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Comment Dislikes, and Why You Shouldn't Care That Much · 6:49am Jan 30th, 2014
As I was watching the main page of FIMfiction, I noticed that a new changeling story is gaining popularity, called Starving. The story is a "Twilight is a/becomes a" changeling type of story, and in this category the most famous one is Mirror's Image. Now, as much as I love these type of stories, I don't really like spending hours on reading the same over and over. Therefore, I made the following comment:
Hi Author, and fellow readers!
Anyone has read Mirror's Image? If yes, then is this fiction going on a similar direction, or taking a different one?
(For my shame, I haven't read the first chapter of this story, but if someone can clarify, that I'll read something completely different, then I'm more than willing to. I love changeling stories
)
Now, what was the response? Yes, you guessed well, the comment was downvoted by multiple people, and nobody replied at all. I have to admit, on the first glance, my comment feel like a cheap advertisement of another fiction. But let's get more deeper than that.
Since my comment was downvoted so much, it must mean that my comment was bad/offensive and I should feel bad, right?
Let's see the most typical (and understandable) reasons for downvoting:
-Is my comment irrelevant to the fiction I posted it under? No.
-Is my comment offensive in any way? No.
Okay, so let's see who downvoted it then? I can categorize the people who've read my comment into three groups, and will analyse how my comment relates to them:
1)People, who've read Mirror's Image: For these people, my comment is valuable, since these people most probably also thinking the same, and they would be really thankful, if the author would answer, so that they would know, what to expect. (Positive)
2)People, who haven't read Mirror's Image: These people either don't care, since my comment is not asking them, or giving them a tip to another fic, which also worth reading, if they enjoyed this one. (Neutral-Positive)
3)The author: If the author has read Mirror's Image, then obviously she won't copy it's storyline and with an answer to my comment, she can gain readers from the first group. If the author hasn't read Mirror's Image, then it's a really great help for him to know, what have his readers probably read, so she won't write the same thing. When I was writing "The Harbinger", I though I'm making something completely unique, by uniting Equestria with Earth. If someone would've told me that there is already a similar fic, called "Conversation Bureau", I would've been more than thankful, and would've read it, to avoid reinventing the wheel. (Positive)
So according to my analysis, my comment was valuable, and either positive or neutral to everyone. "But Servant! Your comment got minus 5 votes! Who downvoted then?" Well, the problem arises from the fact, that people are not rational. They're emotional. So let me tell you who downvoted:
1)The people who really loved this fic.
Why? Because while reading, they reached a high emotional level, a catharsis if you would say. It's a really good thing, and shows that the fiction is really good, since this is the reason why most of us read sad/tragic stories. Then, they met with my neutral comment. From a high emotional level to neutrality, the way goes down, and this manifested in them a will to downvote my comment.
2)The people, who thought I only came to advertise a different story.
My comment directs the readers to a different story in the same genre. The obvious question would be that why I'm advertising the competition. However, this shouldn't be this way. Art shouldn't be a competition, because by the very nature of it is that we get inspiration from each other. Art should be something in what we work together, knowing each others' work, to make something even better. My favorite example for this is The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments, which is a story about Sweetie Belle going into other fiction worlds, while having an overarching story-line, made by Wanderer D, and the writers of each fiction world.
3) The people, who saw that my comment is disliked, and wanted to join the crowd.
We all want to say, that we all have our individual opinions, but most of the time, our opinion is basically someone else's opinion, we just don't want accept it, or don't know it. If you see something that has 100 upvotes, you already have a positive attitude towards that thing, and will most probably also upvote it. If something has 100 downvotes, your attitude will be probably nutpicking, and if you find something bad, you will downvote it also.
So, was my comment bad? Should I feel bad? No, it wasn't. "But there were three groups of people, who downvoted my comment for reason!". Yes, they had a reason; however if you check each group, you'll realize that the person, who needs to change is most probably them, not you:
1)The people who loved this fic should understand, that not everyone is as enthusiastic as they are, and should be able to respect other's opinion
2) People who thought that I'm just advertising another fic should read my comment again, and stop thinking about art as a competitive market.
3)People who just wanted the join the crowd should try to have their own opinion, instead of depending on the crowd.
However, I can't expect people to change, and even if they are the ones, who should change, I can still make some effort to avoid such a situation. So instead of arrogantly stating that they should change and leave with that, I should look into myself: how should I change? How could have this situation went better?
-I should have read the first chapter, and if I still couldn't answer my question by that, I should have sent a private message to the author.
This way, I could have avoided the whole thing. However, since I didn't have time for it at that time, this was sadly not an option for me.
Conclusion: People are fickle. If you intention was good when you wrote your comment, but you still got massively downvoted, don't feel bad about it. If you can do something to avoid such a situation in the future, do it, but if you can't, don't worry about it.
Feel free to oppose me in the comment section. I'm also imperfect, and would like to hear your opinion.
(Edit: The author has answered my question. Starving goes in a different way, so you should definitely read it, if you like "Twilight is a changeling" type of stories. )
Five downvotes is not "massive" downvoting. 10-12 is the usual limit that comments will get, and they rarely get over 20. I have had comments that got upward of 60-70 downvotes. Sorren had one get over 120 downvotes once. Chatoyance has about half her total comments downvoted until they disappear because of TCB politics.
What happened was you made a dumb comment and people got mad about it. If I remember the original correctly, it was just a link telling people to read Mirror's Image, and then you changed it to look less like an advertisement. That's why people got mad--because it looked like you were trying to plug something in the comments of somebody else's story out of nowhere.
1774882
Thank you for your comment. I didn't know comments get THAT much downvoted. Knowing this, I have to admit "massive downvoting" was clearly an overstatement. I modified my blogpost to reflect this.
You don't remember the original correctly. I payed attention to really ask my question as politely as possible, and to make sure that noone will think that it's an advertisement. The edits were only minor things. It never even contained a link to Mirror's Image, for obvious reasons.
edit: And I got the downvotes after I did those minor changes.
This is pretty much on target. I usually view dislikes as a pictorial form of denial.
1957632 What do you mean by "on target"? You mean my comment deserved the dislikes? (Just asking, I'm really open for anything you say.)
My bad, I meant to say what you said was very true. Dislikes provide very little information other than "I don't like this". It's very ambiguous and could mean virtually anything. When I see dislikes, I try to view them from a positive angle, as in they imply some form of denial or disagreement, and thus warrants some questions.
I remember back when they implemented the thumb up/down feature on Youtube, and was surprised at how quickly people took it serious.
Sorry for confusing you, glad I found this blog entry.
1957745 Oh, now I see.
Here is a similar thing for stories. I was kinda influenced by it, when I wrote this blogpost:
http://www.fimfiction.net/group/916/school-for-new-writers/thread/82900/sublecture-how-to-deal-with-a-lack-of-appreciation-and-love-for-your-content (3. point to be exact)