I suppose this is obvious to the rest of the world, but...

[zvi_likes_tv]

Why do people so rarely post links to stories on lj with ?mode=reply appended? For one, this makes giving feedback easier (you get to the end of the story, and a feedback form is right there! empty and waiting for you to fill it!) For two, it means that no one is put off giving feedback either by the evidence that no one else has commented on the

Comments

[bethbethbeth]

Different strokes, baby. Personally, I despise clicking on a story/meta link and seeing the reply box at the end. I *want* to read what other people have been saying before I post. It doesn't change what I think or what I say - ever - but it gives me a context.

As for the 'style light' thing, in my case, I use style mine to read, and so I almost never see people's obnoxious formatting. If I did, I suspect I'd be more diligent about using "style light."

[zvi_likes_tv]

but it gives me a context. Please to expound? I don't quite understand what the context provides to you if it's not going to affect what you say or do.

As for the 'style light' thing, in my case, I use style mine to read, and so I almost never see people's obnoxious formatting. If I save the link to my del.icio.us, I'll probably append style=mine, but if I'm just following a link from a newsletter or a recommendation, I won't change it unless I get there and I can't read.

[bethbethbeth]

Okay...context. Let's say I was reading a story and I loved it and I was going to say "you rock!" but all the comments said "You and your story suck!" When I say I'm not going to change what I have to say, I mean I'm not going to go "Oops, I guess the story does suck" at that point or not reply, but I will probably say "wow, those people who said this sucked? They're on crack."

[zvi_likes_tv]

Oh! I deliberately asked about stories, by which I was meaning not to discuss meta. In meta, it may of course be very useful to see what other people have said before you make your comment, to understand what is going on. Meta posts strike me as the beginning of a discussion, nine times out of 10, and not necessarily complete unto itself.

When I originally read your comment, I didn't see that you had recombined them.

[liviapenn]

A while ago someone, I forget who, was complaining about links with ?mode=reply appended, because she felt like anyone who used that link format was grubbing for comments (and that it was tacky). ^_^ I'm with you, though, I hate scrolling down through a story and thinking I'm about halfway through, and then hitting "the end" and half a page full of comments.

As far as format-light, I'm not sure it's well-known yet. I think the first time I encountered it was on metafandom, and I *love* it.

[zvi_likes_tv]

Well, I can see a bit how ?mode=reply could be construed as begging for comments, if the original author does it, but if it's somebody else recommending a story they have read, I fail to follow the logic. But I also wonder when did asking for feedback become tacky. Holding stories hostage for feedback, yeah, there's certainly a camp which loudly derides that as tacky, of which I am one. But just asking people? I kinda thought that's what we were here for, instead of making it all drawerfic.

[liviapenn]

Well, at the time, I was like: even when I'm linking my own stories, it's not about "LOOK, THE REPLY BOX!" -- it's about hiding the comments, because it makes the page load faster and it gives the reader an accurate picture of the length of the story (if it fits in one lj-post.) It just looks neater. If LJ had a "hide comments and don't put the reply box at the bottom" option, people would probably use that, but there isn't. Even if there was, there would still probably be a "Post a new comment" link at the end of the story, and then people could get upset about it because it's all rude and commanding. ;)

[zillah975]

*snicker* If I ever got that many comments on a fic, that might have occurred to me as a reason to link to the reply box.

To answer the question in the original post, I don't do it because A) I like reading the comments, and B) I don't like feeling like I'm begging for comments myself. I'm a shy, self-effacing type when it comes to my own fics, and comments are a great bonus but not enough to get me over the hurdle of self-effacingness. Plus - though I didn't think of this 'til just now - if I link to the reply box and still don't get any comments? Wow, ouchie+.

As for ?format=light, I actually almost knew about it. I tried to use ?style=light and it totally failed, so I decided I'd imagined the whole "light" thing and stopped trying. I'm inclined to use ?style=mine anyway, on the theory that people style their LJs in the way that suits their eyes best.

[musesfool]

*points up*

What Beth said. I've been told people prefer to read the comments, so that's how I link.

[thawrecka]

Strangely ?format=light appended to a comment page makes the page slower to load and harder to scroll down on my laptop. I don't know why, but it means that whenever I come across a link with ?format=light at the end I have to copy paste the link and change it to ?style=mine every time.

[liviapenn]

I don't remember if it was your post or not... maybe it was? Anyway, I still don't agree with you; I don't think most people use the reply-mode link because they want more comments, I think they do it because it makes the page look that tiny smidge neater, less like an LJ discussion page and more like a website story page.

But I think since you posted that entry, I've come to sympathize more with you, because since then I've seen people starting to put visible hit-counters on their LJ story pages, and it drives me absolutely NUTS. ^_^

[liviapenn]

All I remember is that I took part in a conversation about it one time. For me, that's actually pretty good. ;)

See, I don't mind if people HAVE hit counters-- I know that when I read stories on web pages, for instance, I'm going to show up on people's site stats, etc., even if there's no counter visible on the page. But the visible ones weird me out. It's like "I'm watching you!" ^_^