Cultus Dispatches: Communities Do Comment

More than a year ago, our fan studies column Cultus Dispatches embarked on a study of commenting behavior using Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data, plus data from sites like Archive of Our Own and FanFiction.net. At long last, we have the comment data from the SWG to add to the conversation!

Since the advent of websites with commenting systems, authors have wondered (and worried) about how to increase the comments left on their stories. Many of us have done the statistical analysis familiar to fanworks creators: clicks and kudos and comments and what the proportion of each reveals about reader reactions. Likewise, many have offered theories over the years of how to increase commenting or why it is so hard to get a reader just to tell the author they like the story.

This article builds on prior work pointing to community as essential to a robust commenting culture. Simply put, people comment more when they know the author and feel a sense of shared community with them. Data from various sites, along with Tolkien Fanfiction Survey data, supports this conclusion.

For the complete discussion of these data, check out Communities Do Comment: Expanding the 3C's of Commenting with SWG Data.

Posted on 13 June 2026 (updated 13 June 2026 ) by SWG Moderators