Oh, very interesting and informative! I've been thinking over the idea of using polls to supplement feedback for a while, but I always got hung up in the details. I did think it might present me as pretentious, given that it's not fandom wide, or somehow obsessive and neurotic. I also worried about the anonymity aspect, since fandom seems so obsessed with the idea that no one ever think we think badly of them -- while I can set the poll results to only be for me, I still know who thinks my writing is crap. It also has the problem of only working for people who have log ins, which do constitute the majority of hits, but not necessarily the entirety.
And, well, the other problem I keep hitting up against is knowledge of other fandoms. If I get ten reviews on LJ, I think I came out pretty well. If my roommate does, she gets pretty annoyed. But I'm in Heroes and she's in HP, and even though I can rationalize that size of a fandom matters, I think there's also just a lack of commenting culture in certain fandoms. Polls would probably help fix that, to a certain extent, but sometimes I wonder if it's just how things are.
I would still very much like to implement them, though. I think everyone wants to know if they are being read, particularly beyond the obligation of friendship. I think real reviews can never really be replaced and will always be much more satisfying -- it's always great to know that a specific concern you had was resolved in a way readers like, or that they got a jokey detail -- but even a thumbs up/thumbs down system would, IMO, be nice to have.
Personally, I think I would be quite likely to reply to someone's poll. I actually long for the old, old days of fanfiction.net, when there was a star ratings system. I routinely voted in it and used it as a metric for finding new stories. These days, reviews alone are misleading and incomplete, IMO, when you get them at all. Recs and awards are similarly so, but with LJ polls I don't really think we'd get a solution.
I'm not quite sure how the audience with authority fits into this model, because fanfiction is written for primarily entertainment and enjoyment, and not evaluation.
Possibly exchanges? I think they may represent a limbo between an audience of friends and an authoritative audience. You can't be 100% sure it is a friend you are writing for (unless you cheat), and you are writing to fulfill criteria set by an external source.
What was the most awesome dinosaur ever, as rated by science?
no subject
And, well, the other problem I keep hitting up against is knowledge of other fandoms. If I get ten reviews on LJ, I think I came out pretty well. If my roommate does, she gets pretty annoyed. But I'm in Heroes and she's in HP, and even though I can rationalize that size of a fandom matters, I think there's also just a lack of commenting culture in certain fandoms. Polls would probably help fix that, to a certain extent, but sometimes I wonder if it's just how things are.
I would still very much like to implement them, though. I think everyone wants to know if they are being read, particularly beyond the obligation of friendship. I think real reviews can never really be replaced and will always be much more satisfying -- it's always great to know that a specific concern you had was resolved in a way readers like, or that they got a jokey detail -- but even a thumbs up/thumbs down system would, IMO, be nice to have.
Personally, I think I would be quite likely to reply to someone's poll. I actually long for the old, old days of fanfiction.net, when there was a star ratings system. I routinely voted in it and used it as a metric for finding new stories. These days, reviews alone are misleading and incomplete, IMO, when you get them at all. Recs and awards are similarly so, but with LJ polls I don't really think we'd get a solution.
I'm not quite sure how the audience with authority fits into this model, because fanfiction is written for primarily entertainment and enjoyment, and not evaluation.
Possibly exchanges? I think they may represent a limbo between an audience of friends and an authoritative audience. You can't be 100% sure it is a friend you are writing for (unless you cheat), and you are writing to fulfill criteria set by an external source.
What was the most awesome dinosaur ever, as rated by science?
Archeopteryx. Clearly.