Poll: Ride the Recommendations

[thefourthvine]

isiscolo has an interesting post about the effect recommendations have on readership. (This is as judged by website statistics - part of her ongoing series on readership, feedback, and website stats, which I secretly suspect is a plot to make us all want websites. Or, for those of us who have websites, to make us want to put some actual content on them.)

This has been something of a theme with me recently. See, I do this whole recommendations thing so strangely that it is a constant delight to me that anyone reads or uses my LJ. So it never occurred to me that my recommendations might have effects on, say, readership or feedback. But first I had a vidder telling me my rec of her vid had a noticeable effect on downloading, and I swooned from joy. And then fairestcat and isiscolo pointed out to me that sometimes you can see actual feedback on stories that probably is the result of your rec! (Like, sometimes people say, "Here from thefourthvine," which is just the coolest thing ever OMG.) More joyous swooning followed. (If this keeps up, I'll need a fainting couch, and doesn't everyone want a good reason to buy a fainting couch?) And now isiscolo is saying - well, basically, that LJ recs have an effect, but only current recs; back recs on LJ aren't used as much. (Note: I am excessively over-simplifying her post. Please read it and ignore my summary.)

Me being me, my basic reaction to this was, yes, joyful swooning, and much burbling along the lines of: YAY! People sometimes read the things I recommend, and how neat is that? (Way neat, if you were wondering. Way, way neat.) But my secondary reaction to her conclusions was: hmmm. Perhaps I should update my memories or stop using tags or in some way make my LJ more, you know, useful to people.

And you are the people I want it to be useful to. Plus, I have a sick spouse at home and a bunch of work to do. You know what this means: it's time for yet another poll! (You can totally put "post fewer polls" in question five, by the way.)

[Poll #878107]

Comments

[abbylee]

If it's in one of my fandoms, I don't read your rec unless I've already read the story. The fact that you've recommended it is enough for me to click and I generally like to be surprised by stories, unless I'm in a particular mood. If I've already read the story, then I read your rec and giggle, and then read the story again.

If it's not in one of my fandoms, I usually read your rec to see what you have to say about the story. I read very very little outside of my fandoms, but I tend to get joy from your descriptions, even if it doesn't drive me to read the story.

As far as the backlog question, I have used it in the past, but I'm all caught up and so usually just read it as it comes up on my friendspage. Which isn't to say I don't sometimes get a craving to read back again. For all that I like to be unspoiled the first time through, I am a huge re-reader of stories.

I'm here more because I love read the recs themselves, then to make use of the recs (because I've usually already read the story by the time you recommend it), except as reminders for stories I already love.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

As far as the backlog question, I have used it in the past, but I'm all caught up and so usually just read it as it comes up on my friendspage.

I'm so happy to hear that some people actually do go back through the recs. They get used even after they're off the front page!

I'm here more because I love read the recs themselves, then to make use of the recs (because I've usually already read the story by the time you recommend it), except as reminders for stories I already love.

*beams*

Wow. Thank you. That is amazingly cool. (And, yeah, I'm a huge re-reader of all kinds of things - my feeling is generally, if I enjoyed it once, why not 12 more times? So I have a couple of recs LJs friended just so I can be reminded to re-read stories I love. There's nothing like seeing a link to one of, say, Resonant's stories on my friends list to take a chunk of time out of my day. *happy sigh*)