Meaning of Kudos

[littlemousling]

Poll #10088 Meaning of Kudos

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 369

When I click the Kudos button, it most often means (one or more of) the following:

View Answers

Good job!
261 (70.7%)

I liked this!
339 (91.9%)

I finished this and didn't hate it!
60 (16.3%)

I ADORED this!
204 (55.3%)

I like clicking buttons and assign no meaning!
4 (1.1%)

None of these options apply
6 (1.6%)

This is a sort of follow-up to bethbethbeth's great Kudos/Comments poll here. There are a number of comments there discussing the various reasons people click the Kudos button, some of which may be more common reasons than others.

Feel free to expand on your answer!

Comments

[northern]

I pressed Good job! and I liked this. When it's I ADORED this, I press kudos plus leave a comment.

[littlemousling]

You are meeee! Sometimes I don't quite manage to comment on adored things for various life reasons (most common: because I am reading on my phone and typing is a hassle), but that's definitely the way I conceptualize it.

[shinetheway]

I don't use Kudos. I tell the author exactly what I think in a comment, or I don't tell them because a) it sucked, or b) life is super busy/crazy/horrible and I can't physically/mentally drag a comment out of me, then I feel horribly guilty, then I try to comment on the 2nd/11th/5483925743th time I read it and meanwhile I write stories that I know people read but don't comment on for pretty much exactly the same reasons and the world goes around.

Even feeling guilty, though, it never occurs to me to use the Kudos button. I'm honestly not sure I've ever done it. I love seeing people write long, detailed flaily comments, I love thinking about the author's glee when they get those long detailed flaily comments, and if I can't bring them that glee then I don't feel right doing anything else for what personally feels like my own convenience. Comments SHOULD require sacrifice, in my opinion, something to acknowledge the writer bringing something new into the world. Plus, fandom is a gift economy: the writer made a gift of their story to me, and I make a gift of my appreciation to them. A Kudo just doesn't feel like I'm giving them back anything that shows how much I valued their work.

I am myself. Your mileage may vary. [shrugs]

[jelazakazone]

While I love comments because of the ability to interact and get specific feedback, I love kudos too. When I get kudos on something I've written, it's like a little "ping" that someone liked something I did. It's kind of a like a secret admirer note, in my mind:D

[melusina]

I'll click the Kudos button if I enjoyed the story overall, even if there were elements I found flawed or it didn't absolutely blow me away, but I also click it when I adored everything about the story. In the past, I tended to either click the Kudos button or leave a comment, but not both; recently I've started clicking the Kudos button for ALL fic I enjoyed and also commenting when I have something to say (which is not always - I can seriously love a fic and still feel totally tongue-tied!).

One reason I've started clicking Kudos even when I leave comments is that I think people are starting to use the number of Kudos to determine whether a story is worth reading, it's like a mini-rec for me.

[elizaria]

This is pretty much me

[melannen]

Well, give a comment I just got in that post, I should probably clarify: there is no "I finished it, and I didn't hate it" as separate from "I liked it". If I didn't actively like it, I probably didn't finish it.

[littlemousling]

Thank you! That's very helpful. I thought there were some assumptions being made, so a poll might help (hence ticky boxes and not radio buttons).

[clachnaben]

I leave kudos on about every story I read but leave comments on the ones I really liked or loved. I think kudos is a nice way for a writer to get a ballpark figure on how many people have read/finished their fic, as the hit count can sometimes be misleading. Most of the time I comment too, but commenting takes me much longer (usually several days to think it over) so I like to leave kudos as a kind of "I liked it, comment to come!" promise.

[dangerous_47]

I'm just awful at leaving comments and stuff. Usually don't know what to say and such, so I do the kudos thing because I liked it but usually don't know what to say.

[cesy]

Sometimes it means "I liked this", sometimes it means "Oh wow, this is the best story ever and I am so blown away I cannot possibly put it into words", sometimes it means "I finished this and didn't hate it and want more people to write fic in this fandom/with these characters/tropes so will press the button to encourage you".

[jelazakazone]

Sometimes I just can't formulate a reply because something is so awesome and so I give it kudos. Other times, I just like it and don't have anything beyond, "I liked this" to say.

I am trying to get better about leaving comments in addition to kudos.

[girlpearl]

I will totally also use kudos to mean "I liked the hell out of this but no way am I putting my name on a werewolf watersports bdsm [insert shameful kink here] epic." Sometimes anything I would say in a comment feels a little too id-revealing for a stranger, and a generic "thumbs-up!" is a lot safer.

[littlemousling]

Hey bb! I totally get what you mean, but do you think you could reword that a bit? The author generally puts hir name on those fics, and I don't think you meant to imply that they should be ashamed about [whatever kink], but it's reading that way to me.

[liseuse]

I use the kudos button for fic that either I liked, but don't really have a comment for, or fic that I really liked but can't think of a comment for right now because it is still busy blowing my mind, or (and this happens a lot) fic written by someone who is awesome and big in a fandom and I am scared of commenting because hi, I have pointless social anxiety on the internet, so I like the kudos button for giving me a way out of keeping the fic open in a tab for three months but never actually commenting.

[dangerous_47]

That last bit. I've so been there. /o\

[radondoran]

I usually try to remember to click the Kudos button if a fic made me happy in some way--like, maybe there was one part I really liked, or maybe I loved it but would feel weird talking about why (I loved the other poll's option about kudos'ing anon "because of REASONS"). Or maybe it was completely amazing, and I just can't think of anything to say/don't have time/don't feel like stressing over writing a good comment right now/whatever. The point is, I try to click Kudos when I read a fic I enjoy.

That's why I absolutely love getting Kudos notifications--I always interpret it to mean that I wrote something that made somebody else happy, even in a very small way. And that's awesome! :D

[unjapanologist]

Besides "I liked this!", I picked "I like clicking buttons" because while that's definitely not anywhere near the main reason why I'd kudos a story, it is kind of a factor. You finally reach the bottom of the page, and there's this button that you can click in a "YES FINISH LINE I READ THIS ALL THE WAY THROUGH HURRAY FOR YOU AND ME" kind of way... It's like a victory celebration? Of sorts? All right, I don't know how to explain why, but I just really like clicking a button at the end.

[juno_magic]

I don't like the term "Kudos", so I rarely click that button. But if I do click like/+/♥ buttons, it's usually because I liked something but can't quite say anything useful.

[dancing_serpent]

I chose "None of these options apply" because I don't leave kudos. That word got stripped of any positive meaning for me back in the late 90ies/early 20**s - I was part of a group of authors then who constantly misused it. It got so popular that people started using it for pretty much everything, even as greetings. Got really annoying, really fast and now only carries memories of irritation for me.

[croissantkatie]

Sometimes, I get rather overwhelmed by stories and just don't know what to say. I find kudos really helpful in those situations because it allows me to go YES \o/ AWESOME without having to struggle to find words. I personally love getting notification of kudos. It might be a small thing but it sure makes me feel pretty amazing.

[cypher]

I leave kudos on pretty much everything that I read and enjoy. Then I will also leave a comment if I have something more specific to say -- if I want to call out some turn of phrase or if they made me think about characterization differently or...basically, if my response to the story was more complicated than just "yay!"

And I love getting kudos, as a writer; I tend to assume when the email its my inbox that the reader has just had that experience with my fic. They read it, they feel good about reading it, they want me to know they feel good about reading it. Yay!

[hardboiledbaby]

Ditto (and Kudos!) to this comment! :)

[turlough]

I don't use kudos. If I like a story enough to finish it I will leave a comment. (ETA: And include it in my weekly rec post.) It might be just one or two words or it might be several paragraphs, all depending on how much I liked it and how well my brain-to-English translator is working at the moment. I trained myself to always leave comments when I became active in fanfic fandom back in 2004/2005 so only leaving kudos would feel like I'm cheating.

[iulia_linnea]

I like the Kudos button and use it as a way of letting a creator know I enjoyed her work; sometimes, I can't think of anything to say in comments, so it's nice to have a way of letting a creator know that I appreciated her efforts without having to comment.

[musyc]

I leave a comment if a story really struck me somehow, or I have more to say beyond a basic "this was a fic, yay for fic" sort of enjoyment. I scatter kudos like dandelions in spring, but I often can't formulate a comment.

And a secondary reason that I don't see a lot of people making, so maybe it's just me. I don't want to start a dialogue. I don't want to "make friends" or whatever. I want to tell an author "I liked this" and yay, that's it. Like applauding the actors at the end of the play, great job, thanks for the work, now where did I park, who wants to get dinner? Maybe, maybe if I find myself going through an author's entire backlist and I put them on alert and their stuff is just that awesome to me, maybe then I'll be interested in waiting at the stage door to say hello in person.

If it weren't for the kudos button, I'd leave less than a quarter of the feedback I do right now, because I'm not dropping a "nice fic" comment. The kudos let me give the feedback without forcing me to risk unknown interaction.

[melannen]

I am definitely with you on the making friends part. The social side of fandom is secondary to the reading/writing part, to me, and I don't want every fic I read to turn into a chain of social obligations - or even a new friend. I don't have the time! Or the energy! I wouldn't any time left to read fic! Which isn't to say I don't want to be friends, just that I need to budget my social output more than that.

[melusina]

I just went back and reread a bunch of the comments on a series of polls on Feedback that I did on LJ from 2003 to 2006 and it's interesting that at that point, when LJ was still fairly new (and DW and AO3 weren't even glimmers in anyone's eye), there was some sense that LJ comments were "less than" an emailed letter of comment, because the ease of "clicking a button" and leaving a few word response was viewed as an inadequate response to an author's work (hmmm. . sounds familiar!). The more things change. . .

[littlemousling]

That is FASCINATING.

[jiele]

I love that little button. Comments=social interaction, and most of the time I'm reading to de-stress from things including social interaction, so being able to say "yay!" without the stress is wonderful. If I had the social energy to comment on everything I (finish) reading, that would be nice, but I just don't.

In addition, when I really like a work, it gets a bookmark+rec. Which is about 90% of what I finish reading.

I kind of dislike the word "kudos", probably because it just seems....like a word nobody uses? Idk exactly. I love the ♥ part of the button though.

Oh! But I usually leave comments for people I actually talk to. Which is really only like 2 people. Lol. I think it's because we already have a social-type relationship, so I feel comfortable saying something like "omg ilu u *insert-affectionate-insult-here", as we do in other conversation, without having to worry about how my comment will be perceived.

Though in the case of people I talk to via twitter, if I have something short to say beyond "yay!", I'll probably @-reply them, because it feels more personal.

....so, teal deer:
kudos=stress-free yay!
comment=This was mind-blowing/I actually know you.
bookmark+rec=I read and enjoyed and kudosed.

[anatsuno]

I leave Kudos when
- I liked the story & am out of spoons to make words
- I liked the story & am out of social spoons & don't mean to create a possible 'chain of obligation' (re-using terminology from an earlier comment thread in this post)
- I liked it and finished it but w/ caveats, & consequently don't feel like commenting positively while leaving out the caveats (I don't give crit to people unasked anymore, so listing caveats is not something I will do)*
- I'm rereading and already left a comment and don't feel like leaving another
- I'm downloading podfic I haven't yet listened to

I leave comments when
- I liked it and have the energy to say so in words, even non-specific words
- I have something specific to say or gush about
- I'm rereading and haven't left a comment before
- I'm rereading and want to say in words how much I like it, again
- I finally listened to the podfic and want to say thank you / comment on it

What Kudos NEVER means from me
- 'I finished this and didn't like it'
- 'I don't like this enough to tell you so in words'**
- 'I guess you deserve _something_ for all that work/time'(ugh dismissiveness)
- I am adding to your Kudos count bc I know people use that as a rec.
(when I want to rec something I bookmark it and mark it as rec on AO3; I also bookmark it on Pinboard, and I might even rec it someplace else)


* and ** seem related but they're not similar; my unwillingness at a given moment in time to side-step the stuff I didn't enjoy while leaving a positive comment is an inability _of mine_, it doesn't mean that I rationally weigh a story as "deserving of a comment above Kudos". This is NOT a ranking in story value, but a ranking in my own abilities to express myself in a socially acceptable way, and those two things are VERY different.

I feel like I had other things to say but I am running out of articulatedness, apparently. :)

[jain]

I'm downloading podfic I haven't yet listened to

I'm curious about this reason for leaving kudos. (I'm not a podfic listener myself, so I have no idea what podfic culture is like.) Is it simply because you want to encourage the production of podfic that you leave kudos automatically? Or is the reason more complex than that?

[zillah975]

I often just don't have it in me to leave a comment. Usually it's because I have so much to say but not the energy to say it and I can't boil it down to just a few words that I do have the energy for. Sometimes I'll leave both Kudos and something short like "I loved this!" but yeah. See, even right now, I'm all, "I should just delete this comment, it doesn't add anything," which is a lot the same reason why I often just leave kudos. :)

[sophinisba]

Heh, this is how I always always feel on meta posts. *fist bump*

[zebra_in_dream]

Due to various reasons I seldom comment, so Kudos for me are a way to leave a positive feedback I wouldn't have left otherwise. It means anything from "This story has some problems, but I enjoyed something in it" to "I like this story so much I have no idea what to say".

It has also made me more likely to leave a comment, as it takes the scary out of commenting and means I have a feedback fallback without feeling guilty that I commented on one story but not another.

I'd also like chapter kudos back, because I would like to say "Still reading, please write more" without having to either say that phrase every chapter or having to come up with something new each chapter, even if I don't have anything to say at the moment.

[torachan]

I don't think feedback should be a chore. I loathe the idea that a reader (whether that reader be me or someone reading my fic) is obligated to compose a long, detailed comment and anything else is worthless. Fuck that thinking, seriously.

I have enough stress and obligations in my life that I do not need to add another one for something that is supposed to be a way to relax. And as an author, while of course I love long, detailed comments, I know that if I were to demand only that, I would be lucky to get one comment per fic, if that, because other people also don't want reading to be a chore. I really want to know that people are enjoying my fics, and kudos gives me that information.

[qem_chibati]

Hear, hear.