Ghost readers

Emma I too am astonished at the speed the reader figures build up. What surprises me even more is how the readers find the stories they wish to read. I can understand them reading the most recently published or the those that have been awarded Cherries but how do they find stories that were published ages ago? Just as important a question to ask is, "What do the readers think of the stories and poems they read?" I'd love to know. Perhaps one day when ABC is rich and famous we will be able to afford to have a section where readers can make their views known?

Perhaps the figures aren't a correct reflection after all..?

"Perhaps one day when ABC is rich and famous we will be able to afford to have a section where readers can make their views known?"

There's already two obvious ways to do that. Maybe the relative silence is down to the fact that many readers are googlebots.

Dammit, that's no excuse for not leaving a googlebotcomment.

buk, whenever I read the truncated version of your skinky (I can't remember the correct internet term for alias, so skinky will do) I automatically complete it as bukharinwasmyfather. It's very disconcerting. Particularly for Bukharin, I should imagine, if his ghost ever visits this site.

I hope not too many of the readers are bots. Wouldn't it be awful if all of them were - if nobody ever read anyone else's work?

If it were politically correct to do so, I'd smack their googlebotties.

Is he only a reader then, this Googlebot? I know (s)he doesn't comment, but I thought (s)he might post something at least. We could all contact him/her via the contact button and crash his server.

I think it's probably just as well googlebot doesn't have any literary aspirations. Tony would just delete them.

"Maybe the relative silence is down to the fact that many readers are googlebots."

Your premise may be true (that googlebots are silent), but hopefully your conclusion will turn out to be false.

I always fill in the end of buk's username (is that the word you were looking for?) with 'father' too.

favouritebolsevich, is bolsevich right? If spelt incorrectly Buk's is spelt the proper way, I'm remembering off the top of my head.
Craig

With so many users (16014) why can't I get some kind of comment? Googlebots aside, I can't improve or know where I stand without someone telling me I'm a hack...

AAAAAAAUGH!

This is more than I can take...
There has to be an active writing site that I can get feedback from...

Quietly nurturing my demons...
John

I don't believe that rapidly rising reader numbers can be down to bots because presumably if it were my last piece would have been read as much as the ones to either side of it. The fact that it's either a real slow burn or just doomed to be unpopular suggests to me that it's down to human choice. Bring on the bots I say.

Georgethedog - you are not alone in your desperate need for feedback, but it could be worse: you could be getting feedback that's useless or misleading. I don't seem to get much feedback. Once or twice I've had some really good stuff that kind of makes up for it, and often the same people comment kindly - thanks Ewan! I have said it before and no doubt I'll say it again, but I reckon what we need is small groups sharing work in turn and being keen enough to discuss thoroughly their collaborators' works because the pay-off will be a thorough dissection of their own.
Yup, been reading Buk's name as Bukharinwasmyfather ever since I came to ABCTales. I think it's a good deal funnier than the accurate version; I can't see the difference between having a name that suggests that you have a favourite Bolshevik and having a name like Hesswasmyfavouritenazi, or Polpotwasmyfavouritegenocidist; how about Theshiningpathwasmyfavouritecrazymaoistinsurgency?

georgethedog you wonder why you do not get feedback. Well, very few writers on this site seem to. I've never quite understood why.

I have read your stories. One reason why no one has commented could be the structure of the writing. Could I suggest that you edit both pieces breaking the stories into paragraphs? They are both somewhat difficult to read at the moment and at first sight rather daunting. Rephrasing could allow the content to be read in a more natural and relaxed way and the import of what you are saying become much clearer.

I hope you find these comments helpful, they are well intended.

The googlebot reads do not count on your reader numbers - they are people who come along and read who log up those totals.

Why don't they comment more? I wish I knew! Next newsletter I will focus on getting comments.

Part of the reasoning behind the new comp is to get good criticism going - so get over to the new forum and write some serious crits!

"Yup, been reading Buk's name as Bukharinwasmyfather ever since I came to ABCTales. I think it's a good deal funnier than the accurate version; I can't see the difference between having a name that suggests that you have a favourite Bolshevik and having a name like Hesswasmyfavouritenazi, or Polpotwasmyfavouritegenocidist; how about Theshiningpathwasmyfavouritecrazymaoistinsurgency?"

There's quite a big difference. How much do you know about Bukharin?

Well, I know a fair amount about Bukharin. I have what you might call a good grounding in modern history in general and a reasonable understanding of the Russian Revolution and Bolshevism in particular. For me, no, there's no great difference between Bukharin and the rest of the Bolsheviks. Being purged by Stalin doesn't guarantee redemption. I mean Buk, what are you going to tell me? He was urbane? Clever? He had fine table manners?
The fact that Bukharin was a member of an authoritarian party which presided over the destruction of any genuinely revolutionary potential in Russia in the early Twentieth Century, a collaborator with one of the modern era's truly distinguished butchers and stuck with it until 1937 does not of course mean that he can't be your favourite Bolshevik.... but I'll still read your name as Bukharinwasmyfather; that's just an accident of abbreviation.
Oh, of course I appreciate that I have a somewhat extreme position on Bolsheviks (and authoritarian socialists in general); for me Fabians and social democrats aren't much better. What can I say? I don't distinguish between Bolsheviks and fascists (although I admit average IQ might be higher amongst the former); I wouldn't cross the street to save a Bolshevik from the forces of reaction and I'd rather be roasted alive by the Spanish Inquisition than have anything to do with anyone like a Bolshevik in any kind of Popular Front. Overall my attitude to the authoritarian left would be something like: if you don't get them first then at some stage in the future expect a knock on the door in the early hours of the morning. Thankfully they're such a joke now that the prospect of the recovery of anything remotely resembling early Twentieth Century authoritarian socialism is virtually non-existent.
I'm just off to change my name to Zhouenlaiwasmyfavouritemaoist...... but of course abbreviated it might cause just the same amusement to all-comers as your apparent relationship with Bukharin.

"Oh, of course I appreciate that I have a somewhat extreme position on Bolsheviks (and authoritarian socialists in general); for me Fabians and social democrats aren't much better."

Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with having an extreme position towards the USSR. It was a brutal repressive regime. Only Mao's China has killed more of its own people.

My relative support for Bukharin is a generalised recognition of people who originally get involved with political movements for idealistic reasons, work out things are going horribly wrong and try to change things from within before its too late.

My position is that if, in the 1930s, the Soviet Union had embraced freedom of speech and a mixed economy along the lines that Bukharin (and others who are less famous) advocated then it might ultimately have made the transition to a version of liberal democracy (whether or not Bukharin himself would actually have supported that) and history would have been very different in a significant number of ways, examples being: no purges, no cold war and possibly a shorter world war two.

Obviously you oppose governments in a general sense. I'm a social democrat, I just want governments that do their best to make things a bit more equal and don't kill either their own citizens or, in fact, citizens of other countries either.

I like people who advocate or who have advocated things I support at great personal risk.

'The googlebot reads do not count on your reader numbers - they are people who come along and read who log up those totals.'

what? they count as hits at the very least

bots are not 'people' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebot

bots are bots

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_bot

Thanks jingle. It's been a long time since I've really done any writing so it makes sense that I'm not "following the rules". I'll have a look and see what I can remember about structure.

Thanks again.

John

Fair enough Buk :)

Googlebots? Sounds like some sort of exotic disease!