The Survey
(I need to figure out how to simulcast these things from the YSiF Blog to here...)
What have I learned?
Firstly, I want to say thank you. You guys rock. I mean that. I know we don't have a lot of interact-with-each-other stuff here, so you might feel like you're the only one reading this. You aren't. You're part of a movement. There's a bunch of other people with you. And they're cool.
I was amazed at how nice everyone was. The comments - I read them all - were all positive. Nobody said that we suck. So this either means that we don't suck, or that people who think we suck were seriously under-represented in the survey. And in my experience on the internet, people who think you suck aren't shy telling you so.
We also didn't get anyone who put "much less" for all the characters. I was expecting that. I was going to post a version of today's comic with just backgrounds, no characters and call it "Hey, Joey - this one's for you" or something like that. Didn't happen.
Secondly, how much are we taking from the survey? Some. It's tough, as a creative type I can't really go with either extreme. We have a vision here and believe in it; I'm not going to just scrap everything and change directions. But I'm also not going to act like I know everything, that there's nothing I can learn here. That's why I did this - because I think I'm doing pretty good, but I want to get better.
I hope I asked the right questions to get the answers I'm looking for. I spent a while thinking about the distinctions between liking characters and wanting to see more of them. I mean, Ms. Taylor isn't a villain, or exactly an antagonist, but she's not always very pleasant. But she's interesting.
Thirdly, what were the results? I've tallied the votes for who you'd like to see more. I've got it in a big spreadsheet that really makes me wish I paid more attention in statistics class.
This isn't American Idol, but if it were, Emily and Bram would've been voted off. Brisbane and Kimberly were the least disliked, and Silver_Blossom and Sandra were the most liked. The two best-received stories were Date-Night In and The Troublesome Troubles of Ms. Taylor.
Singles Cruise was both the #3 favorite and the #1 least favorite. I expected that. When I was writing it, I thought that if we had a forum, it'd cause arguments. No other story got more than a single vote for least-favorite.
(Why wasn't David on there? He hasn't shown up in over four years - if you say you want to see less of him in the comics, what does that even mean?)
Fourthly, most of our readers: seem satisfied with the website*, suggest reading Unlike Minerva**, read both comics***, think Kevin & Kell is the most similar comic, and like the more domestic stories****, use Firefox, and read a lot of webcomics.
So, once more - thank you
*: Which we don't get much feedback on. If it were lousy, who would send me an email just to tell me that?
**: Isabel and I are too close to the source material to have any kind of objective opinion on it. The options were "Yes. One should start with Unlike Minerva and read everything in order.", "Yes. But after you read You Say it First first.", "No, You Say it First stands on its own", "No. Unlike Minerva isn't very good" - I agree with all of them, usually at the same time.
***: I check the stats - there are a lot of people who read Namir Deiter but not You Say it First. One of the reasons for the survey was to figure out what was up with that without having to directly ask. Seriously, what's up with that?
****: Which I jokingly refer to, collectively, as "Brisbane and Kimberly sit around the house, talk about doing something, but don't".
What have I learned?
Firstly, I want to say thank you. You guys rock. I mean that. I know we don't have a lot of interact-with-each-other stuff here, so you might feel like you're the only one reading this. You aren't. You're part of a movement. There's a bunch of other people with you. And they're cool.
I was amazed at how nice everyone was. The comments - I read them all - were all positive. Nobody said that we suck. So this either means that we don't suck, or that people who think we suck were seriously under-represented in the survey. And in my experience on the internet, people who think you suck aren't shy telling you so.
We also didn't get anyone who put "much less" for all the characters. I was expecting that. I was going to post a version of today's comic with just backgrounds, no characters and call it "Hey, Joey - this one's for you" or something like that. Didn't happen.
Secondly, how much are we taking from the survey? Some. It's tough, as a creative type I can't really go with either extreme. We have a vision here and believe in it; I'm not going to just scrap everything and change directions. But I'm also not going to act like I know everything, that there's nothing I can learn here. That's why I did this - because I think I'm doing pretty good, but I want to get better.
I hope I asked the right questions to get the answers I'm looking for. I spent a while thinking about the distinctions between liking characters and wanting to see more of them. I mean, Ms. Taylor isn't a villain, or exactly an antagonist, but she's not always very pleasant. But she's interesting.
Thirdly, what were the results? I've tallied the votes for who you'd like to see more. I've got it in a big spreadsheet that really makes me wish I paid more attention in statistics class.
This isn't American Idol, but if it were, Emily and Bram would've been voted off. Brisbane and Kimberly were the least disliked, and Silver_Blossom and Sandra were the most liked. The two best-received stories were Date-Night In and The Troublesome Troubles of Ms. Taylor.
Singles Cruise was both the #3 favorite and the #1 least favorite. I expected that. When I was writing it, I thought that if we had a forum, it'd cause arguments. No other story got more than a single vote for least-favorite.
(Why wasn't David on there? He hasn't shown up in over four years - if you say you want to see less of him in the comics, what does that even mean?)
Fourthly, most of our readers: seem satisfied with the website*, suggest reading Unlike Minerva**, read both comics***, think Kevin & Kell is the most similar comic, and like the more domestic stories****, use Firefox, and read a lot of webcomics.
So, once more - thank you
*: Which we don't get much feedback on. If it were lousy, who would send me an email just to tell me that?
**: Isabel and I are too close to the source material to have any kind of objective opinion on it. The options were "Yes. One should start with Unlike Minerva and read everything in order.", "Yes. But after you read You Say it First first.", "No, You Say it First stands on its own", "No. Unlike Minerva isn't very good" - I agree with all of them, usually at the same time.
***: I check the stats - there are a lot of people who read Namir Deiter but not You Say it First. One of the reasons for the survey was to figure out what was up with that without having to directly ask. Seriously, what's up with that?
****: Which I jokingly refer to, collectively, as "Brisbane and Kimberly sit around the house, talk about doing something, but don't".