Customer Satisfaction Survey
Feb. 3rd, 2010 01:14 pm One of my favourite things about livejournal is the feedback one gets about one's writing (/photos / drawings). This feedback comes not just in the form of actual "I liked this" or "this was crap!!" comments, but more commonly in the number and variety of comments themselves. I write to be read and constantly aim to improve, so I'm constantly taking note of all forms of feedback that I can. In fact as you may or may not recall this very livejournal started out as an experiment in gauging people's reactions to varying different variables in entries.
One generally assumes that comments are indicative of people enjoying an entry and/or finding it interesting. When you get no comments and just hear the crickets chirping, it's time to be worried.*
After posting the link to the completed drawings about my day yesterday I got exactly two more comments all day. This is way below par. To better serve you we here at Emo-snal are interested to know why that was.
* or your audience might have died, as happened with the oriented-towards-people-from-real-life
emosnail before my embracing the anonymous masses here. The friends-list of Emosnail, once veritably spinning with entry turn-around, is now a slow trickle, and entries I post over there more often than not get no comments at all. That low of a turn out is extremely unusual, so I'm curious if you all hate my drawings and I should never do it again or something.
[Poll #1520866]

Bee from one of the cartoons, coloured, and, just for Stacey, bee butt!
See also, my new icon!
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 09:33 pm (UTC)I have to admit that I sort of skimmed it. I'm totally not a comic person and so the whole thing sort of went over my head. lol
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:38 pm (UTC)And thanks for your feedback (:
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:54 pm (UTC)Sometimes, even if I really enjoy reading something, I just can't think of a relevant comment. Sometimes, a piece has already said enough all by itself, and it feels kind of silly to comment on it; almost like further comments or discussion might actually diminish whatever the piece had to say in the first place. I generally avoid commenting if the only comment I can think of is, "Hey that was cool" or "Boy, you said it!"; mostly because I don't think comments like that really add to the discussion or lead anywhere.
On top of that, I just started reading your journal a few weeks back, and I generally make a habit of just keeping quiet and learning about the culture of a journal or community before throwing in my own two cents.
Also, I don't think you should take a lack of comments as a sign of disapproval or a means to measure the effectiveness of a piece. When I post stuff in my journal, I try to think of the journal piece as being akin to starting a conversation in a bar; sometimes I'll get a positive reaction, sometimes I'll get a negative reaction and sometimes I'll get no reaction at all. The presence or lack of comments often doesn't really say anything about the piece itself; it might say more about the people who are listening/reading.
That's just the chance we take, every time we open our mouths in public; even when we know what we're talking about and communicate our ideas effectively, there's no gaurantee that any given idea will spur further discussion.
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Date: 2010-02-03 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 10:05 pm (UTC)There's no rhyme or reason to it; it's just the unpredictable nature of human beans.
Drawing-a-day!
Date: 2010-02-03 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 10:16 pm (UTC)I should have just given myself a monocle or tophat or something
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Date: 2010-02-03 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 10:22 pm (UTC)I reserve that for Sundays! :D
I find it a fun sort of game though to try to adjust all variables of my writing that I can (without actually selling out and writing about stuff I find stupid) to try to gun for the maximum "success" as defined as audience satisfaction. (:
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Date: 2010-02-03 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-03 10:28 pm (UTC)Yes I know what you mean. I often read entries and I know people like comments and feel like I ought to comment it so they know a read and liked it but.. yeah it feels silly writing a comment if you don't genuinely have something to add to the conversation.
I try to keep in mind that comments do NOT necessarily exactly equal the degree to which an entry was read and enjoyed. I think they do provide a very rough idea, since people do tend to comment to things they find interesting (which really is the goal of an entry if you care about comments). And also though it's just hard to divorce one's mind from the "if I don't see it it's not there" of there being readers who don't comment.
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Date: 2010-02-03 10:43 pm (UTC)From what I've seen, you don't need to worry about a lack of comments. I saw a couple of your entries that had over 90 replies, and that's not an easy feat to accomplish ... especially when you consider that you're doing this on your own journal, outside of any LJ community. It's easy to evoke a flood of replies when you're working in a fairly large LJ community; all you have to do is figure out what that community cares about and use that as a jumping off point.
The thing I hate, is when an entry turns into a debate or a flamewar. Sure, that can be fun sometimes, but any more than once a week and it gets tiring and emotionally exhausting. That's basically why I recently split from my previous favorite community, and decided to go the solo journal route.
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Date: 2010-02-03 10:50 pm (UTC)My background is in fine art and when I was younger, I always yearned for a career in the arts. But the way things turned out, I ended up in a career where get paid for writing instruction manuals for network-related products (among other things.) Technical writing doesn't provide much of an outlet for free self-expression, so I'm thankful for live journal because to some small extent, it allows me express myself, without truely caring if my entries are even read and appreciated, and without any kind of hope/expectation of being paid for it.