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[personal profile] aggienaut

   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 [livejournal.com profile] 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)
From: [identity profile] teaberryblue.livejournal.com
I couldn't figure out what was going on in half of them but I don't think that was necessarily a weakness.

Date: 2010-02-03 09:25 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teaberryblue.livejournal.com
Also! Hey! Sometimes all I get on a whole comic is two comments!

Date: 2010-02-03 09:27 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purlav.livejournal.com
I didn't respond to the poll as my answer wasn't quite there. I normally skim LJ entries at work, during breaks, or lunch. If there is a largish post under a cut, I tend to skip it, and just look at it later at home if it grabbed my interest. I saw your initial post & comic (cute) while at work, and saw that you'd be posting more. I had the intention of going back to look at the rest later at home. I noted your later post that pointed back to the first post (again at work) and planned on checking back that evening. I never got around to it, forgot, life got in the way, etc. I rarely post comments on entries anyway, so if I had gone back to look at the post, which I need to remind myself to do (again), I still probably wouldn't have commented. I'm fairly certain this comment will not help you in any way whatsoever as I can't give you feedback on more than the 1 comic I did see, which I did like. (Yay for rambling thoughts after a too long day at work!)

Date: 2010-02-03 09:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Haha thanks for the this comment (: Yeah that happens to me with comments themselves. I check my email while at work, see I have comment notifications and can't resist reading them, but am not about to go jump into lj while at work and by the time I get home I forget to respond to the comments :[

Date: 2010-02-03 09:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Haha they're MEANT to be incomprehensible! Well, the one where I ride a bee is. :D I think what would really help me a lot would probably be if I could distinguish one stick figure from another better. All I had to go on was making my boss' stick figure much bigger than the others. (:

Date: 2010-02-03 09:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crysania4.livejournal.com
The bee is CUTE!

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

Date: 2010-02-03 09:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Aw thanks (:

And thanks for your feedback (:

Date: 2010-02-03 09:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Also I enjoyed it so much I've made a resolution to try to draw something every day now!

Date: 2010-02-03 09:39 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teaberryblue.livejournal.com
I could tell the boss because he had a coffee mug!

Date: 2010-02-03 09:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] teaberryblue.livejournal.com
Excellent! I try to draw every day as well! I was thinking about starting an LJ comm for people to post daily drawings, would you be into that?

Date: 2010-02-03 09:41 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crysania4.livejournal.com
I do think they're adorable...I just don't get what's going on at all. LOL I've always had that problem with comics and tend to have to have people explain to me what's going on. I suck that way!

Date: 2010-02-03 09:45 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Yeah several of mine I'm not surprised people would find were unclear. It would probably help a lot if I had a way to distinguish between the stick figures!!

Date: 2010-02-03 09:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] crysania4.livejournal.com
LOL yes that would definitely help! Maybe some sort of hairdos? Or closing indications (i.e. a triangle if the woman is wearing a skirt?). I can't draw at all, mind you. Just thinking out loud here.

Date: 2010-02-03 09:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purlav.livejournal.com
In any case, post whatever makes you happy! I tend to read everything (eventually) even if I don't comment on things.

Date: 2010-02-03 09:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abe-lincoln666.livejournal.com
The "Didn't hate it, but had no comments forthcoming" option summed my reaction up.

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.

Date: 2010-02-03 09:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] purlav.livejournal.com
You have a very valid point. I will sometimes post a question or mention a topic that I expect will generate a lot of comments, but get no response at all. Other times I'll post something entirely random and unimportant like "I just had tea!" and I'll end up with 20 comments on it within 10 minutes. *shrugs* People are weird!

Date: 2010-02-03 10:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abe-lincoln666.livejournal.com
I've seen that "I just had tea!" phenomenon in action too. Every once in a great while, I'll purposely post two or more entries on the same day, just to see which one will get a response. Inevitably, the entry that I thought would receive the most posts will receive none, and the entry that was just a quick, random observation will start a long, drawn-out discussion.

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)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Yes I very much would be!! Then I could share them without having to worry about spamming my friends list if people aren't into it. I actually looked to see if there was a such community while I was doing it the other day, TRUE STORY!

Date: 2010-02-03 10:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
oh yeah he did have that.. (:

I should have just given myself a monocle or tophat or something
Edited Date: 2010-02-03 10:16 pm (UTC)

Date: 2010-02-03 10:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Yeah giving the one girl who featured in it "girl hair" was easy. I notice most webcomics give the male characters wildly different hairstyles / different facial hair. Several of the guys I work with thouth have nondescript dark brown hair and are cleanshaven. How do you distinguish between such people?! I'm thinking arbitrary distribution of top hats, monocles, and such. :D

Date: 2010-02-03 10:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
In any case, post whatever makes you happy!

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. (:

Date: 2010-02-03 10:24 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Yeah, like I mentioned this whole livejournal started out entirely as an experiment and I would do just that, post one or two line entries, paragraph entries, page entries, all at varying times, and gauge the reaction. One or two line entries really can get a good response since people will almost never NOT read them .. it's too easy to pass up!

Date: 2010-02-03 10:28 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] emo-snal.livejournal.com
Thanks for taking the time to write so thorough a comment!

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.

Date: 2010-02-03 10:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abe-lincoln666.livejournal.com
You're welcome.

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.

Date: 2010-02-03 10:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] abe-lincoln666.livejournal.com
One of the things that I enjoy most about LJ is that it gives me an opportunity to write stuff and see if it generates a response. I know that probably contradicts what I said previously, but I agree that it is kind of nice to know that I've said something that another person was able to relate to, and maybe even touched them in a way that made them feel compelled to reply.

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.

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