ratcreature | another random pet peeve post...

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another random pet peeve post...

When people link to their journal posts containing stories or art, some link not the "plain" entry, but to the "reply mode" version, i.e. you get an URL with "?mode=reply" at the end, a comment form below, and don't see any previous comments. Also, and that is the main reason why I hate the practice, the title of the browser window will be "Post Comment" rather than the subject line of the entry, which commonly is the LJ name plus the title of the work. I get the idea behind linking to the reply form-- people think it encourages comments to have the comment field right there, but the downside is, one, that if you open links in tabs (like when you click several potentially interesting links on your f-list while scrolling down) you can't see in your tab what you have open to easily click the tab to pick it to read, and two, even more annoying for me, if you bookmark the page you won't get the subject line as link text but will have to edit that link text line manually, and edit the URL manually to get the plain one, though that is quicker as you just have to delete a bit.

I bookmark almost every story I finish reading and tag them. Normally I can highlight the summary, click the bookmark button and get the right link text (provided the author didn't put "yay! fic" or something random in their fanfic subject line, which is another annoyance) plus the highlighted summary as description, and just add the tags, whereas with the reply mode link, I highlight the summary, click the bookmark button, then get the wrong link text, have to edit the URL to get a plain bookmark, click back to the window itself to copy the subject line, click back to the tagging dialog, delete the "Post Comment" link text and paste in the right subject. So it is two clicks, two deletions and one c&p action more effort, which, unless the story or art was very nice, puts me in a frame of mind to skip the commenting this was meant to encourage.

Is anyone else annoyed every time they land on a reply page when clicking a link rather than the journal entry proper?

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Is anyone else annoyed every time they land on a reply page when clicking a link rather than the journal entry proper?

I am! I hates it. But I always figured ppl who do it are pixel-stained techno peasants who don't know any better. It didn't occur to me it was deliberate.

I'm pretty sure it is intentional, because I've noticed several people who are quite competent with linking, embedding stuff and html coding and such in general, do this consistently in their posts on notice boards and communities or when linking to previous parts in WIPs.

Hmm, maybe they think it is more polite to link the plain fic without a chain of squee afterwards? That to link the comments would be tooting their own horn? But then, producing the 'post reply' link is soliciting comentary which is also horn tooting.

But then, producing the 'post reply' link is soliciting comentary which is also horn tooting.

If there was a way to hide comments without including the big "post comment" form at the end, I bet people would use it more often than not. (Say, if there was a way to put comments somewhere else entirely, maybe like the Yuletide archive.)

I think a lot of people want to post their fic in a "clean" format, to stand alone, all by itself, and the only way to do that is mode-reply-- the fact that the comment form is more apparent in this format is a *side effect*, not the main reason they do it.

Basically, I think this is a conflict between LJ-as-fiction-archive and LJ-as-social-tool, which makes sense, because it wasn't ever meant to function as a fiction archive, so to make it work as one (ie, to get the story by itself on a page, like on any other fiction archive) you have to use workarounds.

I've done that on some of the pages of my website, sort of. This might be a little different from what you're talking about, though. The "comment at LJ" links at the bottom of the stories (at least some of them -- I forget if I did them all that way) takes you to the "reply" screen at the LJ page rather than the comments. I figured it would be more convenient since the only reason (I assume) why people click on that link is to leave feedback, as they've already read the story at the website.

Since I don't usually bookmark or del.icio.us the fic that I read, I hadn't realized that the reply pages behave any differently than a normal LJ page.

Yeah, that's different, because it's a reply link, and you'd just bookmark the website version, but the other is really inconvenient, just like it sucks when people don't adjust the titles of their web pages, like say all their fiction just has "xy's fanfic" as a title line in the browser rather than the story name. It really makes it more inconvenient to bookmark, and shared bookmarks less useful if people forget to change it manually, and considering how many people look for fanfic through social bookmarks these days, you'd think authors would like to make promoting their fic through that as easy as possible.

Not necessarily so. I often like to see what others have said, even if I have already commented or don't plan to (yes, bad cath :).

so, especially with older stories, I often click the LJ link to see the comments.

That's useful to know! I didn't know anyone would use it for anything other than posting comments. I'll think more about it ...

:) Hey, I may just be really weird, but I love going back to story I liked or that moved me and see how other read and interpreted them...

OK...I am weird :)

Yes, for all the reasons you mentioned!

I often comment on an ongoing thread as well (if there's already some discussion), so that's not possible either...

It's good to know that I'm not the only one annoyed with this. Maybe eventually authors and artists will realize that this probably doesn't result in more comments, and just makes other things that promote an entry like social bookmarking and such more inconvenient.

I do that a lot, linking to other people's journal entries. Usually when the story was behind a cut. But I don't really know how to link other than highlight ctrl c the url...so it's really the best way for me to get *that* particular entry, that I've figured out so far.

Well, with LJ you have the base URL for an entry, that ends in .html if your URL stops there you link to the entry, in many LJ layouts there's at the bottom of the entry several links, to reply, track and so on, the one that per default says "link" will link like that. The "read comments" one will attach a "#comments" after the ".html" thus linking to the bottom of the entry where the comments are, the one that says "comment/reply" will attach "?mode=reply", opening a comment form , and when you c&p the link to a cut-tag it will attach "#cutid1" or "cutid#2" if there's more than one and so on (which I find really inconvenient for rec links because it usually will bring you below the fic header, so unless the reccer includes all info it sucks to have to scroll up, the plain link will after all also show the whole entry, just from the top. The plain entry link to a specific LJ post always ends on ".html" and hast some number before the extension, the rest is special places on the page.

It irritates the hell out of me. For all the practical reasons that you stated--though for me the main is not being able to see all the comments, since I don't bookmark as much as you do. I love reading the comments of a story I liked. It's sort of a nice come down from the story high. On the less pragmatic side, it just strikes me as rude (I cannot tell the difference between this and "plz read and review!" which is generally considered tacky). Unless I am a complete newbie to lj, I am aware of the comment feature and that feedback is a good thing. The ?mode=reply page has a brilliant reverse psychology effect on me. I don't I've ever ended up commented on a story that gave me a link directly to the post comment page.

Yeah, it has that reverse psychology effect on me as well. I will still comment if I really like something, but it's a mark against it in the complex set of factors that make me comment or not (like my actual reaction, time, mood, whether I know them, whether it's a first time poster I want to encourage, how long ago it was posted, and so on).

I suspect some posters really don't realize that this kind of linking is not helpful on LJ, that it is not like with some archives that have the comment form right below the text.

(I cannot tell the difference between this and "plz read and review!" which is generally considered tacky).

I don't know if there's any way to get past a really irritating pet peeve by thinking about it logically, but just so you know, there's plenty of reasons to link to the page where the comments don't show *besides* wanting more comments. Personally, I hate reading a story, watching the scrollbar move down the screen, thinking I've got plenty of "story" left to go, and then WHAM hitting the end, because the last 1/3 of the page is filled with comments. And for people with slower internet connections, I'm sure it's irritating to wait for a whole comment page full of icons to load.

Personally, I *prefer* reading the story and only the story, most of the time. I don't want to read other people's comments before I leave mine. And I understand that some people do like reading the comments, but... it's not like the author has screened them so you can never ever read them. All you have to do is click "read comments." Is that really so irritating?

Sorry if this comes off as lecturing, but this is a conversation and an attitude that I've seen before, and everyone always gets so judgemental about Those People who are Obviously Demanding Comments and how they're so tacky and grasping and all, and then I'm self-conscious for weeks about linking things-- like, I even link to *other people's stories* with the mode-reply on, because I feel like I'm not linking people to the *comments*, I'm linking them to the *story*, you know? There are reasons people use mode-reply besides "gimme gimme gimme" and it always bugs me when people make an *assumption* about my motives that is not, honestly not the case.

*nods* I actually meant to end my comment by saying, "This is a big pet peeve, and I know it's a pet peeve. And that there's probably more pragmatic reasons involved in doing it than highlighting the comment feature in a way that feels tacky to me. I don't actually click a story and say, 'Wow, I'm not going to comment because this is one of Those Irritating People.' I had intended to say that while this irritates me--and it really does--it's a pet peeve. I don't feel any urge to make statements like, 'And that's why No One Should Do This. Here is the Proper Way.' It's just--it does annoy me. I don't want you to feel any pressure to do it some other if you have good reasons to do it your way. And thanks for pointing those reasons, while I did think there had to be better reasons to do it--because it's not like people new to lj are the only ones who do it--but I hadn't worked out the specific reasoning.

Of course, I didn't say any of that. I couldn't figure out how to say it concisely or clearly, and well, my comment did reflect how I felt about it, so I just left it. Which I think made me sound a lot more up in arms about it.

I have no problem with people wanting comments, and try to do a formatting and presentation that encourages people leaving them. I want comments too, after all. And while I read comments I wouldn't care whether I see what others said first or later, and I don't mind authors linking to offsite copies if they rather have a plainer presentation, but the mode-reply is just so inconvenient for bookmarking.

I have no problem with people wanting comments, and try to do a formatting and presentation that encourages people leaving them. I want comments too, after all.

But... the whole point of my comment was that people *don't just do this to get more comments*. They do it because they like the formatting, or because it's more convenient to load the page, or *download* the page. Maybe *some* people do it for more comments, but like I said above, if there was a way to post a story and have comments-not-showing AND no blatant Gimme Comments Comment Box, I bet people *would use that*. Because it's... not always about the comments. And I get that it's a pain for bookmarking, which is actually something I hadn't thought about before and is actually a good reason to not do that, unlike "People will assume you are tacky" which just makes me want to do it more. ;)

No, that's very true, and I have that same frustration of thinking I have "story left" and then realizing it's just tons of comments... [Oddly as I've been reading some stories lately that are both older and not in my fandom, I feel it more so...probably because I don't think of myself as part of a conversation and really don't care what others thought and how others reacted...]

I also will change to reply when saving a story at times, so I don't waste space with comments I'll never look at...

Also, I apologize if that comment sounded mega-snippy, I don't mean it to be. Sorry. ^_^

I actually prefer the "?mode=reply," and I usually open fanfiction on LJ like that (instead of clicking the "# comments" I click on the "comment here" button), because a) I like to read the story without all the comments and when I like a story I save the story to my harddrive and b) I don't like to save all the comments in addition to the story. Then I usually comment, then I edit the URL and save it to my delicious bookmarks.

I can see why mode reply would be your preferencce when you read in that order, and it makes sense for saving, though on LJ I usually don't manually safe to the harddrive because of the file names and the multiple parts, and instead click to "scrapbook" the page with the FF extension of the same name, because then it saves the page in a folder with the entry title and I can browse it like a local copy of my bookmarks and you can group pages too, so that I don't have to manually merge. And for one part stories I liked I usually comment and just store the email notification as my local copy.

I usually tag before commenting, and sometimes, because my tags are so detailed (like plot elements, things, motifs, minor characters) I actually tag while reading especially with longer stories, like if there's four parts, I'd read the first, add tags, open the second part in a new tab while leaving the tag dialog open, add more tags after the second part and so on.

I didn't know about the "scrapbook" FF extension, I think I have to check that one out. I have a little program that lets me merge several parts of a story into one file, which is a great help!

And even without the comments, saved LJ pages are still huge, but they are bit smaller than with comments.

Well, I don't find it that convenient for merging, though iirc there was a function where you could scrapbook only parts, i.e. without saving the comments and then combine, but to store a local copy in a folder it's only a right-click into the context menu and it gets saved like a bookmark, only with the content stored locally, which I find faster than manually saving on lj.

I never do that linking to my own stuff - BUT I have a macro to get that result for others links, because I do not want the comment pages (apart from other reasons, I like to judge the length of text at a glance at the scrolling bar). So maybe that's a reason for others? Though I heard people do it to get comments.

I can see the point about getting a more accurate scrolling impression, and I don't object to people wanting to make commenting as easy as possible, for me it's just so aggravating for bookmarking (though that doesn't matter as much on IJ as on LJ because for some annoying reason there you never get proper browser window titles) that it dwarves the scrolling and the load time aspect. And personally I like to see other comments.

I belatedly saw others had already mentioned the scrolling. I'm not going to go into the comments issue, but I agree with you about the tabs - I would also prefer to see the title there which disappears in reply view. But I'm aware of the technical difficulty to get a plain text page without either a reply form or the comments.

i just automatically delete everything past the 'l' and hit enter the first time I get to the page. No matter what the page looks like, neon pink with 6pt Tan font, whatever, because I always tag everything *first* then go back and read from del. this way, everything is the basic link (OMG I've spent so much time fixing all the ?style and ?format and ?comment stuff out of tagged entries, what a mistake that was!) I use the My LJ Style button to look at the page later, but the stored link is plain.

Yeah, it is such a pain for bookmarking. I have installed a FF button that lets you pick how far up you want to go not just for directories, but also for merely getting rid of all the extra intrapage clutter, so that is often the first thing I do as well.

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another random pet peeve post...

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