I don't so much mind the one star ratings. I figured the reader in question just didn't connect with subject matter. Perhaps I went too far or perhaps I didn't go far enough.

But I don't want to feel that I'm simply repeating myself. I want to strike out in new directions and explore new ideas. That's what I'm working on now and if it garners me some one star ratings so be it.

In life or writing you have to take chances.

I'm glad to see you active again, I hope in dad/son stories

I should point at myself, if there is someone to blame for the lack of feedback stories get. I've read and contributed several stories over the years to the archive, but have hardly if ever left any feedback.

As an author, I love to get feedback, even criticism. I have nothing against criticism myself, and understand that my stories may not be everyone's cup of tea. But I always liked to know, what worked and what didn't.

I struggle giving feedback myself. I notice fairly quickly, whether a story does it for me, or not. It is just a matter of personal taste and leave it like that, without making any comment, assuming someone else must like it.

There are a few exceptions (Celtic's and some of Nathan's stories come to mind), but I leave too long stories and too short stories do not do it for me (call me goldilocks if you want). Too long is boring for me, because I'm not looking for the next "War & Peace" in the archive, and too short is mostly unfulfilling, because it tends to be a butcher's job.

I'm drawn to stories where the characters at the center of it have some kind of agency. Things just don't happen, but they make sense within the universe the author has created. And the characters make/ have choices within that world. In my humble opinion an author who managed to do that within his stories was justoneguy.

Lack of feedback for authors is nothing new here at the Archive.

Over the years, several good authors have given up, or only send something new in very rarely.

Feedback is the only reward an author gets on this site, or any other, for that matter!

Now, as for information collection and how the fiction archive works, there is NO information collected there! The server does not store (via the script running the ratings) who rated which story and at what level. It DOES store a small notepad file for your favorites, otherwise, when you run a cleaner software on your computer, your favorites would be gone.

The FA is not collecting any data. It's a home-grown script written by the glorious efforts of Talula, who doesn't care what you're doing or what you're reading! So if you're afraid of rating a story or leaving a comment, well... you're already ON the story page, so you might as well.

As far as I understand correctly, it is allowed to discuss on the forum works that we like, already published in the EA archive library?

For example:

http://forums.eunuch.org/showthread.php ... highlight=

True. But that thread is hardly a conversation and more of a monologue. I've read, but due to differencesmin taste, most of the stories mentioned don't really appeal to me. I thought about commenting on some of my favorites 8n the way you did, but my guess was that as the stories I really liked are quite old, the authors wouldn't be around any more and that my comments would be uninteresting to anyone else, as whether they liked the story or not and/ or would be willing to read it, would depend on personal taste

wasala92 (imported) wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 12:49 am True. But that thread is hardly a conversation and more of a monologue. I've read, but due to differencesmin taste, most of the stories mentioned don't really appeal to me. I thought about commenting on some of my favorites 8n the way you did, but my guess was that as the stories I really liked are quite old, the authors wouldn't be around any more and that my comments would be uninteresting to anyone else, as whether they liked the story or not and/ or would be willing to read it, would depend on personal taste

When you have more than five messages on the forum, you will have an additional option "Send Private Message".

Sometimes such correspondence turns out to be more convenient for some individual messages .