As everyone attached to the Archive ought to know, the ONLY payment that we can give to authors is feedback on their stories – whether through posts on this board or through private messages to those who are also registered members. ALL authors need feedback in order to encourage them to write.

Recently, the system seems to have broken down. Since the beginning of October, there have been over 90 new stories submitted to the Eunuch Archive. In that time, there have been threads begun on this board to comment on only nine stories (some of them older ones). These threads have attracted a total of 36 comments (including the original post).

Someone opens a new story to read, on average, every FOUR SECONDS, twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week, yet we have had a comment on a story only about once every two and a half days. That’s nearly 14,000 stories read per comment written.

Any readers here who want to encourage the writing and posting of quality stories need to take the time to post feedback.

While I seldom read any of the stories, except to dip in occasionally to see what topics are being covered, I will try to read through the recent batch and post some comments here within the next few days.

If this community is to continue to grow and prosper, we all need to do our part to encourage others.

Well said, I am as guilty as anyone in this and would like to express my thanks to all authors new and old for the tremendous quality and variety of stories they post. I did try just rewcently to post a positive feed back on husbands revenge which I enjoyed a lot. I am not sure if the problem is my end but the `post feedback` link on the story page does not work for me. If this is a common problem it may explain some of the drop off in responses. If it is something wrong with my settings then I will just visit this part of the board through the other links.

The "post feedback " button is NOT working but it may be repaired in the future. The best way to give the authors their due praise is right here on the story reviews and feedback section. --FLO--

tjstill (imported) wrote: Tue Dec 26, 2006 6:42 pm Well said, I am as guilty as anyone in this and would like to express my thanks to all authors new and old for the tremendous quality and variety of stories they post. I did try just rewcently to post a positive feed back on husbands revenge which I enjoyed a lot. I am not sure if the problem is my end but the `post feedback` link on the story page does not work for me. If this is a common problem it may explain some of the drop off in responses. If it is something wrong with my settings then I will just visit this part of the board through the other links.

Undoubtedly, the feedback button issue is NOT the reason for lack of feedback. Folks here are just less inclined to do so, whether from laziness or some other reason. The feedback and email systems havent worked right for ages, and even when they did, they were rarely used. A big reason for lack of feedback, at least on the boards, is because there is a very large cutoff between them. The greatest majority of the people who come here to read stories never register or come to the forums - they just read and leave. Fine - just don't expect them to do feedback. Even with all the systems working wonderfully, don't expect them to send feedback, because they just don't. Those who ARE registered and who do read the stories, stop being lazy. Write the authors, comment on the stories, and recommend stories to others. Unfortunately, where I once read dozens of stories and often commented, I seldom have time to read anymore, and will soon have even less.... Apologies to my favorite authors - at risk of omitting many - Slammr, Pueros, Nathan, Paolo, Androboy (whom I fear we have lost forever), and others. Read and COMMENT, dammit.

As Kristoff mentions, the feedback link won't help. It never did. The "printer friendly format" button sure got a hell of a workout though. For example, every single chapter of "XY-n", which I wrote back in 2001, or so, got hit almost every day - and that's a long series - back when the hit counters worked and I routinely checked them.

In all that time, over 2 years, 3 emails...in addition to the usual comments from friends - not that I didn't appreciate them. I did. I do.

But if nothing else, something like this forum, for stories, give fledgling authors something to cut their teeth on before moving on to more ambitious works.

Back before the hack, when we could check story hits on all the stories we've submitted, I had over 750,000 hits on my stories. I haven't kept track of the emails I received, but I do know that I can get 5000 hits on a story without a single response. I've learned to write for my own pleasure, not expecting any feedback, but it is nice when I do receive some.

Funny thing, though. If I write a story about a good looking girl cutting off some poor guy's cock, I get a ton of responses.

As Paolo said, this is a good place to hone one's writing skills. I think I've learned a little writing for the Archive. I wrote my first bit of fiction for it.

One thing interesting: I can trace links that people use to get to my website. One led to a blog on which some of the pictures I have on my site were posted, along with speculation about who this "Slammer" person was, the blogger speculating that Slammer was probably female. He had a link to my website. One person thanked him for the link, saying, "I like this Slammer." It's fun being mysterious and having them guess at my identity. One thing about the Internet, you can get a lot of exposure, even if it never earns you a penny. I imagine there's many published authors that haven't had their work read over three quarters of a million times, and that's not including a couple of hundred thousand hits on my websites.