This is an interesting subject. As much as I love getting comments and kudos as a writer, I just don't think there's any way to make readers leave them, and as a reader I'm pretty much impervious to such requests.
I have to like something about a story to leave a kudos. That can range from an author trying something different to a nice turn of phrase, to characterization I appreciate even if the story itself could be better. If I really like the story I'll comment. If someone is putting up old stories, I might just kudos instead of commenting when I run across them, there are other variations, my behaviour isn't totally consistent.
But you know, I don't read everything; I tend to skip drabbles and very short fic; I skip stories whose subject matter doesn't interest me. If the characterizations don't suit me (which happens fairly often) if I'm in a bad mood--I'll stop reading quickly. Maybe on a different day I would have tried harder. Lots of stories go by the wayside that way. I'm quite sure my stories get the same treatment from readers too, that's just how it is.
Because I do the mfu_shortstorie listings I see a lot of commenting behaviour in action, and it's actually helped me become pretty mellow about the reaction to the stories I write. There are stories that I think are tremendous that don't get much reaction. Stories that I think are trite and/or badly written that have kudos out the wazoo. So much fanfic is id driven--readers have needs they want the stories to fill, and our needs aren't always the same.
In some of the younger fandoms it seems to be de rigeur to leave kudos easily. I don't think that's true in our fandom. When the kudos system started it was so rarely used I suspected people thought their computers would explode if they hit that weird button :D But I think it's changing as people get used to the idea.
I should add the one time I do try very hard to comment (or kudos at least) is if I'm participating in a challenge. It's a small fandom and I consider it a salute to my fellow writers to acknowledge that we're in it together.
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I have to like something about a story to leave a kudos. That can range from an author trying something different to a nice turn of phrase, to characterization I appreciate even if the story itself could be better. If I really like the story I'll comment. If someone is putting up old stories, I might just kudos instead of commenting when I run across them, there are other variations, my behaviour isn't totally consistent.
But you know, I don't read everything; I tend to skip drabbles and very short fic; I skip stories whose subject matter doesn't interest me. If the characterizations don't suit me (which happens fairly often) if I'm in a bad mood--I'll stop reading quickly. Maybe on a different day I would have tried harder. Lots of stories go by the wayside that way. I'm quite sure my stories get the same treatment from readers too, that's just how it is.
Because I do the
In some of the younger fandoms it seems to be de rigeur to leave kudos easily. I don't think that's true in our fandom. When the kudos system started it was so rarely used I suspected people thought their computers would explode if they hit that weird button :D But I think it's changing as people get used to the idea.
I should add the one time I do try very hard to comment (or kudos at least) is if I'm participating in a challenge. It's a small fandom and I consider it a salute to my fellow writers to acknowledge that we're in it together.