Introduction
Everyone knows fanfic writers live for comments.
Everyone also knows that not all comments are received with equal enthusiasm. Unsolicited criticism (constructive or otherwise) is rarely received well. Demanding updates is rarely received well.
But I have over the years taken note here and there of authors complaining about comments which are on the face of it purely complimentary. I have run into a few myself which I didn't feel good about even though they were definitely not negative.
I suspect there is sadly no such thing as a universally well-received comment. Speaking for myself I sometimes don't comment because I'm not sure how what I want to say would be received.
So the goals here are, I suppose:
Map out what the community norms are, as much as there are norms.
Let authors express their feelings about comments abstractly.
Give commenters an idea of how risky certain comment types are — and maybe an idea of how to retool them to be less risky.
Validate my own feeling that it is unfair for authors to make sweeping statements about "just comment! it's easy!" when many authors do not in fact want 'just comments'.
So. Yeah. I'll probably keep this up until I lose interest and/or run out of ideas.
If you have a kind of apparently positive comment you'd like to evaluate reactions to, drop it in the ask box!
(I'm still getting used to the sideblog thing so there may be hiccups. Thanks for your patience.)