Whoa! I am not irritated with coolgirl!
Nor I. If you check back through most of the polls in this folder, you'll find comments about how a certain option couldn't be used by a particular voter because it landed outside their own personal perameters, was too specific or...whatever. I don't think they're mostly intended as criticism, so much as they're intended to just explain why a particular voter didn't choose a, b or c.
Really, that's just a natural, built-in hazard of polls! You'll never think of all options. And your poll doesn't significantly differ from any of the others in this regard, coolgirl. In fact, it's pretty typical. <g> Plus, there are very few of us who've figured out exactly how a poll works on the first try.
Nor do I think at all that you intended to insult anyone with your poll or your list of options, coolgirl.
So I probably should start a poll as well asking people to vote whether they want me to close down this poll!
Don't you dare!
And also, from what I have seen on this site and on others, is that a lot of feedbacks are boosted by authors responding every two or three comments. So someone could have 20 feedbacks and really 15 of them are their own.
That's actually a quite recent innovation on this forum, SlotMadden. If you go back a little bit you'll find that until fairly recently, most fdk folders would only contain an acknowledgement/thank you post from the author at the end of a list of fdk posts. Perhaps now and then, there'd an additional odd author's post or two, where they felt a reader's question needed answering or commenting on immediately. But it was rare to find the type of conversation you mention.
But there's nothing wrong with either version of fdk, imo. It depends what you want out of it. Some of us want fdk and nothing but. Some of us enjoy the back and forth conversations between authors and readers. Yes, if you're simply counting post numbers on a story's fdk folder to gauge it's popularity or judge whether it's something you want to read then the latter form of fdk will artificially bump up the fdk post. So to speak. But that really only matters if you're only counting numbers as an indication of popularity. Generally speaking, you'll find that most of the stories which generate the most conversation are the ones you'll want to read anyway. One way or another.
It's really up to the author which kind of fdk he/she receives. If it's something you feel strongly about - you want just plain fdk for example - do say so at the top of your story when you post. Our readers are generally inclined to go with an author's request on this kind of thing.
LabRat
(who always thought the conversation between reader and author was the best part about posting a story
)
