roane72 replied to your post: Dear Brain, 100 hits and 10 kudos does not mean…
Not only does it not mean that, but a 10% kudos rate is actually VERY VERY good. (Says she who has also fixated on numbers in the past,) <3
That’s really interesting, I’ve never looked at other people’s numbers. My brain is just weird about numbers and if it can come up with a rule for their relationship to each other, it will, and it won’t let go.
Yep, what Roane says. I have fun crunching internet numbers, and my better stories generally maintain about a 10% kudos rate.
I did some experimenting, in fact, and discovered that if you’re feeling snobbish, looking for stories with a roughly 10% kudos/hit ratio is a great way to find the high-quality stuff. It doesn’t matter how high the actual hit or kudos numbers are; the ratio tells you more. All you can really tell from a lot of hits or kudos alone is that the story’s been around for a while and maybe it went viral.
[snipped]
whoa as a person who’s pretty obsessive about data, that 10% figure is not really accurate at all
a) chaptered fics generally have lower kudos/hits ratios than one-shots because of repeated hits
b) fics that have gone viral have way, way lower ratios (e.g. in sherlock fandom, one shots like whore of babylon (2%); 26 pieces (3%); infiltrate (0.8%); or chaptered fics like ttobb (1%); cure for boredom (1.6%); performance (2%); etc) because in the process of being rec’d you’re likely to get more hits from readers who wouldn’t have liked your fic in the first place; and because of re-reads
c) fics that have immediately come out may maintain a 10% rate briefly because they’re new, but the ratio drops over time because once again re-reads, and also because people might be slightly inertial about not giving kudos if a fic already has a fair amount (? anecdotal)
d) the above point may not hold for fics written by bnfs or near-bnfs, as they have a loyal reader base willing to kudos their every fic; and in fact most fics i’ve seen maintaining a 10% rate or higher are either fics written by bnfs that haven’t gone viral, or
e) fics that appeal to a specialized segment of readers (e.g. femslash; rarepairs; rare characters) may have a higher kudos/hits ratio because these readers are more likely to appreciate what little fic they have
f) empirically speaking, a lot of fic i’ve enjoyed that don’t fit any of the above categories have closer to a 5% kudos/hits ratio
and finally,
g) but a lot of other fics i’ve enjoyed (e.g. a lot of fic here) haven’t had that kind of kudos/hits rate, which didn’t prevent me from liking them!
TL;DR DON’T READ THE NUMBERS, READ THE WORDS
There you go. Radialarch has done way more work on this than I have. Also I totally agree with that bottom line.