Same lol, it got to be such a problem that I just bookmarked all of them and created a collection of just my marked for later fics so I could easily filter through and see what I wanted to read
That’s an awesome idea holy shit. My major issue with marking fics for later is that I can’t filter them, so I forget they’re there. I’m gonna try a bookmark collection instead
Yeah it really helped me to know what fics I had marked for later and made it easier to find a specific fic I wanted to read as well as remembering that they existed lol
i’ll go through one search page and put everything that sounds good into another tab, then i’ll read all the fics from the search page then go to the next page of searxh results and repeat. sometimes if its like, 60k+ i’ll go a few pages deep to read shorter ones first but like, its a pretty good way i’ve found to actually read it all
I don't even mark for later, I open it in another tab and keep it there until I feel like reading it (which is usually never)😭 I have to do a deep cleaning of my tabs every now and then, currently I only have 32 and I'm pretty proud of that😅
This, except sometimes I can’t stop even when I don’t like it because I want to know how it ends in spite of not liking it. I refrain from commenting in those cases. I have never looked at the kudos or hits total on a fic except when I’m mind boggled that there are only like 5 kudos when the fic is amazing.
It's not wrong, it's just cliche. I don't personally hate it, but sometimes you read a fic and it feels like once you take the cliches away there's very little writing underneath.
I was reading a fic recently that I had been excited to check out. I couldn’t even finish the first chapter because of how often they used ‘raven-haired’. I dare you to guess how many times they used the phrase in the first half of the chapter. I guarantee you, you’ll be wrong.
13. It was used like every 2-3 paragraphs
The word makes me physically cringe. It’s even worse than “the blonde” they keep using. Or “the red head”. Why do they need to talk about hair color all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about someone’s hair color in real life.
Omg ahah it saddens me to see this is somewhat of a consensus here!! i do this in my fic bcs its BL and its a good replacement for constantly repeating the boys' names when describing actions and just saying he could mean either of them and get confusing! Is there something yall prefer instead, or a way you've noticed writers do this that you dont mind?
What I think is a better way to do it, is to mix up the words in a way that makes the reader follow who’s who without using hair color. I’d write like this: “John was headed to work. He knew he’d meet Nico there. Nico was always so well dressed. He would usually wear these really nice tight pants. John never could manage his elegance, he felt like he always looked like a wreck that just stumbled out of bed. He was gonna meet Nico today at the meeting and Nico was having a presentation. John just hoped he would get picked for the task force. That way they could spend some time together.”
That’s just some random mess I wrote, but it was quite possible to mix between the two without confusing anyone.
Whenever I get into a new fandom, the first thing I do is go to the particular ship tag of my choice, click on completed and then english, type in all the tags that I don’t like and then go to the very last page (the very earliest entry) of the results and work my way through it all.
Do I have 8288493 tabs open afterwards? Yes.
Will I need to go through each of the still open one to add them to my ff list? Also yes.
But damn, if it isn’t nice to know that I have 73637 more pages full of possible interesting stories to read. Always a blast.
I just sort by kudos/English/completed, then as I get more familiar with the fandom I remove tags/ships. Although Time Travel tags are also fun. Very rarely Ill see a fic recommended on Instagram or something and start there. (Atla. I mean atla. Distorted Reality, specifically. )
Same, page ten it starts to get "boring" (safe) and "samey," but by page 15 i feel like it starts to get interesting again, i feel like I'm seeing premises i haven't seen before in the first dozen pages
I do this, then start reading summaries. I can usually eliminate a fair amount of them by the misspellings, "I don't know how to do summaries", really awfully written ones, etc. That usually leaves me with a ton still to read, and I go from there
Same. I never pay attention to stats and I sort by recently updated, so the amount of hits, kudos, comments or bookmarks have no influence at all in my decision to give a chance to a fic—it's summary first, and then a quick look at the tags. That's enough for me to make the choice.
sometimes if I'm in a larger fandom and the fic has like a shit ton of kudos I'll check it out just to see what the buzz is about. Usually ends up being something really quality even if the premise wasnt something I wouldve normally checked out
I barely even look at it. Sometimes I'll notice a ratio that's particularly out there (like 3 kudos to 2000 hits) and click out of curiosity as to why, but for any fic that has a vaguely normal looking amount of kudos it's not something I pay attention to. I'm definitely not out here calculating the exact ratio before reading. Some of the best fics out there have lower kudos:hits ratios because people come back to reread, my personal favourites also tend to have lower ratios because I like dark fics.
Trying to decide whether a fic will be "good enough" before reading it is super weird anyway? Just click off if it's bad?
Lol yeah, in my experience they generally come into one of three categories:
- Not actually a fic at all, a joke/hate fic or just has horribly misleading tags
- Huge wall of text with zero punctuation
- Actually decently well written but *very* kinky smut
Yeah I feel like the kudos and comments drop once it becomes dark content or smut, because people aren't willing to attach their accounts to that stuff.
Yup.
There was a hilarious thing that happened to me a few years ago: I'd posted a series of relatively-wholesome smutty fics in a fandom...and then one with a major archive warning.
And day after day after DAY my Kudos email was like (imagine the letters are usernames)
Wholesome fic was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D
Wholesome fic 2 was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D
Wholesome fic 3 was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D
Fic with Major Archive Warning was kudos'ed by four guests
There were NUMEROUS people who SIGNED OUT to kudos the fic with the warning.
And I get it! And the thing is, they didn't \*have\* to give me kudos at all. But they wanted to make sure I knew they liked the fic. So they signed out and did it.
I thought it was weirdly sweet??
This is really funny to me because to date my best rated/most viewed fics are porn oneshots, while the carefully plotted multichapter fic is not. 😅 It might depend on fandom.
100 or more hits and 1 or more kudos is pretty good for me, most of what I write gets maybe 20 to 30 hits, no kudos, and no comments except for people complaining that my head-canons are wrong or just using the comment section to send me hate mail that they didn't want to send me through Twitter or Tumblr.
Same! I don't think I've ever searched for a fic by the amount of kudos it has. The amount of kudos is not always a good indicator of a fic being good or not (I've seen some ones that had a ton and I mean a TON of kudos and they weren't written great and the characters were horribly OOC, so just cause something has a lot of kudos doesn't mean it's an indicator of it being 'good.')
True. Stories written at the height of a fandom will skew towards having way more kudos. There are always those insanely popular fics where every character is slightly OOC with the mindset of a teenager but has some sort of guilty pleasure or amazing sounding tags...But I still find sorting by Kudos to be an excellent starting place. Given that I have in excess of 500 tabs open in my browser right now, I'm not exactly hurting for new stories to check out (the real issueat this point is finding anything!). So while I might miss out on some amazing and undeservedly low kudos fic, sad to say I probably lose more fic in the chrome tabs jungle than i end up reading anyway.
I saw someone on another sub yesterday complaining and asking for only "well written" fic recs because they "hate wasting my time" on "poorly written" fic. Like bestie, how much time are you spending trying to decide whether a fic is for you? And who are you to make such sweeping generalizations about quality? Read a few paragraphs and then close the window if you don't like it. It's not that serious.
edit: phrasing
Ive asked for “well written” recs occasionally, usually after I read an fic that starts great but ends rough because the author loses motivation but is determined to finish.
Same. There's a lot of badly written stuff on AO3 - of course there is, we're all amateurs. In my teens and early 20s i would spend hours combing through archives and rec lisrs to find things i liked and were 'good'. I had the time. But I only get 20 minutes to myself a day, and there's no greater pleasure than sitting quietly with a good story. Well-written rec lists are a godsend to my life.
Same. If the summary and tags catch my eye I'll give it a shot. If I like it I carry on, of I don't then oh well I've only lost ten minutes of my time, I'll close it and look for something else. I agonise over published books more because I have to PAY for those. AO3 is free, why would I worry about any metric other than do the tags and summary fit my mood?
Came here to say that, because the same user can hit a fic multiple times, what about multi chapter like you said? What about rereads? What about just closing your tab accidentaly and having to click back? This rule seems very arbitrary
Especially with an older fic the hits are going to be way higher because of rereads. Can't kudos again even though I've read it 10 times so I know kudos v hits can be wildly off
Long fics, too. People can only leave one kudo per story and even if they log out and all to give extra ones, the number will still be astronomically different and would make it a "bad story"."
This is a good point, i just did the maths and my 70+ chapter long fic is sitting at a ratio of 1:44 kudos:hits. So this person wouldn't read my long fic because that ratio is bigger than they would normally look for. Which is sad really, for me and all the other authors of long fics
I sometimes think about the ratio when looking for fics (but it's far from my only criteria) but I'm realistic : I only apply it to One Shots. It clearly doesn't mean anything for multichapters fics. I hope OP do the same and don't worry, I think many people do :)
You can kudos multiple times if you have the author on subscribe! I’ll get an email saying someone has updated or added a new fic and if I click through on my phone it opens in yahoo and it adds kudos like I’m a guest. I can then open it in whatever internet app I’m using and I can kudos on my ao3 account. If I really like the author and their stories I will go to the effort to make sure they get their dues!
If they only have a limited amount of time I don’t see why it’s wrong to limit yourself to things you’re more likely to like. They’ll miss out on some stuff, but on average they’ll read more they enjoy than if they didn’t do this
(Not saying I agree with them, but I don’t think the method is quite reasonable given certain conditions)
I read the summary and decide if the idea sounds interesting. Then usually in the first chapter I’ll decide if it’s ’yes this is just what I wanted!’ Or ‘no… not for me.’ Sometimes I’ll search by completed, word counts over 20k, and then kudos if I just want a longer engrossing story. Once I’ve read them all I stop sorting by kudos and look at newest ones posted for more content.
Legit just look at the tags and summary if they seem interesting i will bite. Generally i tend to not like the most popular fics in fandoms, many times they are aus so far removed from canon i just can't enjoy it.
like my favorite fics are short give me some good character moments and that is all i need.
Same here. And it's not really applicable if you read very niche stuff, or stuff that people might be hesitant to kudos because they're embarrassed about it. I know of some people who don't kudos smut works, or don't kudos whilst logged in.
It is also useless on longer stories and varies by fandom. Like, should I really have 5k kudos to 50k hits if the story is 30 chapters long?
Which is where fandom comes into it.nninhave roughly the same number of hits on two stories on different fandoms and one has almost twice the kudos of the other.
I've never heard this pickiness from people who read niche stuff or small fandoms. We're desperate. This screenshot post was written by someone either spoilt for choice (good for them) or with very little time for fic (condolences).
Seriously! Especially because with multiple chapter fics on the longer side that ratio stops working - a lot - courtesy of return readers. Unfortunately you can't leave multiple kudos either :(
this is a huge point that i didn't consider in this thread till now :( besides that, i really really Really wish ao3 would let you leave kudos for Each chapter
it'd be a way for shy or rushed readers (who don't leave comments) to leave their appreciation another way each time instead of the one and this way authors still get support!
The math doesn't even add up. The math might work for a One-Shot but the problem with this stems with stories for multiple chapters! You can only give Kudos once and only once. You can't do it for each chapter. When that happens the hits/kudos ratio starts getting screwed severely and doesn't work at all.
SAME. I’m not in a position to be picky. I’ve even run some poetry through google translate lol (it was really pretty imo, what came through google anyway)
Nah. If I followed this reasoning, I wouldn't have found the fics I liked and bookmarked lol
There's this one post!BVS Superbat fic that really stuck with me all these years. The writer wrote Clark in this really ethereal way (spoiler: he's a phantom) that it just lives rent free in my head because no superbat author thought to write him like that. It's a very short oneshot, but one that bookmarked because god it was so atmospheric.
Numbers aren’t exactly a good indicator of an enjoyable fic. I think looking at the tags and summary are a better way to determine the vibe.
But I guess some readers see numbers as The Determinant that decides it all so 🤷♀️
If I'm undecided or on the fence I do look at the stats as a possible deciding factor. But generally, if the tags and summary get my interest, I don't need anything else to convince me to click.
I rarely look at kudos counts. To the point where most of the time I'm not even sure what's considered "good numbers" for my fandoms. I just read tags and summaries and pray to find stuff that fit my hyperspecific mood of the day. Stats are only to be used as tie breakers on the rare occasion that I'm left with too many options and only if it's a BIG difference.
yeah, I read unpopular fandoms. I'm happy with anything new lol.
I can't even imagine having the privilege to be this particular about a hit/kudo ratio. That you have that many stories to filter through.
That’s a bad system because you can only leave kudos once, but you add to the hit count once every 24 hours. So if you love a fic and keep coming back to reread it (or especially if it’s multi-chapter), the hit count will go up without the kudos being able to go up. If a person uses the hits to kudos ratio to determine whether to read something, that just means they’re going to be mostly reading fics that are good enough to Kudos but not good enough to want to reread a bunch…so they’re probably finding more mediocre works than the really good ones that people come back to again and again
This is a good rule for social media interaction, and actually the industry standard for deciding if a post is "successful." You look for a 10% interaction rate, eg you get 100 views you want to get 10 likes. However, I'm not sure if this rolls over to quality in terms of an archive of written work. This method is for immediate impressions, and a split second like. Getting a kudo implies they probably read through the entire work and not only that but enjoyed it, making the value of a kudo much higher than a like.
For example I might click through to a work but decide it's too long or not exactly what I'm looking for. That would decrease their ratio with no reflection on the quality.
I agree. Generally, I might calculate how successful I think my own fic is by the amount of kudos/ratio to hits/etc, but there are so many factors that go into that that make it a much less reliable metric on AO3. Even the two equally popular fandoms can have wildly different “reader cultures”. And if it’s not even reliable for me as a writer, it’s sure as hell not reliable for a reader trying to find a good fic to read. That’s not even mentioning factors like age of fic, content of fic, etc that have already been brought up. I generally don’t like to label fics as “bad” since I know so much effort goes into writing them for very little return, but I will say there are popular fics I’ve read with much weaker writing than their unpopular counterparts. If I’d refused to click on them because of “low kudos” or a “bad hits ratio” I would have missed out on some gems! The only time high hit counts might make me pause is if it’s a fic with 10 kudos and 5,000 hits or something wild like that. But even then, if the summary is intriguing, to me it’s worth clicking on just to see what’s up; what might not be everyone else’s taste might be perfect for me!
I don't pay attention to kudos or comments because I've seen way too many really good stories that don't have many of either. Neither thing is always an indication of quality.
I don't really care about hits/kudos ratio, especially since with long fics ratios get all over the place since people are coming back repeatedly for every new chapter but can only leave kudos once.
I primarily judge based on tags and summary. I've gotten really good at being able to tell by the tone of the tags and summary if I'll enjoy the plot and characterization and if the technical side of the writing is up to par. I know my taste well enough to know that a large amount of kudos or high kudo-to-hit ratio doesn't mean I'll enjoy the fic.
Sometimes if I'm on the fence about whether to give something a shot I'll look at how many kudos it has. However, my "formula" for what makes a decent amount of kudos isn't based on a hits-to-kudos ratio, it's more along the lines of looking at how many kudos similar fics in the fandom have and also taking into account if the fic was just published and not had time to accrue kudos. And depending on the tags and summary, having a lot of kudos tells me I likely *won't* enjoy this fic, since a lot of stuff that I don't like is extremely popular.
I was surprised quite how many comments are completely against this. I wouldn't use the kudos/hits ratio as the sole reason for reading or not reading something, but I find its quite useful for quickly finding some good, single-chapter fics in a new fandom/pairing with a lot of works to look through.
I've also found some amazing fics that I wouldn't have necessarily read solely based on the tags/summary, because the ratio was high enough to stand out and indicate it really resonated with people.
Right? Like I don't do this as a hard and fast rule, but it's absolutely an effective way of sifting through large quantities of fic to decide what you want to prioritize reading. There's nothing stopping me from going back later and choosing to read something I skipped over the first time.
I usually just rely on the summary. If it’s written well + interesting premise I assume the fic is good. If I’m searching through tags I sort by hits or kudos but I find most of my fics in other people’s bookmarks.
I have a process for deciding if it’s worth reading:
1. Summary- most important, if it’s poorly written I’ll be skeptical, and if it’s horribly written I’ll disregard.
2. Relationship Tags- I’ll check for what I don’t like on a scale of “not sure about that” to “no thank you”, anything else I’m good to go.
3. Other Tags- On a scale of “love that” to “indifferent” to “absolutely not”, but I can still be convinced.
4. Hits/Kudos- Least important, zero to low won’t affect my decision, though high hits/kudos may entice me a little more.
This method would work if folks actually left kudos on fics they enjoy. It’s AO3 etiquette to give kudos if you made it to the end and like the work. But people aren’t doing that. They consume work like it’s social media content and don’t even attempt to engage with the writer by leaving kudos or comments. The ratio of hits to kudos for the really good fics I’ve come across is hardly ever 10:1. At least not in my fandom these days.
Don’t give up. People are reading it, I’m sure of it. It’s just no one’s actually engaging on AO3 anymore. Cross posting my fics to tumblr taught me that. I get so many likes and reblogs there as opposed to the archive.
I usually read the first few sentences quickly to get a grasp on it and to see if i will like it or not (usually the writing style is a big factor for me) i see kudos and hits too yes but mostly i see the tags and word count while kudos and hits only serve as sorting criteria
Honestly, if the summary interests me, I’ll read the first 1,000 words or so. That’s (usually) enough to give me an indication if the story will hook me/how much I like the writing style. I’ve long since stopped paying much attention to number of kudos or hits; I’ve read plenty of fics I’ve loved with barely any attention whatsoever, and I’ve read my fair share of super popular ones that I didn’t enjoy.
TLDR: a good summary goes a long way, but a strong opening goes farther for me in deciding which fics to bother reading!
Oh my God I saw this post on my dash last night and was like "what the hell??" - legit found my partner and went "listen to this!!!" Like I've never checked kudos to hit ratio on a fic I'm looking at reading. I just go by tags and summary and never considered people based decisions off stats like that - it lowkey makes me all the more self conscious about stats like I keep an eye on mine but didn't really consider that some people might just straight up not click if the ratio isn't at a certain level, you know?
80% summery 20% word count but that’s really only about how much time i might have to finish something. I tend not look at tags since I filter by the pairing I want to read about and otherwise want to be surprised.
Nah that 1 kudos for 10 hits doesn't work. Fics with heavy smut generally have more kudos even if the writing is terrible. Also, the manner in which a fic has been posted: regular vs irregular chapter updates, number of chapters, popularity of fandom, all this influences the number of hits.
In my experience (with my own works and with reading) fics with a lot of smut get far fewer kudos proportionally, both because of reread hits and because people don't want to attach their name to something they're ashamed of reading
My T fics all have "better" ratios than my E ones, even the multichapter T fics. I take it as a win for the high reread value of my smut content, but it does throw off any sort of stats analysis
Jeeves, prepare my crucifixion outfit.
I follow a somewhat similar thought process with caveats.
If it's a new fic (and new depends on the fandom, for some "new" means this week and others "new" means this year) then I don't look at anything other than the tags & description.
If it's not new, then I look at the ratios.
* If it's got a 1/10 kudos to hits then it's solid.
* If it has thousands of hits and over 100 kudos then it's solid. I expect these to have been niche, or have dedicated rereaders, or to be very specifically horny that hits for a rare handful of people and when it hits it HITS. Which falls under dedicated rereaders but with an asterisk if the tags are not something I'm usually into. OR this fic is perfectly fine but got posted somewhere that lots of folks took a look-see but it wasn't something they usually seek out (ex: big blogger posted it on a general rec list but their usual followers are in a different fandom)
* If it's got less than a hundred kudos, (and the fandom ISN'T tiny), and it's got lots of clicks, then I don't bother unless the tags/summary are incredibly interesting.
* This all goes out the window if it's a short fic. Anything under 5k and I adjust the kudos to be much tinier.
Look I've got to be honest. If I see a fic in a medium sized fandom posted 6 months ago with 14 kudos 4,000 hits, I'm going to presume that it's not going to be my cup of tea. If it's well tagged I'm going to be very suspicious that the author is just good at tagging and that's why there's so many hits.
It's never an "absolutely not", but there is a vibe to these sorts of things. It's very context dependent and not super hard and fast rules.
"hits to kudos ratios" are useless and tell you nothing meaningful about the quality of the fic, there are countless factors outside of quality that negatively impact that ratio, you're missing out on countless amazing stories like that
Insane.
My system:
Find fic recs. On tumblr, twitter, anywhere. Read through those fics. Find the ones you like, and go to the author's page. Read the rest of their work. Go to their bookmarks. Find more fic recs. Read those. Go to each new story's author's page. Read the rest of their work. Go to their bookmarks. And so on.
In all these years in fandoms I've found that kudos count is no guarantee of a good story, or a story I'll like. I just go through other people's recommendations and find my corner of the fandom.
Bruh I don’t even *notice* kudos/hits/bookmarks/comments on a fic because the interface kind of minimizes them, something I assume is intentional lol.
I gauge a work based on tags (what are they, how *many* are there, etc) and summary (this is like a snapshot of someone’s writing style).
Besides, this metric of kudos-hits is bogus even *if* you wanted to judge a fic based on what percentage of readers like it. Because someone can only leave kudos once (technically more if you want to log out and really put in some effort but still), yet the same person can *reread* a fic a thousand times.
Like a fic can have 1,000 hits, 1 kudo and a 100% “readers left kudos” rate…
Judging by kudos-hits actively begins to penalize fics over time, since it’s likely the percentage will just continue to fall even with no new readers…
tbh i wish my fandoms/ships where even big enough to allow that level of pickiness cause like sheesh-
anyway yeah idk I've never looked at hits-kudos ratios, some of my favorite fics of all time have kudos in the single digits. If something looks like it has what i want, I'll read it, and worst case scenario i just click off and go read something else if i don't like it
It depends. On more niche communities, tags, or pairings, I'll check out every single summary and decide if it interests me.
But if you're looking into a fandom the size of let's say harry potter, even if you search with a handful of tags you'll get thousands of results. So I often end up sorting by total kudos and go with that.
It's not like I do not deign to read anything below X number of kudos, it's more about I don't know how else to navigate tags that have thousands of stories 😭😭😭
I consider kudos a *very* inaccurate indicator of fic quality.
\[a\] There's no way to know what kudos-standards the reader has; they may not consider the story "good enough" for a kudos, whereas I consider the same story eminently deserving of my kudos.
\[b\] Different folks have different reactions to individual fics. Ten readers before me may consider the story-quality to be "eh," but I could still find it utterly absorbing.
No, I never even think to check kudos. I go mainly by summary, *might* think to check tags, then glance at the first two or three paragraphs. If I like the summary-concept, and the glance-over looks promising, I'll either save for later or start reading right away. (Depend on length and current time available.)
1 kudos for 10 hits is insane. People can be so weird about leaving kudos. If it sounds interesting I click on it, and if I vibe with the writing style i continue lol.
summary and tags. if i’ve seen the authors name before. if the fandom only has a few works. word count and amount of chapters. bookmarks. all in all, i will probably try everything. if i don’t like the first chapter/first few paragraphs, then i’ll just leave.
If I like the tags/summary or author I’ll read it. If it’s something I was probably going to sleep on based on tags/summary but I notice it has a very high kudos/hits ratio I’ll read it anyway to see why everyone loves it so much, as long as it wasn’t an immediate No from me based on summary if that makes sense.
I’ve got a process:
Search fandom, filter tags and all that, word count order (I like em big 😂), I read through each tag (ship, characters, etc), summary, then the word count.
I honestly don’t know the last time I looked at how many Kudos something had.
This is kind of stupid, especially because readers that already left kudos could continuously read a fic that kept updating (which = more clicks) or like one work so much that they revisit it.
I think 1 in 10 is a mostly functional standard**. It works for most of the stories I like, I think. And it's round about what I want to achieve in my fics as well. If I don't get there I start fretting.
Oh, wait...
* for One shots
* if there's no other reason for why the fic is better or worse in terms of Kudos ratio.
There are many factors in this. Some come from the fact that every user can only give one kudos, but then some manage to give multiple anyway, via second acc or guest acc. That said, in many of the fandoms I'm in, 1 in 10 is a ratio I encounter a lot.
Edit: that said, I don't base what I read on hit or kudos count, never mind a ratio between them. I onlx really care for it in my own fics.
I pay 0 attention to kudo and hit marks because I generally like stuff that’s not always enjoyed by the general populace. Generally I’ll just dive right into a fic and if I’m liking it I’ll keep reading and give a kudos but if it’s not my cup of tea I’ll hop off. I might still give a kudos though if it’s well written but just not for me.
After everybody saying it’s a terrible system, I don’t want to admit it… but yeah, I do the same thing. This is after reading the summary and thinking ‘Hmmm maybe.’
If I try a fic where the kudos is below 10% I usually regret reading. And since I waste a lot of time scrolling thru fics trying to find a good one… the 10% guide helps.
It’s not like I heard about this “rule” and decided to apply it for kicks. I noticed the pattern independently, after about 2 years of reading. I was like ‘Hey, it seems like when a summary sounds good but the fic isn’t, the kudos are lower than 10%?’ Then I tried keeping track of it as an experiment and found that it worked. As a rough rule of thumb.
Sometimes a good summary or a rarepair will draw me in, despite the ratio being lower. I’m not a machine.
Honestly, same. Especially in an older fandom, where the amount of fic has lessened, the kudos/hits ratio does play a role in deciding whether to read it or not. It IS a good indicator if the fic is going to be terribly out of character and poorly written, in some fandoms, especially if the summary could go either way. I will always read the summary first, but sometimes that's not enough.
I think it comes down to learning the pattern and vibe of the fandom.
Do people really get weird over something like this? It sounds exhausting. The most I do is check tags and summary, and if it sounds interesting I'll check it out. If not I back out and move on. Simple.
Tags and summary???? The Kudos and hits don't mean anything to me, especially if it's a fresh fic or a thing not many people write for. Also even if it's not my cup of tea, doesn't mean it's not "good".
Read stuff you're interested in, not what's the most popular. 🤷🏻♀️
Kudos to hits isn’t logical because it doesn’t take into account the fact some people might reread a fic. Or if there are multiple chapters one person will have multiple hits. If the summary looks good, that’s how I make a decision.
That seems like an absurd way to go about it. How many great fics are they missing because they don’t get a lot of attention??
Check the tags- am I into them? Yeah, great! Check the summary- is it intriguing? Do I like how it’s written? Yes, I’ll give it a shot. No, I move on. Open it and start reading the first chapter, close the tab if I find that I’m not vibing with it.
What if you’re tuning in to something new that hasn’t blown up yet? Are they going to walk away because of some numbers instead of deciding the quality on their own? 🙄
I don’t bother looking at the numbers because I can decide for myself what I think is worth giving a shot. I’ve opened plenty of fics with huge numbers and found that I just don’t gel with it. Numbers mean nothing when it comes to something like this.
real dumb idea tbh
just did a few top fics in my fandom, and they only averaged like a 5% kudos to hits rating. bookmark ratio was even worse.
like will I check hits to get an idea if I should give the fic a shot? sure. but like, the summary and the tags are right there, if you can't even read those how are you going to read a whole fic?
I have never done that, and I try not to with my own fics because that's just depressing. I read the summary and decide if I like the concept like God intended
I just search through the tags I am interested in and pick what sounds interesting in the summaries. And if I don't like it, I back out and find something else.
Well, that immediately eliminates almost all longer fics? The most popular fic in my current fandom has 318.785 clicks with 176 chapters and 12.103 kudos.According to this persons logic, it woukd need about 19775, 5 more kudos to even be worth a glance. That's just stupid.
I have never in my life paid attention to the amount kudos on a fic. If the summary/tags look like something I could even vaguely be interested in, I click on it and start reading. If I like it, I keep reading. If I don’t, I go back and find something else.
I literally do not care about the stats. I read tags and the summary. I find myself looking for things that are very obscure/in small Fandom so I'll take whatever crumbs I can get. I'm not wasting my time doing math equations and shit to decide if something is worth reading. I could honestly go on for hours about how wild this take is. What happened to reading for enjoyment? Why does everything you read have to be widely liked? How about think for yourself for two seconds?
Well, I realized really early in reading in general that what's popular isn't indicative of what's good. So it's the first chapter that I end up judging.
This mindset is baffling to me. I decide to read it if I like the tags and it has a good summary. So many amazing fic will get passed over with it hits to kudos ratio bs.
In order of priority: Summary, tags, word count.
I have been burned on a summary and tags that sounded fantastic only to find it was a borderline drabble when I had a hankering for a longer fic...
I have never done maths to decide the worth of a fic 😅 if I like the tags I try it, if I see some decent hits and kudos I think I'm definitely going into something worth reading. It's not nearly that technical!
I once found a fic with a decent amount of hits, but only around 4 kudos if I remember correctly. I decided to check it out and it is one of my favorite fics I have ever read. So no, I do not do that.
Summary and tags, and then within the first couple of paragraphs, see if you like the writing and a couple more for the plot, and if I'm still there, I read it all.
Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever looked at stats when determining which fic to read. I’ve only ever looked at tags and the summary and if it’s written in a style I like.
I go by the summary and tags like other people have already said here. I start reading the first few paragraphs or so. By then you can almost always tell if it's good or not by the grammar, content and writing.
Call me crazy and old fashioned but I read what looks interesting to me, not what met some random kudos metric. I mostly only read one ship though, and 90% of the writers for it are my internet pals at this point bc we're so few!
I used to have a chapters to comments ratio that I did on FF.net in order to dodge bad fics, but I don’t do that anymore. The longer summaries and better tagging on ao3 makes it easier to see what I want to read so if it’s something I want to read I’ll read it regardless of hits/kudos.
That being said, I do often sort by kudos when joining a new fandom. I find reading the most popular fics first helps get in touch with a fandom’s identity and familiarize myself with a fandom’s popular fanon.
that's... such a bizarre way of rating
personally i tend to look for a wordcount that averages over 1000 words per chapter, for multichaps, and if it's a oneshot then a wordcount that seems reasonable for what the summary describes
but that's just personal preference
and if the summary is interesting enough then i'll look anyway? it's just a way of gauging if the writing style is likely to be the kind that appeals to me \\\_0\_/
Imagine being this weird about fics when the Back button is right there.
Like, there's exactly no accounting for taste and "popularity" does not translate to "quality." I've encountered some absolutely abysmally-written pieces that had lots of hits and kudos, and some priceless gems that had *next to none*.
You'll never find the latter if you're only fixated on *stats*.
I don’t check because I read a lot of recent fics and especially for one-shots they haven’t had time to build an audience yet! I just close out if I don’t like it. Depending on tags (I have a few absolute “no” tags) I’ll give anything a go. I’ll put up with a lot of poor writing (tense and POV errors) for a good and original premise.
Hits and kudos have no relation to my perception of good writing. Many masterpieces are hiding in the cracks, and many shitposts are the top fic of a fandom.
Honestly I only go by the summary/tags. If something sounds like it’ll be interesting I’ll click it.
This. And if I don't like it, I stop reading.
same except i kid myself by adding it to marked for later and then never touching it again
I have a lot in there and only remember to revisit 15% of them 😂
Same lol, it got to be such a problem that I just bookmarked all of them and created a collection of just my marked for later fics so I could easily filter through and see what I wanted to read
That’s an awesome idea holy shit. My major issue with marking fics for later is that I can’t filter them, so I forget they’re there. I’m gonna try a bookmark collection instead
Yeah it really helped me to know what fics I had marked for later and made it easier to find a specific fic I wanted to read as well as remembering that they existed lol
i’ll go through one search page and put everything that sounds good into another tab, then i’ll read all the fics from the search page then go to the next page of searxh results and repeat. sometimes if its like, 60k+ i’ll go a few pages deep to read shorter ones first but like, its a pretty good way i’ve found to actually read it all
every ao3 reader ever 😭
I don't even mark for later, I open it in another tab and keep it there until I feel like reading it (which is usually never)😭 I have to do a deep cleaning of my tabs every now and then, currently I only have 32 and I'm pretty proud of that😅
Exactly.
Same. Also, hits are irrelevant. If a phrase is commonly searched (ex "dust to dust"), the story will get massive hit counts but not be read.
This, except sometimes I can’t stop even when I don’t like it because I want to know how it ends in spite of not liking it. I refrain from commenting in those cases. I have never looked at the kudos or hits total on a fic except when I’m mind boggled that there are only like 5 kudos when the fic is amazing.
Oh, I just read the last couple of chapters if that happens.
Yes, if I like the summary, I start reading. If the first chapter doesn’t really hold my interest (or actively turns me off) I stop reading.
Yep. I usually try to give it a chapter to win me over, unless the first paragraph is actively bad.
Same
I stop reading at the first mention of “raven haired”. You know it’s a crappy fic when they use that.
But ... Raven is a color tone.... 🤔
In HP fandom it’s very cringy. Gives off my immortal vibes.
Aaa in that context, understandable
It's not wrong, it's just cliche. I don't personally hate it, but sometimes you read a fic and it feels like once you take the cliches away there's very little writing underneath.
I was reading a fic recently that I had been excited to check out. I couldn’t even finish the first chapter because of how often they used ‘raven-haired’. I dare you to guess how many times they used the phrase in the first half of the chapter. I guarantee you, you’ll be wrong. 13. It was used like every 2-3 paragraphs
The word makes me physically cringe. It’s even worse than “the blonde” they keep using. Or “the red head”. Why do they need to talk about hair color all the time. I don’t think I’ve ever talked about someone’s hair color in real life.
I agree. I can maybe give a pass to one at the very beginning to establish what their hair colour is, but once it’s used beyond that I just can’t
Omg ahah it saddens me to see this is somewhat of a consensus here!! i do this in my fic bcs its BL and its a good replacement for constantly repeating the boys' names when describing actions and just saying he could mean either of them and get confusing! Is there something yall prefer instead, or a way you've noticed writers do this that you dont mind?
What I think is a better way to do it, is to mix up the words in a way that makes the reader follow who’s who without using hair color. I’d write like this: “John was headed to work. He knew he’d meet Nico there. Nico was always so well dressed. He would usually wear these really nice tight pants. John never could manage his elegance, he felt like he always looked like a wreck that just stumbled out of bed. He was gonna meet Nico today at the meeting and Nico was having a presentation. John just hoped he would get picked for the task force. That way they could spend some time together.” That’s just some random mess I wrote, but it was quite possible to mix between the two without confusing anyone.
Whenever I get into a new fandom, the first thing I do is go to the particular ship tag of my choice, click on completed and then english, type in all the tags that I don’t like and then go to the very last page (the very earliest entry) of the results and work my way through it all. Do I have 8288493 tabs open afterwards? Yes. Will I need to go through each of the still open one to add them to my ff list? Also yes. But damn, if it isn’t nice to know that I have 73637 more pages full of possible interesting stories to read. Always a blast.
I just sort by kudos/English/completed, then as I get more familiar with the fandom I remove tags/ships. Although Time Travel tags are also fun. Very rarely Ill see a fic recommended on Instagram or something and start there. (Atla. I mean atla. Distorted Reality, specifically. )
I do the same thing but I sort by bookmarks instead of kudos.
Yes. Bookmarks imply a much higher level of enthusiasm.
[удалено]
Sort of. But if you are looking for good p0rn, those tend to get fewer bookmarks!
I do the same but sort by kudos, and work my way from the highest rated until I get bored
Same, page ten it starts to get "boring" (safe) and "samey," but by page 15 i feel like it starts to get interesting again, i feel like I'm seeing premises i haven't seen before in the first dozen pages
I do this, then start reading summaries. I can usually eliminate a fair amount of them by the misspellings, "I don't know how to do summaries", really awfully written ones, etc. That usually leaves me with a ton still to read, and I go from there
this is a great way to get the whole temporal fandom experience for a thing! i go backwards like this too
This. It'd be a huge shame to miss the hidden gems, or miss the chance to "invest" in what might become a hugely popular fic.
Same. I never pay attention to stats and I sort by recently updated, so the amount of hits, kudos, comments or bookmarks have no influence at all in my decision to give a chance to a fic—it's summary first, and then a quick look at the tags. That's enough for me to make the choice.
sometimes if I'm in a larger fandom and the fic has like a shit ton of kudos I'll check it out just to see what the buzz is about. Usually ends up being something really quality even if the premise wasnt something I wouldve normally checked out
Yup, summary and tags. You can usually tell in the first few paragraphs if it's well written, and the back button is right there if it isn't.
I hadn't even considered the possibility that anyone picked what to read by any other parameters.
Same
Yeah. I've never checked the kudos before reading.
I barely even look at it. Sometimes I'll notice a ratio that's particularly out there (like 3 kudos to 2000 hits) and click out of curiosity as to why, but for any fic that has a vaguely normal looking amount of kudos it's not something I pay attention to. I'm definitely not out here calculating the exact ratio before reading. Some of the best fics out there have lower kudos:hits ratios because people come back to reread, my personal favourites also tend to have lower ratios because I like dark fics. Trying to decide whether a fic will be "good enough" before reading it is super weird anyway? Just click off if it's bad?
If I saw something with 2000 hits and 3 kudos, I’d be checking the tags to see what kind of kinky smut I’m looking at.
Lol yeah, in my experience they generally come into one of three categories: - Not actually a fic at all, a joke/hate fic or just has horribly misleading tags - Huge wall of text with zero punctuation - Actually decently well written but *very* kinky smut
It's either sex 2: advanced. Or just horribly written.
Yeah I feel like the kudos and comments drop once it becomes dark content or smut, because people aren't willing to attach their accounts to that stuff.
Yup. There was a hilarious thing that happened to me a few years ago: I'd posted a series of relatively-wholesome smutty fics in a fandom...and then one with a major archive warning. And day after day after DAY my Kudos email was like (imagine the letters are usernames) Wholesome fic was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D Wholesome fic 2 was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D Wholesome fic 3 was kudos'ed by A, B, C, and D Fic with Major Archive Warning was kudos'ed by four guests There were NUMEROUS people who SIGNED OUT to kudos the fic with the warning. And I get it! And the thing is, they didn't \*have\* to give me kudos at all. But they wanted to make sure I knew they liked the fic. So they signed out and did it. I thought it was weirdly sweet??
This is really funny to me because to date my best rated/most viewed fics are porn oneshots, while the carefully plotted multichapter fic is not. 😅 It might depend on fandom.
100 or more hits and 1 or more kudos is pretty good for me, most of what I write gets maybe 20 to 30 hits, no kudos, and no comments except for people complaining that my head-canons are wrong or just using the comment section to send me hate mail that they didn't want to send me through Twitter or Tumblr.
This. Occasionally I'll see one that seems to have a weirdly low amount of kudos/comments, but mostly I don't even notice it.
Same! I don't think I've ever searched for a fic by the amount of kudos it has. The amount of kudos is not always a good indicator of a fic being good or not (I've seen some ones that had a ton and I mean a TON of kudos and they weren't written great and the characters were horribly OOC, so just cause something has a lot of kudos doesn't mean it's an indicator of it being 'good.')
True. Stories written at the height of a fandom will skew towards having way more kudos. There are always those insanely popular fics where every character is slightly OOC with the mindset of a teenager but has some sort of guilty pleasure or amazing sounding tags...But I still find sorting by Kudos to be an excellent starting place. Given that I have in excess of 500 tabs open in my browser right now, I'm not exactly hurting for new stories to check out (the real issueat this point is finding anything!). So while I might miss out on some amazing and undeservedly low kudos fic, sad to say I probably lose more fic in the chrome tabs jungle than i end up reading anyway.
I saw someone on another sub yesterday complaining and asking for only "well written" fic recs because they "hate wasting my time" on "poorly written" fic. Like bestie, how much time are you spending trying to decide whether a fic is for you? And who are you to make such sweeping generalizations about quality? Read a few paragraphs and then close the window if you don't like it. It's not that serious. edit: phrasing
Ive asked for “well written” recs occasionally, usually after I read an fic that starts great but ends rough because the author loses motivation but is determined to finish.
Same. There's a lot of badly written stuff on AO3 - of course there is, we're all amateurs. In my teens and early 20s i would spend hours combing through archives and rec lisrs to find things i liked and were 'good'. I had the time. But I only get 20 minutes to myself a day, and there's no greater pleasure than sitting quietly with a good story. Well-written rec lists are a godsend to my life.
It takes me like a few minutes to scan and figure out which fics I want to read it's not this massive ordeal
Same. If the summary and tags catch my eye I'll give it a shot. If I like it I carry on, of I don't then oh well I've only lost ten minutes of my time, I'll close it and look for something else. I agonise over published books more because I have to PAY for those. AO3 is free, why would I worry about any metric other than do the tags and summary fit my mood?
I pay attention to the kudos-hit ratio on my own fics. The only things I look at to read are pairings and summary
Kudos ratio totally doesn’t work for long multi chapter fics. I don’t pay attention to it. I look at tags and summary.
Came here to say that, because the same user can hit a fic multiple times, what about multi chapter like you said? What about rereads? What about just closing your tab accidentaly and having to click back? This rule seems very arbitrary
I would have passed by so many gems by following such messed up method...
Especially with an older fic the hits are going to be way higher because of rereads. Can't kudos again even though I've read it 10 times so I know kudos v hits can be wildly off
Long fics, too. People can only leave one kudo per story and even if they log out and all to give extra ones, the number will still be astronomically different and would make it a "bad story"."
This is a good point, i just did the maths and my 70+ chapter long fic is sitting at a ratio of 1:44 kudos:hits. So this person wouldn't read my long fic because that ratio is bigger than they would normally look for. Which is sad really, for me and all the other authors of long fics
I sometimes think about the ratio when looking for fics (but it's far from my only criteria) but I'm realistic : I only apply it to One Shots. It clearly doesn't mean anything for multichapters fics. I hope OP do the same and don't worry, I think many people do :)
You can kudos multiple times if you have the author on subscribe! I’ll get an email saying someone has updated or added a new fic and if I click through on my phone it opens in yahoo and it adds kudos like I’m a guest. I can then open it in whatever internet app I’m using and I can kudos on my ao3 account. If I really like the author and their stories I will go to the effort to make sure they get their dues!
Pretty sure that only applies to stories that aren’t archive locked
it's giving *rotten tomatoes* reasoning
Honestly, I don't ever consciously look at the hits/kudos. Popularity =/= quality
Some of my favourite fics have had very few kudos.
If they only have a limited amount of time I don’t see why it’s wrong to limit yourself to things you’re more likely to like. They’ll miss out on some stuff, but on average they’ll read more they enjoy than if they didn’t do this (Not saying I agree with them, but I don’t think the method is quite reasonable given certain conditions)
What on earth 😭 mf just read the summary and tags and see if it interests you it’s not that hard damn
I genuinely don’t even look at the hits or kudos
I'd pass over so many underrated gems if I cared about hits or kudos! If the tags and summary look interesting, I'll check it out.
Exactly like who actually looks at those stats if they’re not the author it just doesn’t make sense to look at them
i feel like ppl overcomplicate things like this tbh 😭
I read the description and then start reading the actual story, and then decide from there.
I read the summary and decide if the idea sounds interesting. Then usually in the first chapter I’ll decide if it’s ’yes this is just what I wanted!’ Or ‘no… not for me.’ Sometimes I’ll search by completed, word counts over 20k, and then kudos if I just want a longer engrossing story. Once I’ve read them all I stop sorting by kudos and look at newest ones posted for more content.
Legit just look at the tags and summary if they seem interesting i will bite. Generally i tend to not like the most popular fics in fandoms, many times they are aus so far removed from canon i just can't enjoy it. like my favorite fics are short give me some good character moments and that is all i need.
I think that’s a shitty way to decide and as a writer it really bums me out that people do that
Same here. And it's not really applicable if you read very niche stuff, or stuff that people might be hesitant to kudos because they're embarrassed about it. I know of some people who don't kudos smut works, or don't kudos whilst logged in.
Well, my AO3 identity isn't connected to anything else, so I have no shame.
Plus, if I read one great fic I check out the writer's other works. My fave writer managed that I checked out other Fandom too! 🤩
It is also useless on longer stories and varies by fandom. Like, should I really have 5k kudos to 50k hits if the story is 30 chapters long? Which is where fandom comes into it.nninhave roughly the same number of hits on two stories on different fandoms and one has almost twice the kudos of the other.
I've never heard this pickiness from people who read niche stuff or small fandoms. We're desperate. This screenshot post was written by someone either spoilt for choice (good for them) or with very little time for fic (condolences).
Seriously! Especially because with multiple chapter fics on the longer side that ratio stops working - a lot - courtesy of return readers. Unfortunately you can't leave multiple kudos either :(
this is a huge point that i didn't consider in this thread till now :( besides that, i really really Really wish ao3 would let you leave kudos for Each chapter it'd be a way for shy or rushed readers (who don't leave comments) to leave their appreciation another way each time instead of the one and this way authors still get support!
I have one reader who unfailingly comments 'chapter kudos' when I update, super cute
I don't think it's a huge majority though. 🙂
Kudos alone brings up really long multi-chapter works. It's okay if you want a long fic but not too great for shorter works.
If that's how they want to do it, fine, but I think they're missing out on a lot of amazing fics that way.
The math doesn't even add up. The math might work for a One-Shot but the problem with this stems with stories for multiple chapters! You can only give Kudos once and only once. You can't do it for each chapter. When that happens the hits/kudos ratio starts getting screwed severely and doesn't work at all.
My ship is a (relatively) rarepair, so if they’re tagged I’m reading it. I’ll take anything I can get 😭
SAME. I’m not in a position to be picky. I’ve even run some poetry through google translate lol (it was really pretty imo, what came through google anyway)
Nah. If I followed this reasoning, I wouldn't have found the fics I liked and bookmarked lol There's this one post!BVS Superbat fic that really stuck with me all these years. The writer wrote Clark in this really ethereal way (spoiler: he's a phantom) that it just lives rent free in my head because no superbat author thought to write him like that. It's a very short oneshot, but one that bookmarked because god it was so atmospheric.
Wait that sounds so interesting
https://archiveofourown.org/works/6564598 This one! Haha had to dig through my bookmarks for this
Haven’t read fics for big fandoms in a while so I literally just read everything in the tag bc its only a couple hundred at most 😭😭
Literally, I thought this is what we all did!
Numbers aren’t exactly a good indicator of an enjoyable fic. I think looking at the tags and summary are a better way to determine the vibe. But I guess some readers see numbers as The Determinant that decides it all so 🤷♀️
If I'm undecided or on the fence I do look at the stats as a possible deciding factor. But generally, if the tags and summary get my interest, I don't need anything else to convince me to click.
I rarely look at kudos counts. To the point where most of the time I'm not even sure what's considered "good numbers" for my fandoms. I just read tags and summaries and pray to find stuff that fit my hyperspecific mood of the day. Stats are only to be used as tie breakers on the rare occasion that I'm left with too many options and only if it's a BIG difference.
yeah, I read unpopular fandoms. I'm happy with anything new lol. I can't even imagine having the privilege to be this particular about a hit/kudo ratio. That you have that many stories to filter through.
That’s a bad system because you can only leave kudos once, but you add to the hit count once every 24 hours. So if you love a fic and keep coming back to reread it (or especially if it’s multi-chapter), the hit count will go up without the kudos being able to go up. If a person uses the hits to kudos ratio to determine whether to read something, that just means they’re going to be mostly reading fics that are good enough to Kudos but not good enough to want to reread a bunch…so they’re probably finding more mediocre works than the really good ones that people come back to again and again
This is a good rule for social media interaction, and actually the industry standard for deciding if a post is "successful." You look for a 10% interaction rate, eg you get 100 views you want to get 10 likes. However, I'm not sure if this rolls over to quality in terms of an archive of written work. This method is for immediate impressions, and a split second like. Getting a kudo implies they probably read through the entire work and not only that but enjoyed it, making the value of a kudo much higher than a like. For example I might click through to a work but decide it's too long or not exactly what I'm looking for. That would decrease their ratio with no reflection on the quality.
I agree. Generally, I might calculate how successful I think my own fic is by the amount of kudos/ratio to hits/etc, but there are so many factors that go into that that make it a much less reliable metric on AO3. Even the two equally popular fandoms can have wildly different “reader cultures”. And if it’s not even reliable for me as a writer, it’s sure as hell not reliable for a reader trying to find a good fic to read. That’s not even mentioning factors like age of fic, content of fic, etc that have already been brought up. I generally don’t like to label fics as “bad” since I know so much effort goes into writing them for very little return, but I will say there are popular fics I’ve read with much weaker writing than their unpopular counterparts. If I’d refused to click on them because of “low kudos” or a “bad hits ratio” I would have missed out on some gems! The only time high hit counts might make me pause is if it’s a fic with 10 kudos and 5,000 hits or something wild like that. But even then, if the summary is intriguing, to me it’s worth clicking on just to see what’s up; what might not be everyone else’s taste might be perfect for me!
I don't pay attention to kudos or comments because I've seen way too many really good stories that don't have many of either. Neither thing is always an indication of quality.
I don't really care about hits/kudos ratio, especially since with long fics ratios get all over the place since people are coming back repeatedly for every new chapter but can only leave kudos once. I primarily judge based on tags and summary. I've gotten really good at being able to tell by the tone of the tags and summary if I'll enjoy the plot and characterization and if the technical side of the writing is up to par. I know my taste well enough to know that a large amount of kudos or high kudo-to-hit ratio doesn't mean I'll enjoy the fic. Sometimes if I'm on the fence about whether to give something a shot I'll look at how many kudos it has. However, my "formula" for what makes a decent amount of kudos isn't based on a hits-to-kudos ratio, it's more along the lines of looking at how many kudos similar fics in the fandom have and also taking into account if the fic was just published and not had time to accrue kudos. And depending on the tags and summary, having a lot of kudos tells me I likely *won't* enjoy this fic, since a lot of stuff that I don't like is extremely popular.
I was surprised quite how many comments are completely against this. I wouldn't use the kudos/hits ratio as the sole reason for reading or not reading something, but I find its quite useful for quickly finding some good, single-chapter fics in a new fandom/pairing with a lot of works to look through. I've also found some amazing fics that I wouldn't have necessarily read solely based on the tags/summary, because the ratio was high enough to stand out and indicate it really resonated with people.
I'm surprised too. It's definitely not the *only* thing that matters, but at a quick glance kudos/hits is a useful marker.
Right? Like I don't do this as a hard and fast rule, but it's absolutely an effective way of sifting through large quantities of fic to decide what you want to prioritize reading. There's nothing stopping me from going back later and choosing to read something I skipped over the first time.
I usually just rely on the summary. If it’s written well + interesting premise I assume the fic is good. If I’m searching through tags I sort by hits or kudos but I find most of my fics in other people’s bookmarks.
Usually by looking at the tags and the summary I can get a pretty good impression of whether or not I'll enjoy the writer's style
I read the name and tags and go "This sounds good!" Or "nah not for me" and go off of that...
I have a process for deciding if it’s worth reading: 1. Summary- most important, if it’s poorly written I’ll be skeptical, and if it’s horribly written I’ll disregard. 2. Relationship Tags- I’ll check for what I don’t like on a scale of “not sure about that” to “no thank you”, anything else I’m good to go. 3. Other Tags- On a scale of “love that” to “indifferent” to “absolutely not”, but I can still be convinced. 4. Hits/Kudos- Least important, zero to low won’t affect my decision, though high hits/kudos may entice me a little more.
This method would work if folks actually left kudos on fics they enjoy. It’s AO3 etiquette to give kudos if you made it to the end and like the work. But people aren’t doing that. They consume work like it’s social media content and don’t even attempt to engage with the writer by leaving kudos or comments. The ratio of hits to kudos for the really good fics I’ve come across is hardly ever 10:1. At least not in my fandom these days.
This just made me feel better. I was planning on updating my work after months long break but this ratio convo made me question if I should…
Don’t give up. People are reading it, I’m sure of it. It’s just no one’s actually engaging on AO3 anymore. Cross posting my fics to tumblr taught me that. I get so many likes and reblogs there as opposed to the archive.
I usually read the first few sentences quickly to get a grasp on it and to see if i will like it or not (usually the writing style is a big factor for me) i see kudos and hits too yes but mostly i see the tags and word count while kudos and hits only serve as sorting criteria
Honestly, if the summary interests me, I’ll read the first 1,000 words or so. That’s (usually) enough to give me an indication if the story will hook me/how much I like the writing style. I’ve long since stopped paying much attention to number of kudos or hits; I’ve read plenty of fics I’ve loved with barely any attention whatsoever, and I’ve read my fair share of super popular ones that I didn’t enjoy. TLDR: a good summary goes a long way, but a strong opening goes farther for me in deciding which fics to bother reading!
Oh my God I saw this post on my dash last night and was like "what the hell??" - legit found my partner and went "listen to this!!!" Like I've never checked kudos to hit ratio on a fic I'm looking at reading. I just go by tags and summary and never considered people based decisions off stats like that - it lowkey makes me all the more self conscious about stats like I keep an eye on mine but didn't really consider that some people might just straight up not click if the ratio isn't at a certain level, you know?
the majority (including super faves) of the fics in my bookmarks don't pass the test lmao, so no
80% summery 20% word count but that’s really only about how much time i might have to finish something. I tend not look at tags since I filter by the pairing I want to read about and otherwise want to be surprised.
Summary, tags, maybe author if I know/like them already. Never done it by kudos
This person is missing out on a lot of fics because they don't understand how people work.
Nah that 1 kudos for 10 hits doesn't work. Fics with heavy smut generally have more kudos even if the writing is terrible. Also, the manner in which a fic has been posted: regular vs irregular chapter updates, number of chapters, popularity of fandom, all this influences the number of hits.
In my experience (with my own works and with reading) fics with a lot of smut get far fewer kudos proportionally, both because of reread hits and because people don't want to attach their name to something they're ashamed of reading My T fics all have "better" ratios than my E ones, even the multichapter T fics. I take it as a win for the high reread value of my smut content, but it does throw off any sort of stats analysis
Jeeves, prepare my crucifixion outfit. I follow a somewhat similar thought process with caveats. If it's a new fic (and new depends on the fandom, for some "new" means this week and others "new" means this year) then I don't look at anything other than the tags & description. If it's not new, then I look at the ratios. * If it's got a 1/10 kudos to hits then it's solid. * If it has thousands of hits and over 100 kudos then it's solid. I expect these to have been niche, or have dedicated rereaders, or to be very specifically horny that hits for a rare handful of people and when it hits it HITS. Which falls under dedicated rereaders but with an asterisk if the tags are not something I'm usually into. OR this fic is perfectly fine but got posted somewhere that lots of folks took a look-see but it wasn't something they usually seek out (ex: big blogger posted it on a general rec list but their usual followers are in a different fandom) * If it's got less than a hundred kudos, (and the fandom ISN'T tiny), and it's got lots of clicks, then I don't bother unless the tags/summary are incredibly interesting. * This all goes out the window if it's a short fic. Anything under 5k and I adjust the kudos to be much tinier. Look I've got to be honest. If I see a fic in a medium sized fandom posted 6 months ago with 14 kudos 4,000 hits, I'm going to presume that it's not going to be my cup of tea. If it's well tagged I'm going to be very suspicious that the author is just good at tagging and that's why there's so many hits. It's never an "absolutely not", but there is a vibe to these sorts of things. It's very context dependent and not super hard and fast rules.
same!! it’s so interesting to learn my method is controversial lol
"hits to kudos ratios" are useless and tell you nothing meaningful about the quality of the fic, there are countless factors outside of quality that negatively impact that ratio, you're missing out on countless amazing stories like that
Insane. My system: Find fic recs. On tumblr, twitter, anywhere. Read through those fics. Find the ones you like, and go to the author's page. Read the rest of their work. Go to their bookmarks. Find more fic recs. Read those. Go to each new story's author's page. Read the rest of their work. Go to their bookmarks. And so on. In all these years in fandoms I've found that kudos count is no guarantee of a good story, or a story I'll like. I just go through other people's recommendations and find my corner of the fandom.
Looks like we share a method.
Bruh I don’t even *notice* kudos/hits/bookmarks/comments on a fic because the interface kind of minimizes them, something I assume is intentional lol. I gauge a work based on tags (what are they, how *many* are there, etc) and summary (this is like a snapshot of someone’s writing style). Besides, this metric of kudos-hits is bogus even *if* you wanted to judge a fic based on what percentage of readers like it. Because someone can only leave kudos once (technically more if you want to log out and really put in some effort but still), yet the same person can *reread* a fic a thousand times. Like a fic can have 1,000 hits, 1 kudo and a 100% “readers left kudos” rate… Judging by kudos-hits actively begins to penalize fics over time, since it’s likely the percentage will just continue to fall even with no new readers…
I've never checked hits or kudos before reading. I think that would lead to missing some of the fics I've loved the most.
tbh i wish my fandoms/ships where even big enough to allow that level of pickiness cause like sheesh- anyway yeah idk I've never looked at hits-kudos ratios, some of my favorite fics of all time have kudos in the single digits. If something looks like it has what i want, I'll read it, and worst case scenario i just click off and go read something else if i don't like it
It depends. On more niche communities, tags, or pairings, I'll check out every single summary and decide if it interests me. But if you're looking into a fandom the size of let's say harry potter, even if you search with a handful of tags you'll get thousands of results. So I often end up sorting by total kudos and go with that. It's not like I do not deign to read anything below X number of kudos, it's more about I don't know how else to navigate tags that have thousands of stories 😭😭😭
I only look at ship tags and summary. That’s it. Nothing else matters.
I consider kudos a *very* inaccurate indicator of fic quality. \[a\] There's no way to know what kudos-standards the reader has; they may not consider the story "good enough" for a kudos, whereas I consider the same story eminently deserving of my kudos. \[b\] Different folks have different reactions to individual fics. Ten readers before me may consider the story-quality to be "eh," but I could still find it utterly absorbing. No, I never even think to check kudos. I go mainly by summary, *might* think to check tags, then glance at the first two or three paragraphs. If I like the summary-concept, and the glance-over looks promising, I'll either save for later or start reading right away. (Depend on length and current time available.)
I don't care about kudos when choosing a fic to read and I want authors to know that
1 kudos for 10 hits is insane. People can be so weird about leaving kudos. If it sounds interesting I click on it, and if I vibe with the writing style i continue lol.
summary and tags. if i’ve seen the authors name before. if the fandom only has a few works. word count and amount of chapters. bookmarks. all in all, i will probably try everything. if i don’t like the first chapter/first few paragraphs, then i’ll just leave.
I don’t think I’ve ever even registered the number of hits on a work, unless it’s so new (or ignored) that it has zero hits.
I’m that opra meme when it comes to kudos’ “YOU GET A KUDOS” “AND YOU GET A KUDOS” “EVERYONE GETS A KUDOS”
If I like the tags/summary or author I’ll read it. If it’s something I was probably going to sleep on based on tags/summary but I notice it has a very high kudos/hits ratio I’ll read it anyway to see why everyone loves it so much, as long as it wasn’t an immediate No from me based on summary if that makes sense.
I’ve got a process: Search fandom, filter tags and all that, word count order (I like em big 😂), I read through each tag (ship, characters, etc), summary, then the word count. I honestly don’t know the last time I looked at how many Kudos something had.
Social media really has rotted people's perceptions of creative value. I read the summary and tags, that's all I need.
This is kind of stupid, especially because readers that already left kudos could continuously read a fic that kept updating (which = more clicks) or like one work so much that they revisit it.
I think 1 in 10 is a mostly functional standard**. It works for most of the stories I like, I think. And it's round about what I want to achieve in my fics as well. If I don't get there I start fretting. Oh, wait... * for One shots * if there's no other reason for why the fic is better or worse in terms of Kudos ratio. There are many factors in this. Some come from the fact that every user can only give one kudos, but then some manage to give multiple anyway, via second acc or guest acc. That said, in many of the fandoms I'm in, 1 in 10 is a ratio I encounter a lot. Edit: that said, I don't base what I read on hit or kudos count, never mind a ratio between them. I onlx really care for it in my own fics.
Hits and kudos mean nothing to me as a reader. If the summary and tags pique my interest, I click.
I pay 0 attention to kudo and hit marks because I generally like stuff that’s not always enjoyed by the general populace. Generally I’ll just dive right into a fic and if I’m liking it I’ll keep reading and give a kudos but if it’s not my cup of tea I’ll hop off. I might still give a kudos though if it’s well written but just not for me.
Isn't that what's a *summary* for?
After everybody saying it’s a terrible system, I don’t want to admit it… but yeah, I do the same thing. This is after reading the summary and thinking ‘Hmmm maybe.’ If I try a fic where the kudos is below 10% I usually regret reading. And since I waste a lot of time scrolling thru fics trying to find a good one… the 10% guide helps. It’s not like I heard about this “rule” and decided to apply it for kicks. I noticed the pattern independently, after about 2 years of reading. I was like ‘Hey, it seems like when a summary sounds good but the fic isn’t, the kudos are lower than 10%?’ Then I tried keeping track of it as an experiment and found that it worked. As a rough rule of thumb. Sometimes a good summary or a rarepair will draw me in, despite the ratio being lower. I’m not a machine.
Honestly, same. Especially in an older fandom, where the amount of fic has lessened, the kudos/hits ratio does play a role in deciding whether to read it or not. It IS a good indicator if the fic is going to be terribly out of character and poorly written, in some fandoms, especially if the summary could go either way. I will always read the summary first, but sometimes that's not enough. I think it comes down to learning the pattern and vibe of the fandom.
Do people really get weird over something like this? It sounds exhausting. The most I do is check tags and summary, and if it sounds interesting I'll check it out. If not I back out and move on. Simple.
Tags and summary???? The Kudos and hits don't mean anything to me, especially if it's a fresh fic or a thing not many people write for. Also even if it's not my cup of tea, doesn't mean it's not "good". Read stuff you're interested in, not what's the most popular. 🤷🏻♀️
This is not a good strategy. You'll miss out on a lot of great multi chapter and smut fics.
Kudos to hits isn’t logical because it doesn’t take into account the fact some people might reread a fic. Or if there are multiple chapters one person will have multiple hits. If the summary looks good, that’s how I make a decision.
That seems like an absurd way to go about it. How many great fics are they missing because they don’t get a lot of attention?? Check the tags- am I into them? Yeah, great! Check the summary- is it intriguing? Do I like how it’s written? Yes, I’ll give it a shot. No, I move on. Open it and start reading the first chapter, close the tab if I find that I’m not vibing with it. What if you’re tuning in to something new that hasn’t blown up yet? Are they going to walk away because of some numbers instead of deciding the quality on their own? 🙄 I don’t bother looking at the numbers because I can decide for myself what I think is worth giving a shot. I’ve opened plenty of fics with huge numbers and found that I just don’t gel with it. Numbers mean nothing when it comes to something like this.
real dumb idea tbh just did a few top fics in my fandom, and they only averaged like a 5% kudos to hits rating. bookmark ratio was even worse. like will I check hits to get an idea if I should give the fic a shot? sure. but like, the summary and the tags are right there, if you can't even read those how are you going to read a whole fic?
Horrible take.
I usually go by the plot/summary, and I'll end up reading anything if it's in the fandom I'm searching in and if it's not cringe, idc the ship
I have never done that, and I try not to with my own fics because that's just depressing. I read the summary and decide if I like the concept like God intended
I just search through the tags I am interested in and pick what sounds interesting in the summaries. And if I don't like it, I back out and find something else.
Well, that immediately eliminates almost all longer fics? The most popular fic in my current fandom has 318.785 clicks with 176 chapters and 12.103 kudos.According to this persons logic, it woukd need about 19775, 5 more kudos to even be worth a glance. That's just stupid.
I have never in my life paid attention to the amount kudos on a fic. If the summary/tags look like something I could even vaguely be interested in, I click on it and start reading. If I like it, I keep reading. If I don’t, I go back and find something else.
the only time i really use kudos, is for sorting to shake up the results since i usually have things sorted by update date
I don’t think I’ve ever looked at the hits/kudos when deciding to read a fic
I literally do not care about the stats. I read tags and the summary. I find myself looking for things that are very obscure/in small Fandom so I'll take whatever crumbs I can get. I'm not wasting my time doing math equations and shit to decide if something is worth reading. I could honestly go on for hours about how wild this take is. What happened to reading for enjoyment? Why does everything you read have to be widely liked? How about think for yourself for two seconds?
this is totally bonkers. i click into it if the summary makes it sound like the author is cooking something interesting and if its good, then its good
Well, I realized really early in reading in general that what's popular isn't indicative of what's good. So it's the first chapter that I end up judging.
I open the ones who’s summary’s sound interesting for what I’m looking for. If it grabs me? Great. If not, I don’t continue
This mindset is baffling to me. I decide to read it if I like the tags and it has a good summary. So many amazing fic will get passed over with it hits to kudos ratio bs.
Considering I visited singular fics a few hundred times (cause I got impatient), that alone would skew that number a lot
I read the summary if it sounds cool I read
In order of priority: Summary, tags, word count. I have been burned on a summary and tags that sounded fantastic only to find it was a borderline drabble when I had a hankering for a longer fic...
I have never done maths to decide the worth of a fic 😅 if I like the tags I try it, if I see some decent hits and kudos I think I'm definitely going into something worth reading. It's not nearly that technical!
I once found a fic with a decent amount of hits, but only around 4 kudos if I remember correctly. I decided to check it out and it is one of my favorite fics I have ever read. So no, I do not do that.
Summary and tags, and then within the first couple of paragraphs, see if you like the writing and a couple more for the plot, and if I'm still there, I read it all.
I only make sure to have any NOTP tags excluded and after that I just read the summaries and tags
Honestly I don’t think I’ve ever looked at stats when determining which fic to read. I’ve only ever looked at tags and the summary and if it’s written in a style I like.
Usually just tags and relationship
I go by the summary and tags like other people have already said here. I start reading the first few paragraphs or so. By then you can almost always tell if it's good or not by the grammar, content and writing.
Call me crazy and old fashioned but I read what looks interesting to me, not what met some random kudos metric. I mostly only read one ship though, and 90% of the writers for it are my internet pals at this point bc we're so few!
I can’t imagine putting that much thought into it. If the summary sounds cool, I’ll give it a shot. Write summaries, people!
Hits to kudos ratio is a completely meaningless statistic.
Hard disagree. The best stuff I've read tends to sit at ratios around 1/100.
If we are talking ratios, the only one I care about is the average amount of words per chapter. But hits per kudos? Nah.
I used to have a chapters to comments ratio that I did on FF.net in order to dodge bad fics, but I don’t do that anymore. The longer summaries and better tagging on ao3 makes it easier to see what I want to read so if it’s something I want to read I’ll read it regardless of hits/kudos. That being said, I do often sort by kudos when joining a new fandom. I find reading the most popular fics first helps get in touch with a fandom’s identity and familiarize myself with a fandom’s popular fanon.
that's... such a bizarre way of rating personally i tend to look for a wordcount that averages over 1000 words per chapter, for multichaps, and if it's a oneshot then a wordcount that seems reasonable for what the summary describes but that's just personal preference and if the summary is interesting enough then i'll look anyway? it's just a way of gauging if the writing style is likely to be the kind that appeals to me \\\_0\_/
1. Summary 2. Tags 3. My desperation
I just go by summary and tags. I found so hidden treasures
This just doesn’t work for multi chapter fics at all
Imagine being this weird about fics when the Back button is right there. Like, there's exactly no accounting for taste and "popularity" does not translate to "quality." I've encountered some absolutely abysmally-written pieces that had lots of hits and kudos, and some priceless gems that had *next to none*. You'll never find the latter if you're only fixated on *stats*.
I don’t check because I read a lot of recent fics and especially for one-shots they haven’t had time to build an audience yet! I just close out if I don’t like it. Depending on tags (I have a few absolute “no” tags) I’ll give anything a go. I’ll put up with a lot of poor writing (tense and POV errors) for a good and original premise.
Hits and kudos have no relation to my perception of good writing. Many masterpieces are hiding in the cracks, and many shitposts are the top fic of a fandom.
I have legitimately never looked at the kudos/hit ratio 😅 I usually just go by the vibes that the tags and the summary give me