Comments on stories over one year old: 24 threads, 23 works (3rd Q: 27/24)
Comments on stories over five years old: 12 threads, 12 works (3rd Q: 19/18)
Comments on stories over ten years old: 7 threads, 7 works (3rd Q: 12/11)
Comments on stories over fifteen years old: 4 threads, 4 works (3rd Q: 6/6)

I interpret this as fewer people are reading (or rereading) my ancient stories in fandoms I’m no longer in, though maybe it just means fewer people are commenting on them. I’ll have to tease apart the kudos data as well. I suppose I could take snapshots of my statistics page and look at hits over each quarter or some such, too.

Looking just at stories over a year old, fandoms commented on are: Harry Potter, Stargate Atlantis, HP/SGA crossover, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Bedlam Stacks, The Witcher, Pirates of the Caribbean, SGA/PotC crossover, Battlestar Galactica, Old Kingdom, The Golem and the Jinni, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Lord of the Rings, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane/The Goblin Emperor crossover, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and original works.

Fic with most comments this quarter: An Untangled Knot, the Twelfth Night Olivia/Viola story I wrote for Femslashex, with 10 comment threads, 4 of which came after reveals.
Fic not posted this period with the most comments: Neil deGrasse Tyson Space Station SpaceshipAdvisor Reviews (Excerpt), which was written in 2016, got 2 comments.
silverr read and commented on it, then recced it on Discord which got me a second comment from someone else. I also got 2 comments this period on After the End of the Story, which was posted in mid-September for Remix, but they were left at the beginning of October, not even a month after posting, so it doesn’t really count as an older story in this context.
Most popular older fic commented on: As usual, An Eye for an Eye, an E-rated Lucius/Harry (Harry Potter) noncon fic that I wrote in December 2003 that has the second most hits, kudos, and bookmarks of all my stories. (It was the same last quarter, except that it had the third most kudos then, but has since moved into second place.)
Least popular older fic commented on: Calypso Dreams, an M-rated SGA/PotC crossover (Elizabeth Weir/Tia Dalma) ficlet which was originally written for Porn Battle 2008, got its first AO3 comment, yay!

Patterns and other things that caught my eye:
• One comment (on What a Woman Can Do, Éowyn pegging Faramir, posted in 2009) specifically mentioned it was a reread (and that the reader was surprised to realize they’d never commented before).
• An additional 5 comments (which I didn’t count here) were posted by two people in an existing thread on An Eye for an Eye, because one commenter had said they were planning to write a sequel, and someone else (who also commented directly to the story, and that comment is counted here) asked if it had been written yet. (This is a story that ends with a twist, and I got so tired of people asking for me to write a sequel that I specifically grant permission in the end note for anyone who wants to write it, provided they link my original story as inspiration.)
• Three older Yuletide stories were commented on (one from 2009, two from 2016).
• After we “met” on Discord and friended each other,
silverr very nicely went through all my original words and fandoms she knew, strewing comments and kudos in her wake.
• I got into a nice comment discussion on my Witcher femslash stories with someone else who had the same reaction I did to the sauna scene that inspired my first one.

A year of comments!
I’ve been keeping track of comments since January 1st 2018, so for the whole year I received 229 individual comments as part of 203 comment threads. This appears to be around 2 comments every 3 days, but of course in actual practice most comments come just after posting a story. When I did my year in review statistics, I saw 103 comment threads received on stories written in 2018, so roughly half of my comments are on new works, half on older works (which is the same thing I’m seeing quarterly) and works out to about two out-of-the-blue comments on an older work every week.

This year I wrote 25 stories for 12 exchanges (if you consider NYR an exchange) and had a record (alas) three noncommenting recipients. I got 14 comments on previous Yuletide stories over the year, so truly, Yuletide is the gift that keeps giving!

Finally, 2019 has started very well on the comment front; as of today, the 9th of January, I’ve already received 8 comments, mostly on the just-revealed Yuletide stories. I hope you all get lots of comments this year, too!

Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth

fandom, navel-gazing, statistics, feedback

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