Good thing for the writers of course, but it definitely slows down the reading

[cimorene]

We've reached that magical level of fandom activity where a kudos to hits ratio better than 1:10 is no longer a guarantee of basic (ie proofread) presentability.

Comments

[mecurtin]

... and this is why I find fic by following your bookmarks. Your sacrifice is appreciated!

[cimorene]

I would do it anyway, but I'm glad recs are useful to other people! At this volume I actually finish much less of it, though, just to keep up.

[vass]

I deeply hate kudos:hits-type metrics, and have mellowed considerably on proofreading these days... and yet I feel oddly certain I just read the fic you were talking about.

[cimorene]

Like the presence or absence of bookmarks, comments, and recs, they are quite limited, but still useful in a hurry! But of course, the larger the sample, the more representative they are of the average reader's taste: so not a good predictor of quality if you had to make bets, but still more informative than nothing.

(For instance, something with over a thousand hits and a very good ratio of kudos is more likely showing the result of a popular fandom trope than a beautiful style pastiche, but it's almost certain to be basically worth reading, if not worth recommending.)

Usually, though, a ratio around 1:20 kudos to hits is still often a really good story, with a fair number of flawed but interesting ones of different types mixed in... and in those fandoms 1:10 is practically through the roof, and I think I'd usually find nothing but meticulously polished and edited, well written stuff that was also undeniably very good in some specific way that everyone was responding to.