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

[sprat]

I post them to find out what OTHER PEOPLE thought of my vision.

Yes, sure. Me too. But that doesn't mean I'm going to GET what I want, you know? Or that I'm going to enjoy hearing these thoughts about my vision if the other people do decide to tell me about them. Loquacious praise is only one of a variety of potential responses, after all. Others include loquacious condemnation, very terse praise, ambiguous praise that's actually a veiled insult, confusing comments that might be praise but might as easily be free verse somebody's decided to write in the comment box because it was handy, comments about things you had nothing to do with, corrections of your typos, mockery, flames, spam, silence or (gasp) an automated expression of non-specific appreciation similar to what you've probably unwittingly gotten for years from people who use text replacement utilities to spare themselves from typing commonly used phrases ("I really enjoyed this!!") over and over again.

Putting a story on a public internet space is like signing a waiver that states you understand these risks and would like to venture forward regardless. If you need your readers to reply to you in some specific way (or with a minimum wordcount), I suggest that you clearly state this expectation in your story header, so readers can decide for themselves if they want to enter this sort of feedback contract with you. I think you'll find the expectation is not as universal as you might think, so clarification might be helpful for you and for the people who are about to read your work.

[shinetheway]

I'd quote you but, well, just pretend I'm quoting that entire first paragraph. Since it's a little long.

And, um. Yes? [confused] I want all of that. I enjoy all of that. I love people correcting my typos, I'm probably not smart enough to undestand the veiled insult so I'll just cheerfully accept the praise, I don't care if "I really enjoyed this" is C&Ped into fifteen stories in a row because hey I'm perfectly willing to take them at their literal stated word every single time (if the Kudos button said "I really enjoyed this!" or "I read this!" or "This sucked!" at least 93% of my issues with it would go away, since that's a rather clear-cut statement of feedback right there--which is also why it'll never change because it's quite clear that people use that Kudos button for way more than a clear-cut statement of feedback and would object to making it more specific). And if someone actually decided to write free verse as a feedback to my story I would read the SHIT out of that. Feedback is feedback. I enjoy feedback. Praise is awesome, obviously, but feedback is why I post rather than just declaiming my stories to my mice in dramatic reenactments accompanied by interpretive dance and periodic heavy breathing. I like writing, I like being good at it even more. I like people noticing my writing, and I like to see their reactions to it. I'm not exactly sure how this makes me unusual.

[whole second paragraph quoted here]

...um, you really do take a legalistic approach to this, don't you? I need to have people sign a waiver, or no wait, I sign a waiver by posting, and people need to sign off on it, or there's this contract that I've put out there with expectations that you have to meet, and you can only read if...or maybe it's I can't post if you don't agree, and there's gotta be a formal signing a contract with me--okay, no, I don't get it.

I mean. Seriously, this is fandom. This is what we DO. We post stories. We post reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to stories. We post reactions to reactions to reactions to stories (which I think is where you and I are up to). I am one hundred percent positive that I am not the only writer in fandom who wants to know what their readers have said about their work, who checks email and LJ/DW obsessively in the hours and days after posting a story to see what people have said, who looks hopefully at their friends so they can get pre-reads and betas and suggestions of what works and what doesn't, who eagerly offers pre-reads and betas to their friends and types up all of their suggestions and satisfactions in email and chat and twitter. I'll grant you that I'm possibly one of the stupidest writers in fandom for actually, you know, coming right out and saying it. Especially I'm starting to get the impression from all of this discussion (not just with you, I mean more from reading the reams of comments that these couple of posts have generated) that a lot of people feel that...I'm not sure, maybe writers are doing it for A Love Of The Craft/Fandom/whatever and feedback is really more about the feedbacker than the writer and even could be just one of those incidental things that doesn't enter the picture except on special occasions? As I said, I don't get it. And maybe I'm beating a dead horse, and, well, being stupid. But I gotta be me. [wry]

So. In case this was honestly ambiguous for you before, please let me state that regarding the fics you're reading, and based on 15 years of writing and knowing writers and talking to writers about writing in my various little corners of fandom, I can say with complete confidence that writers--take your pick of some, most, all, any--want feedback. That's why they post to places that have comment options like LJ and DW and AO3. That's why no one that I've ever seen disables comments on a fic post. I can think of a few people who do specifically state that they're only interested in positive feedback, since this is a hobby that they do for fun, and no writer likes being told that they suck, but basically every writer knows that it could happen and, yes, accepts it. Fen can be rather blunt, and I suspect many writers get comments that make them blush and want to hide under the bed.

You can have every single reason in the world not to give that feedback, and they're all valid because the world is a sucky place and people have lives (me) and distractions (me) and hero worship (also me) shitty brain chemistry (SO me) and comment performance anxiety (...actually, not so much me, but this seems to be pretty common), but the one thing I've yet to see is someone posting "I don't comment." Full stop. Period.

People give a reason because, in a way, people feel they NEED to give a reason. So far as I have ever experienced, and I've got 15 years of history informing this statement, giving feedback--at least sometimes, at least a little bit, at least WANTING TO even if the world doesn't let you for any of a number of utterly valid reasons--is the expectation and even the norm in fandom. It's an ideal to aspire to, and like most ideals the vast majority fail at achieving it in true form. But in my opinion, my expectation that if you have something to say about my fic then you're going to say it is not quite the dramatic departure from the norm that you seem to assume. And as I've said before, and will continue to say again, although with less and less hope that anyone actually cares to understand what I mean, my problem with the Kudo button is not that someone gave me feedback I didn't like. It's that someone gave me feedback I didn't UNDERSTAND. Did I win brownie points for courage for posting that ridiculous zombie parasitic wasp larva MCR fic? Did I write a decently spelled and plotted story that didn't make any major errors? Did I write the best story that person's ever read in their entire lives and they're going to fannishly follow me wherever I go? It's the equivalent of a gift of a live goldfish. It's nice to look at, and if you get a bunch of them in a row it feels kinda nice, and it's also nice to think someone cared enough to give me a pet goldfish, but ultimately it doesn't really FEED BACK any information about what I wrote, not even really that they liked it. It's a button used to say everything, and hence (for me) ends up saying...well, nothing.

FYI, the H key on my keyboard is a bit dodgy, I think I caught all the skipped Hs but if I missed one I apologize. And if you want to continue this discussion in my LJ I'd be happy to, I don't want to keep spamming LittleMouseling's LJ so this'll pretty much be my last comment here.

[sprat]

I'm not arguing that writers do not want feedback, though. What I'm saying is a) so what? Our wanting feedback on our work doesn't mean anyone has a moral prerogative to provide it to us (good lord, if ONLY the world worked like that!); and also b) Kudos ARE, in fact, feedback. The word means "honour; glory; acclaim", actually, so they are (at least nominally) pretty high praise. They may also be a little rote and generic and non-specific, but so are a lot of supposedly handwritten comments. C'est la vie, you know? At least it's not silence, which is by far the most lackadaisical, most ambiguous, least helpful most common feedback writers tend to get on their work.

[esteefee]

Yes, sure. Me too. But that doesn't mean I'm going to GET what I want, you know?

But, to reiterate, in a gift economy, it is important for the sustainability of the economy that its members try to "circulate and redistribute valuables within the community".

And in that context, I think kudos are the least valuable gifts, like leaving, I dunno, a single rose petal outside my door.

Whereas comments are like leaving food.

And I do think there are some situations where kudos are very much like silence. e.g., when a single kudoser leaves a kudos on every single story in an 80K word series, but not a single comment. Then it definitely feels like deliberate silence from that particular user, as the kudos trickle in one after another. It's like they are spending the day with me without saying a single word.

[sprat]

It's like they are spending the day with me without saying a single word.

Except they HAVE said a word: "kudos". In fact, in your scenario they've said it several times.

And in that context, I think kudos are the least valuable gifts...

Wow. Hmm. I guess I believe that it is unacceptably rude to comment on the relative value of gifts I've been given? (???)

I guess what it comes down to is that I just find that I am a much happier person if I avoid assigning hidden negative motives to the actions of strangers when I have no concrete reasons to do so. So, like, maybe half the people who click the kudos button on my stories really ARE trying to damn me with faint praise. But since I'm choosing to read these malicious kudos they're sending as unambiguous compliments, they're completely missing their intended mark, and I totally win. I feel pretty good about this as an approach to life in general, actually.

But of course you are entitled to approach things differently if you prefer. I just wish you (and those who share your feelings) would make it clear that you expect a certain kind of feedback from all readers of your work in the header info, so people can make an informed choice about whether or not they want to go ahead and read it.

[esteefee]

Except they HAVE said a word: "kudos". In fact, in your scenario they've said it several times.

Saying the same word 14 times in a row is *meaningless*. Try it. Or at least, coming from one person, the meaning is, you aren't worth a single *other* word. They just read 80K of my words, but couldn't write me *one* of their own. Instead they rang my doorbell 14 times and ran away. It's just very, very weird, is all I'm saying. I find it the opposite of communicative in that context.

But since I'm choosing to read these malicious kudos they're sending as unambiguous compliments

You're really putting a straw man out for me. I don't know where you're getting that from what I said. In general, I consider kudos to be gifts, just the least valuable kind, that's all I'm saying. I would rather have one comment from one person than a whole passel of kudos on a story. They don't feel like interaction to me.

I just wish you (and those who share your feelings) would make it clear that you expect a certain kind of feedback from all readers of your work in the header info

Wow, again: straw man. I don't *expect* anything from my readers. Do not expect. Would like very much? Sure. Hope to get them and get jazzed if I do? Yeah. And I do the same as I hope: I comment a lot. Because I believe in the economy. But we're talking about kudos here, and I am just saying: I don't think they're good for the economy.