Words on ice

[altivo]

For those who are interested: FurRag is moving from one physical host to another this weekend, so will be unavailable for a couple of days until the kinks are worked out. It is still very much alive and we are pushing for a phoenix-like reawakening.

SoFurry, the much vaunted successor to the old YiffStar site, has been up and running for nearly a month now, though much of that time was spent chasing down a termite nest full of bugs and defects. I have been conducting a careful, somewhat scientific evaluation of SoFurry for a couple of weeks now, and will have something more detailed to say about it soon.

My conclusion though, is that FurRag is still needed. It's a site for readers and writers. It doesn't feature artwork or music, but just text. Without the other distractions (and believe me, visual art is a major distraction and particularly so to younger folk) the writing has a chance to really shine. If you read or write, FurRag belongs on your list of bookmarks and should be visited regularly.

I confess that I've been playing a rather devious game in order to evaluate SoFurry. I wrote a 4000 word explicitly erotic story, created a totally different pseudonym and posted the story to SoFurry and FurAffinity under that pseudonym. At the same time, I posted my published, non-erotic science fiction/romance story "A Close Port of Call" to both sites under my usual name. Comparing the reactions to the two stories, and the difference between SF and FA, has been rather enlightening though not particularly surprising. But more on this in a few days.

Comments

[frith]

It's been a few days: any results, trends, publishable data?

[altivo]

Well it might be experimenter bias but I don't think so. Pretty clearly, my expectations were validated. I'll try to post details over this weekend.

In short: A porn story posted to SoFurry receives a heap of accolades. Especially if it's all spelled and punctuated properly, since so many of them are not. Good quality writing that is not porn gets ignored at SoFurry, even if it is nominated to several groups and otherwise publicized as much as permissible.

The same stories on FurAffinity are both ignored. FA users look at pictures, they don't read stories.

On FurRag, the non-porn gets a lot more attention, but that one isn't so much a fair test, as I'm a known writer there with a modest following, while the porn-author is an unknown.

[altivo]

Here's the full result as I posted it on http://forum.furrag.com/

It's time for me to report those results. Here's what I did:

I already had an "Altivo" account on YiffStar though it had been unused for years. I also have a more active "Altivo" account on FurAffinity. I created a new account on all three sites, one that had never been used before with a new name so it was a totally unknown writer.

On the three Altivo accounts I posted a 4000 word science fiction story with a romantic element but no explicit sex. On the test account (again all three sites) I posted a 4000 word story that included an explicit and detailed sex scene between a wolf and an otter, formulaic but well-polished and proofed.

After four weeks, here are the statistics:

FurAffinity shows only 16 views for the Altivo story, and 3 comments. The erotic story has 53 views, 1 fave, and 5 comments.

SoFurry shows that Altivo's story has 172 views, 1 fave, and 5 comments. By contrast, the erotic story has 717 views, 16 faves, 8 "votes" (star ratings), and a 12 on the infamous "cum counter", as well as 27 comments. I did try to take advantage of SoFurry's "group" feature to present both stories in front of users with related interests, so the "clean" science fiction was nominated to four groups with suitable interests and the erotic story was nominated to two.

Here on FurRag, the clean science fiction story has 91 reads, 2 reviews, and a rating of 4.5 stars. The erotic tale has 32 reads, 1 review, and a 4 star rating.

As Osfer predicted, SoFurry has a higher reading rate overall. As I expected and some of you may also have found, FurAffinity users aren't much interested in text. I have stories on there that have been online for over a year and still have only been read 30 or 40 times. By contrast, though, those same stories have readership counts here on FurRag that come to several hundred each. Some of my longer multi-chapter pieces have tens of thousands of reads.

Clearly, if you want a big response to erotic materials, SoFurry is the first place to post it. Most of the comments there were brief: "I liked it. Write more." However, several of them made a point of complimenting the spelling and grammar, which surprised me until I looked at some of the other stuff that's posted there. I guess spelling and grammar are rather rare skills at SoFurry. Non-erotic material will be pretty much ignored on SoFurry, even when you push hard to promote it. The story in question was good enough to be published in ROAR, and has received favorable reviews both online and in print sources, but SoFurry readers weren't very interested. It was tagged "No-Yiff" of course.

If you want meaningful reviews and comments, and continued readership even for older stories, then FurRag comes out on top among these three sites. It would be nice if readers here were more vocal, but at least the responses are generally detailed and useful. The read counts can definitely be encouraging after a while. (The Argosiad has about 60,000 words in 23 chapters as posted here, and is incomplete because I continued writing offline. It has a read count of more than 22,000 now and continues to increase.)

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

FurRag always was bookmarked.

I'll stay tuned for the results of your devious game.

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

...posted the story to SoFurry and FurAffinity under that pseudonym.

Was the pseudonym erotic as well? I'm curious about the results myself.

[edited to clean up stupid typing errors...]

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nothing erotic about the pseudonym, at least not in the normal sense of erotic.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I liked yiffstar, I could actually find my favourite authors. I'm interested to hear the differences between the two sites :)