I tried to keep up with all the asks, answers & reblogs but got lost! Sorry if this is repeat info! As an author on AO3 I love getting comments but hate responding to them ONLY because it inflates my comment count. I don't know how to answer them & not have it count as another comment. But I Iove & adore any & all of my Lovelies who comment! I still rate my own work against others & when I see fics with 50 comments I'm like "damn, mine must suck" so I don't like to falsely rep how many I have.
There’s been a fair bit of discussion on this, but no conclusions drawn that I know of. Basically the main suggestions/points being raised by this are:
if you just want to know for your own information, the stats page counts by comment threads rather than individual comments
sorting by comments to find a fic isn’t the most common method (sorting by kudos is much more common)
if you decide not to reply to comments, it’s nice to put an author’s note at the end thanking readers for their comments in some way
there is a subset of readers who might stop commenting if they don’t receive replies, so that’s something to keep in mind
most commenters appreciate replies by don’t expect/require them
most people seem to halve the comments on a fic out of habit, assuming that the author is replying so you might be misrepresenting yourself in the other direction (something to think about if it’s a concern for you)
I’ve seen a fair number of people talk about “comment inflation” and “falsifying stats” and things like that, but I still haven’t got a firm grasp on what the problem there is. If it’s about readers searching by comments, I don’t know that it’s really something to worry about. If it’s about comparing yourself to other authors, I’m not sure you can do that either if the other author does reply.
I’m very curious about that whole idea around comment counts: where it comes from, what influences it, and why it seems to occur in some fandoms but not others. .Any insight you (or anyone) can provide would be much appreciated. It really does seem to depend on what part of what fandom you’re in if this is a worry or not.