I’ll try and be careful about what I say here, as I was planning on keeping my mouth shut on this, but here goes.
I can see it from both sides. I have said before that I enjoy klipdoctor’s stuff – he is an excellent writer. I enjoy his stories, and I review them, as I try and do with the other ff’s I read and enjoy. I am as guilty as the next person of sometimes reading and not reviewing; that can be for many reasons. Generally, it’s because I’ve hidden myself away for 5 minutes to read an update, and have to run back to whatever I was doing, whether that be work or kids. On the whole, I do try and make sure that I go back and review at some stage, but I don’t always get a chance / remember to on top of the ten million other things on my to do list.
The reason I do try my hardest to review consistently is because since starting to write ff, I do realise the importance of the review function to an author. I can only liken it to a work scenario, where you plug away at something, but it really gives you an extra motivation if somebody takes a minute to give you a pat on the back rather than to leave it and just expect you to work away regardless.
However, I don’t think you can use number of reviews as an indication of how good a piece of writing is. If people are consistently reading (and ff tells you if that is the case in your stats), then the likelihood is that they are enjoying it. I’ve been lucky enough to have quite a lot of reviews for HCIF, but there are pieces of OG writing on the site which are infinitely better, with far less reviews. As an example, I’ve had very kind people who have said how much they enjoyed Involved, and it was read by just as many people as HCIF, but it got far, far less reviews – I don’t think that means that it's a worse story, I think it’s because less people reviewed it, simple as that.
I haven’t read klipdoctor’s latest update yet, although have seen the author’s note after the references to it on here. While I can see why it would dent his confidence for reviews to fall, I don’t think it’s acceptable to label people as lazy if they are reading and not reviewing. There could be a million and one reasons for people to fail to review. I will say again that he is an excellent writer, and I for one, will be disappointed if he ends it here, but that is his choice. I do hope he realises though, that there are a lot of people who enjoy what he does, and it would be a shame to bring that to an end if it’s simply for the reason that he’s not happy with the level of reviews.
Sorry if that was a bit of a self-indulgent ff rant, but it was brewing inside of me!
PS rhubarb, I want to read whatever you write, I don’t care if it’s OG related! Please continue to share your stuff with us!
I should probably get some work done now....