My left elbow is the talk of the town

Part 1: What this post is not

This post is not here to:

Shame people for not commenting. I know from my own work how common, and powerful, the obstacles are that prevent people from commenting. More importantly, shaming people is not an effective way of changing their behaviour.

Inform readers that commenting encourages fic writers to produce, and not commenting can demoralise writers, sometimes to the point that they stop writing. I assume you know this already.

I want instead to talk about why people may not comment, and what might work to encourage them to comment.

Part 2: Why do so few people comment?

The major reason that people don’t comment? The default option is not to comment. It sounds trivial, but defaults are insanely powerful. They’re why you stay with mobile plans that cost you too much money, or stuck in behaviour patterns that you want to change. You have to opt in to leaving a comment. Yet another decision asked of you after the hundreds and hundreds you’re asked to make already. You don’t want to make another decision. (Of course, by not leaving a comment, you are making a decision, but it doesn’t feel that way, does it?).

Making the decision to leave a comment also opens you up to a flood of panicked worst-case scenarios. What if you say the wrong thing? What if you expose yourself in some way? What if you sound like a creeper, or entitled, or arrogant, or God knows what? It could be a disaster. The status quo is to say nothing. The status quo is safe.

And then, writing a comment takes effort. So much effort. I’ve seen post after post from harried writers saying that just one line – one emoji! – will do. But I’ve seen in my own work that adding literally one extra button-click to a process can filter out 96% of people who are already stressed or time-poor.

All of this might lead you to tell yourself ‘I’ll come back later, when I have the spoons for a proper comment.’ And maybe you will. But when I tell myself this, that is the devil speaking. I’m not going to come back. I know I’m not going to come back. I know I’ve never come back in the past. I know nothing’s changed, so why would I come back now? But you will, says the devil – or rather, present bias, the psychological bias that makes you re-up that gym membership even though you went maybe 1.5 times total. Leave that comment now. The one-line keysmash you actually post is better than the prose poem you never finish.

Commenting can also feel … kind of thankless. Yes, you get to yell about a story you loved with the person who produced it, which is wonderful. But commenting won’t necessarily get you more output, or more clout. And I know from experience that it’s not necessarily reciprocal.

Part 3: What might get more people to comment?

If this were my day-job, I’d simply accept that People Be People, and I’d make suggestions for fanfic-hosting platforms to tweak their interfaces to nudge people to comment. Below are a couple of such suggestions. But – as with platforms like AO3 – I’d be really reluctant to ask for changes to the user interface of a free-to-use service maintained by volunteers.

Likely most effective but also most intrusive/least feasible

Once readers have finished a fic/update, move them to the comment-box by default. This fix targets the default problem I mentioned earlier, by making the default option commenting. The important thing to note is that commenting is not mandatory. You always have the option to just hit kudos/ hit the back button. But you have to opt out of commenting, rather than opting in to commenting. Researchers have found that switching defaults can be highly effective in getting people to change their behaviour. But this fix is also intrusive, and I don’t want to risk collateral damage, like shaming or isolating people who cannot comment.

Likely less effective but also less intrusive

A message above the comment box framing comments as low-effort, like even one line can make an author’s day/keep them going etc. This message primarily targets the second big stumbling-block for commenting: the perceived effort. I was initially nervous about suggesting this, because I treasure the gorgeous, thoughtful, detailed comments I get and I’d worry about putting off those commenters. But research on charitable donations suggests that I needn’t worry. Asking people for charitable donations with the rider “Even a penny will help” not only increased the number of people contributing, but had no impact on the average size of contribution. So it’s likely that anchoring people to the lowest-effort commenting would increase the number of comments, but those rock-stars who leave you beautiful, thoughtful comments would keep doing so anyway.

It’s also important that the message looks like it’s coming from the platform, rather than individual authors. Doing so reinforces the message that commenting is a social norm, and it also makes the decision to comment – you know – less of a decision. Which helps to battle the problem of defaults I mentioned earlier.

Part 4: Thank your commenters!