I think the feedback for fics has gone down a lot because the show has gone to shit. I know a lot is y’all still like it but it’s just not the same. The magic that made SPN great is long gone because of the writers. Ever since the show started going downhill, the fandom has to. People just aren’t reading SPN fan fiction like they used to.
That is definitely one possibility. I know a lot of folks are unhappy with the current set of writers, so I can see them leaving the fandom. Personally, I’m trying to hang onto to the couple of writers whose episodes don’t leave me feeling confused or upset, and hoping the show will stick around to season 20, when Robbie Thompson said he’d come back! In the meantime, epic series like what @kittenofdoomage and @ilostmyshoe-79 and @littlegreenplasticsoldier and @tricia-16 and @jhoomwrites and @paperannxo and @thatwriterlady and several others put out are what fill in the gaps for me. Those, and the genius bits from @grey2510 and @thayerkerbasy and others I’m forgetting because my brain is Swiss cheese. (Oh, and With Wolves by @bamby0304 is giving me life!) I came to fan fiction to fill in blanks I felt the show left, and have not yet been disappointed! Getting involved in fan fiction has helped me hone my critical thinking skills, and developed my storytelling muscle, so I’m not just a passive sponge soaking up the show, anymore. So, I’ll be here at least as long as the show is here, no matter how bad it gets.
The one trend I’m seeing in all of the responses to my post about feedback is that it has dropped ‘recently’, as in this calendar year. The fact that so many people have said this across the board makes me think that the worst of this might actually be a Tumblr issue. Either the tags telling people the new content is out there aren’t working properly, or the tags telling people there are responses aren’t working properly, or both! When these two methods of communication between writers and readers fail, then feedback disappears. It’s something to think about, definitely.
Passing thought while I’m considering Tumblr’s issues. The number of posts I see with tens of thousands of notes that have fandom content is drastically reduced, whether it’s fics or photos or gifs or whatever. I’d be curious to hear from photog blogs like @stardustandmelancholy if their feedback numbers are also down. Maybe we’re all feeling alone because Tumblr changed something?
That’d be a pretty simple survey to design, methinks. I mean, peeps are gonna have to reblog it so it will get enough of a sample size to = statistical significance. But to me, it can just be maybe five-ish to-the-point questions, the first one of which - meaning the “Pre-survey assessment” to weed out persons not fitting the criteria - would be: “Has your original work had a noticeable decrease in feedback over X amount of time? —> Yes - No - I don’t know”. (Gif sets aren’t germane to this topic, as not an original creation, but a transfer of medium, and I would keep polls on writing and art and, say, vid edits separate).
And from there, if the person says “I don’t know” or “No”, then they’re done, no need to go on further to the actual survey. Have parameters, such as “Multiple comments from the same person on the same piece count as a single item of feedback”. Then could assess truer #s with the rest - “Excepting reaction gifs/images, and one-to-three word exclamatory statements, i.e. Awesome!, This was great!, etc., and comments from the same person beyond the initial, estimate your typical amount of individual feedback items –> 1 to 10; 11-20; 21-30… etc.
I suspect a question structured in a similar manner regarding # of followers and perhaps # of reblogs and keep that a separate question from # of total “likes” might be useful, as well, and like I say, isolating to strictly fics for a singular poll would garner the purest data. No write-ins either, just want #s, want objective data vs. subjective to start. And agreed, good to have a year’s worth at minimum - six months would start cutting it close, less than six likely not useful. Also likely of import is their average output in, say, one month. A separate poll could then drill down on things such as subsets of the fandom, length of story, genre of story, ships, etc.
#hi #I’m Nash #I’m a research nerd #this concludes my nerding out #for now
