Yes, the whole hit vs. read thing ... but there again, say there are 1000 hits. Five kudos. That means the number who actually read it is between there somewhere, but that's a huge difference. And the number that liked it but didn't even bother to leave kudos could be anything, too. You really get no solid sense of whether a story is being enjoyed by a lot of people, or just sampled by a lot of people, based on a high hit count.

Then again, a really low hit count might make a person go "Hm. Did I do something wrong here?" With a new story, it seems like a lot of fen would at least look at it.

It's all a mystery but it's a fascinating one to me because I'm fascinated by people's motivations and the way they think.