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TBH, I’d be overjoyed if I netted two reviews per 1,000 hits. Only one of my stories exceeds that ratio, because I had a serial reviewer post for the first half dozen chapters or so. Rest of the stories… the one with 16k hits has only three reviews.

Shoutbox was cool in that regard, few ever visit the Chatbox.

I had gotten smacked by the trolls. I’d post a chapter, lose a “+”. Post another chapter, lose a “+”, repeat. That became...very discouraging to an inexperienced writer. And I’m posting originals here!

Author: BronxWench Title: Masking Intentions Summary: Newly masked and permitted to walk among the Court of the Seaborn Crown, Kdis is given his first assignment. He must guard one sprog, a youth who stands on the cusp of a terrible manhood. Kdis did not expect to desire his charge, despite the games the sprog enjoys and the potential cost to Kdis. Forfeiting his own life might be the sanest course for Kdis, but sanity is as rare as mercy in the halls of the Palace of the Sea. Feedback: Yes, please!! Fandom: Original Fiction Warnings: Abuse Anal BMod Bond Fingering Minor2 MM Oral Rape SandM Tort Toys Violence Solo story or chaptered story: Chaptered URL: http://original.adult-fanfiction.org/story.php?no=600109395 Review Reply thread: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/index.php/topic/25864-bronxwenchs-review-replies-original-fiction/ (This was originally published on 3/24/16, and has undergone some editing to clean up some of the more egregious shite. I don't know if I've made it better, but I certainly hope so!)

.Petition to include a “Liked” button then in addition to my additional request (minus a dislike so there’s no maliciousness). I recognize I am at a disadvantage writing originals and not fanfiction so I do understand that, but it does break my heart to look in my neck of the woods and see close to 1,000 views with 2 reviews. Which is common in the original fiction side of the house. You have always done a lot of work here – it’s very impressive. I was surprised when I returned and you were just as active as always. Yes, I’m not trying to attack or anything I’m just saying where I believe the breakdown is and possible solutions. Maybe I’m remembering things in a favorable light but I do remember conversations with fellow authors discussing writing tips and requesting feedback on how to accommodate reader requests. I honestly did not know that people were so…….. there’s a word here I don’t know if I should use…. to tattle on authors for requesting reviews to mods. That seems sophomoric to me as this should be a gathering of adults. young, learning adults granted sometimes (I have been there) but I don’t think it ever occurred to me to tattle on my readers or authors I was following.

Maybe just a “recommend” or “subscribe” button? The assumption being if someone reads and clicks the recommend button then the story is “liked” and would generate traffic and encourages the writer that people are at least enjoying the work. Prevents disliking maliciously. A subscribe would create an alert on the archive profile to say “hey a story you are reading has updated!” and would again also let the author know they are being enjoyed. I know we have, in the archive, a list of recommended reading but if we could link it somehow because it doesn’t make the author’s heartstrings flutter because there’s no link to them that lets them know they’ve been recommended and afaik there’s no alert to let the reader know there’s been an update. They have to check manually. I may be wrong, I cleared out my profile years ago, and apparently, a lot of my favorite authors removed their stories which is sad. My thoughts were more archive-oriented. Forums and the archive are, in my mind, not really “together”. I know this is a forum about the archive but I always feel like I’m joining a separate space with the forums. (I take additional issue with the amount of separation that exists in the forum for topics – you can promote your story here but to talk about it you have to go over here and if you want a beta go here whereas I would think an author would just make a single thread where they can simultaneously say “go read my story” and talk about it and thank people for reviewing and get feedback from the audience. Just the “Nomadic String about This Story I wrote about Delicious Cake” and not worry if it zigzags into chaos. Potentially a me problem but I am mentioning it. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.) But I am not a coder and I do not know the amount of mess coding all that would be. If I was a coder I’d volunteer my time to make gold stars for reviewing stories in the archive. I started and stopped at HTML. I wish I could code but I fear I’m too tired to pick up a new hobby. I can see if I can design something that happens monthly for reviewing here in the forum, but my request, if I were to design something, would be chaos. I’ve never been one for controlled conversation. I know you guys got titles here that goes in the signature so that can always be utilized, I suppose. A ranking system I dunno... I’m chewing on it...

We were talking at one point about something to replace the ratings system, perhaps a “like” or “kudos” feature that would be harder to abuse, at least in terms of downvoting a story that didn’t have the reader’s OTP, or had content (duly tagged) that the reader still found offensive even though they were alerted by the tags to its presence. (Yes, it got that petty.) As I recall, and it was a while ago, it was not something that was easy for the coder to implement, and our focus on code updates was to make the site more mobile-friendly. Encouraging reviews has always been difficult. We had to implement a policy of not allowing authors to withhold chapters until a certain number of reviews was received, because readers emailed us in droves to complain bitterly. Review demands are still prohibited, because honestly, none of us have the patience to deal with the surge of irate emails they engender. On the other hand, readers tend to expect fast updates without any consideration for real-life demands that might slow an author down, and I can’t imagine we’d want to reward a flurry of “Get off your ass and write the next chapter, dammit!” reviews. But that would involve a quality assurance review of reviews, and I don’t have the staff for that, probably because we’re all volunteers and getting paid in virtual whiskey and brain bleach isn’t appealing to a lot of folks. Now, if someone wanted to revive the AFF Reviewers Association, and had the artistic talent to create badges and banners to hand out to reviewers, that would be something I’d get behind. Anyone reviewing a story could leave a link to their review, and whoever is running the initiative could hand out badges and such monthly (weekly might be a bit time consuming). Who knows? It might be a way to get folks more active again. Another way for authors to perhaps encourage reviews is to post story updates to the Promote a Story! thread, with helpful links to the story or chapter so readers could jump to it quickly. Readers could follow that story promotion thread, and get email notification when the author posts about an update. Sometimes we lose track of a story, and this could be a way to keep it fresh in readers’ minds. I’m enjoying all this brainstorming!

I couldn’t remember. Now I do! I thought removing them was temporary and there was some work for something new and great that was supposed to happen? That being said, it’s not really about bringing back the star rating system (though I’m not a fan of all or nothing and feel we should find a way to restore that) it’s about encouraging reviews. Something like a system that grants something to interact with the writers. Even if it's gold star badges. I think I had proposed a while ago a system that authors could block off access to newer chapters with a lack of interaction from the audience XD But that was like… forever years ago and was sort of a joke suggestion. (sort of)

I just joined another fiction site and they have a rating system that you need to be logged in to utilize. Or you can elect to allow things to be anonymous and come what may. Just give us the option to have it there and only allow logged-in people to use the star option and then you don’t have trolls (unless they gonna be making 12 accounts but I imagine that would be obvious). Maybe the badge system would come with a demerit and if you’re reported enough times for trollololololing then your review and ratings rights are suspended. I was around when the trolls attacked and I watched it happen – but there was much more conversation back in those days about what was being written. I couldn’t remember if we had a star system back in those days – so that does seem possible, then. The nothing approach I think has created a breakdown in author/ reader relations that were really good back then. Or bad, sometimes, granted. But also could be really good. Side note: I somehow started this topic while not logged in accidentally – whoops?

We HAD ratings, but trolls kept spamming the down-vote button w/o reading the stories, which was demoralizing to some authors; and fanboys spamming the up-vote based on their one-true-ship desires. This made ratings useless for actually judging if the story was any good.