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

[foreverdirt.livejournal.com]

I read parts of the posts. (Feel free to say which parts in the comments.)

I definitely read the intros. As for the recs:

If I'm currently reading in the fandom then I tend to treat your recs more as positive reviews -- I know you'll have said nice things, but I want to see it for myself before I get others' opinions. So if I haven't read the story before I tend to read it first, then come back and read your rec. If I've read the story before I'll certainly read your rec -- before rereading the story if I remember it, after rereading the story if all I remember was the happy glow of good fic.

If it's not a fandom I'm reading at the moment, either because I don't know it or I have fandom fatigue, then I'll read your rec first and then decide based on that whether or not to read the story. (Though recs that start "All you need to know about this fandom is HOMOEROTIC NINJA PIRATES WITH ROBO-MONKEYS!" will probably have me reading the story before I read the rest of the rec.)