User blog comment:Brandon Service DF/The Commenting Community, and How to Improve It/@comment-4920659-20160217163820



How I feel from this essay.

But since I read the entire thing, as well as reading other's thoughts on it, I have to say I agree on some points you made, while others feel a bit redundant.

Most people wanting a response to their work that is more elaborate is indeed an accurate statement, and there are those who don't mind it if they get a ton of comments with little thought put to them, but something like this can't really be changed. Majority of the time that someone comments a few words or sentences, they really don't have much else to say or are busy with other things to really put effort into saying what they deeply think of the battle. And sometimes, the battle doesn't really need much of a review besides "There were some great lines in those verses," "The flow felt off a few times," "It was a good battle, but maybe not as much as your other ones," etc. I think this often results from who the audience is and what they think of the characters. For example, Undertale battles are getting more attention than most video game battles because of the game trending recently and several users being fans of it. Of course, there are exceptions in which a popular fanmade battle maker uses someone obscure/not talked much about and the viewers don't say much besides "I didn't know this person, but I still think they were written for very well." On the other hand, if a person uses a character from a well-liked series, such as Rick Grimes, it will often result in the battle being advertised to TWD fans to see what they think of. In that case, they prefer to see more of an opinion from the fans of the show a bit more than a regular user who isn't into it as much.

As for pretty much every blogger linking/advertising/mentioning the blog they made, it's really only natural. When people are finished with their work, they would want to show it off to see the quantity of people that like it over the quality of what they think. Some of them do say "pls give out your honest thoughts/criticism" and a few of the times they get it. Like you mentioned, Drak did try to get as many people to read his battles as he could, and in the end, he became one of the biggest fanmade series people on the wiki. Of course, there are those people who get criticism and don't improve as well, even when they're regularly told, but in those rare cases, the newer users who make series and are told how to become better do so. If anything, I think there's more of a problem from bad battles getting the same comments on how bad it is than there are lack of good in-depth comments on the better battles.

Then the last thing I would probably mention is the content used in battles that copies from what others do (i.e. hints, templates, etc.) Like, it's fine, but I don't think it's really done for comments. Some people just think it makes a battle look more presentable and would rather not be plain and simple compared to how other series are made nowadays. For me, I just used to hint on chat because I didn't want to straight out give the battle, but then I just went with adding hints and later removing them. New concepts for blogs will keep on being repeated and used because they basically want to try to be as popular as the next guy using them.

Also, in the more recent days that I've read fanmades (I probably miss some if they aren't as popular/on top blog sorry guys <3), I do try to give my honest thoughts or criticism on a battle, saying which lines I like and how well I think they were written for, but in most days, I can't really say much besides a "good job *thumbs up*" like other people. So, I think addressing this was a nice topic to bring up. It definitely would help me in some aspects.