coaltide | Delay? Deny? Depose

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2024

Delay? Deny? Depose

Delay the collection opening with picklefic.
Deny by clicking the reject button on low-effort drawerfic.
Depose of CEOs.

Main Collection Opens: December 25 (9am UTC)

Madness Opens: December 26 (9am UTC)

Author reveals: January 1 (9am UTC)

Yuletide Discord for Hippos & Exchanges After Dark Discords for Namespace ~~drama~~ 18+ discussion. Google Group for PHs.

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Blarg. I guess you could open all those stories that are still anonymous and refresh them Wednesday, but that’s so much effort. Hence why I wish people would wait! I know some people have some issues about needing to reply immediately but it does mean I’ll never go read their other stories because I won’t find out who they were.

Are you equally mad at people who don't reply to fic comments at all?

I do like getting replies! It's just that in the anon period I want to get replies from named authors so I know who wrote what.

Right, but how do you find out the author if they don't ever reply to your comment at all? It sounds like you don't go look them up or anything.

I forget and move on? I’m just longing for the ideal situation here: I read a good fic, author gets a nice comment, I get a reply and to go read more of their fic (and hopefully leave more comments). If authors don’t reply or do it anon then it impedes the whole chain of interactions.

You know, I have this remarkable thing called an Inbox on AO3, where all my comments and replies are listed and nothing is marked as Read until I reply or specifically tag it as such. I can even filter specifically for unread ones.
So anyway in your predicament, instead of complaining about people replying too soon for your tastes, I would just leave the anon author replies as Unread until they were revealed and THEN go check out their other fics. You can even pretend they never replied until post-reveal if you like.

DC

I talked about this upthread: yes, I can check my inbox, but I can't tell which were from the Yuletide fics. Right now, some of them are back on page 7. When I filter for unread, I get ALL comment replies - that doesn't help me narrow it down. Like, sorry, but I'm not opening 8 or 9 pages of fics on January 1st just to see which of them were the just-revealed Yuletide fics and not other fics I've read since then. I would like to check out their other fics, but it's not really that important that I will spend half an hour tracking them down. I just look at the ones that pop up in my inbox after reveals and be done with it.

I think the core misunderstanding here is that many people going on about their daily lives are not actively thinking about that fic they commented on a week ago, or the author or their other fics. When people are doing the dishes or writing their fic or going for a jog there is simply no impetus to go find that comment again and look at the author's other fic. There is however an impetus when you get the mail or notification that pisswizard47 has responded to your comment. It's actually just marketing.

+1

I'm lazy, ok. Unless your fic was a masterpiece I can't stop thinking about, I'm not going to expend any effort to look up who you are later. Whereas if you reply, I get a prompt to check your profile and see if you've written other things I want to read.

+0.5

I bookmark the fics I have any real interest in finding out the authors for, and I do not bookmark many fics. Otherwise I don't care when authors reply. I'm just going to delete the message.

coalie who started the sub thread

It’s truly not a big annoyance for me, it just feels like a missed connection. If I read a good story I’d like to know who wrote it and go look at their other fic, so it behooves them as well as me for them to make that easier because I’ll probably comment on it if I like it. If they reply anon, well, unless it was an amazing story that I also bookmarked, I’m just going to go on my way and never know because I have a zillion other stories to read.

In an era of low engagement, my point is it’s to the author’s benefit to make it easy for readers to find them, and not get huffy saying I should go dig through my ao3 inbox later (which I mostly use to reply to comments on my own fic). It just adds that tiny bit of friction, like having to scan a QR code, that impedes what would otherwise be an easy interaction.

Filtering Unreads is easy if you actually tag them as Read when you're done with them, but I guess that's also too complex a solution when one can complain about the habits of others inconveniencing you instead.
I am happy to know that I would annoy you in particular with my habit of replying to comments as I read them.

How does filtering unreads help? Every comment response I get (and every as-of-yet unanswered comment I received, but at least those go away when I answer them) is marked as "unread" and looking at them in the inbox doesn't change the status like it should (because I've read them, why the fuck are they still on "unread"). You'd have to manually change comment responses to "read", which I never do. There's currently like 6000 "unread" messages in my inbox.

I am happy to know that I would annoy you in particular with my habit of replying to comments as I read them.

I don't know about CYRT, but for me, the annoyance is very mild. All it means is that I'm never going to see the author's other fic, but it's not like there isn't enough fic to read and enjoy out there.

DC

I didn't know people even used their AO3 inboxes. I've had an account on the site fifteen years and still forgot it even existed until this conversation, since I'm getting email notifications for the comments anyway, so there doesn't seem to be much point going to look at a copy of the thing I already looked at and manually marking it as read there a second time.

cyrt

I use it to keep track of unanswered comments, because I sometimes have a backlog and as soon as you answer them, they are automatically changed to "read" in your AO3 inbox. But with other people's comment responses, there's just no easy way to use the read/unread filter that doesn't require extra effort.

CYRT

Ah. I have cunningly avoided this problem by never writing fandoms or characters popular enough to develop a backlog of more than one unanswered comment at a time.

Same. I think the most my backlog has ever been was five or maybe seven comments :D

I guess it just boils down to different people preferring different notification methods, with the pros and cons that come with them. Personally, I find it easier to manage comments in the site inbox rather than read and archive emails for them, and so I just have emails for kudos. I don't have to hunt far to see who it was that replied to my comments after reveals, but then again, they're not several pages deep. As for sorting comments by people, it's not something that has really occurred to me so it's not something I miss, but I do see the utility of being able to do that.

Re: How is your Yuletide going, actually?

(Anonymous) - 2025-01-01 10:33 (UTC) - Expand

Re: How is your Yuletide going, actually?

(Anonymous) - 2025-01-01 11:40 (UTC) - Expand

I delete comment replies as soon as they hit my inbox so my unread count is always the number of comments I have left to reply to. /cool story bro

cyrt

Ha, that's useful. But I'd hate not having a record of everything I received. I like being able to go back and find comments and replies from 2009 (I deleted stuff before that and STILL REGRET IT!!!!!)

DC

I archive fic comments and kudos emails and use my email for that. It lets me easily search to see if someone I'm considering treating for an exchange has ever commented or kudos on my fic and therefore might be more likely to like how I write.

Same.

For fuck sake coalie just suggest your method if it’s so great.

We don’t need your villain origin story.

That's not exactly a villain origin story. It's a 'author whining about poor stats' origin story.

I'm not annoyed at all? I'm just going to be less likely to see your other fic, that's all. If you're considering replying "good, I don't want anyone as lazy and stupid as you reading them anyway" I suggest calming the fuck down.

DC

If it's not my own gift author, I don't look them up. When they reply after the anon period is over, I click on the author link and check them out. If they don't reply or reply earlier, I don't. I ain't mad about it or anything, I'm just not going through the trouble of finding and revisiting the Yuletide fic to track them down.

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