I know everyone does not like RPF, but the Third Monday challenge revealed today and I can't say enough good things about what I got. Jon Stewart/Anthony Weiner [link] My own story(About Keith and Rachel, natch) [link]

Is there a way, on AO3, to leave a note for a writer that's not a public comment? I keep hitting "If you're interlacing your metacarpals, something has gone horribly wrong. I think you mean phalanges." "No, violin fingerings are done with the left hand." kinds of technical knowledge things that I feel bad putting out there in front of everyone.

No, Debetesse, although if you can track down the writer on LJ/DW you might be able to send them an email or PM.

I poked around for all of three minutes, and, geez, you're right, there doesn't seem to be a way to convey a private message to an author short of "pssst, this is my email, I'd like to discuss your fic with you" or even "loved your fic! But there's a few discrepancies that if you're willing to talk about, here's my email for the entire website to see!".

Because, even though I suck at giving feedback to fics, if there's some typos or whatnot that seriously bugs, I don't feel that's something I need to point out in general comments for all to see.

Maybe the site can fix that in the future with enough feedback? I don't know the landscape of fic archive sites well. But I know the discontent is there in LJ and several of my favourite authors have left for AO3 or Dreamwidth.

Fanfiction.net. It's the only way to be sure.

The last resort. Oh dear.

ita has crossed over to the dark side. Her moral compass has been compromised. Can our hero truly make this choice?!

"Fanfiction.net isn't my father! Nooooooooo!!!!!"

Shhhhhooot. At FFN I get actual reviews that point out ... well, actually I've gotten only positive comments, but when a writer whose work I enjoy takes the time to throw down a couple detailed paragraphs about what I am doing well in my stories, that's better than "this is really funny!" or "I like this a lot" which is pretty much all I get at AO3. It may not be exactly constructive criticism, but when that kind of comment hits some aspect that I put effort into, it means something. And when there is complete silence about an aspect that I thought important - then I tend to assume it needs more work.

I have several stories on AO3, ones that have several dozen comments on fanfic.com, and of all of those there has been one comment. It's kind of like sending things out into the void there. Well, there have been a couple of what seem to be the equivalent of a Like. And yes, I have left actual comments.

I try to comment on AO3 more, because I can tell that if these stories were on LJ, they'd be commented up the wazoo. But that's a social exchange as much as anything else. But that doesn't make the lack of comments suck less.

Then again, sometimes I get to a story posted today and it's already got 172 kudos, and I thnk...excellent! It's getting response! And then I notice--*9* comments, including author response. So...NSM!

I have some stuff up on ff.net, and I want to work out how to get it down, or something. But I can't work out my login credentials. That was a long time ago.

There are a lot of things I like about AO3, but I really miss the opportunity for discussions that arise in the comments with the author and other commenters, even though that's where wank is born sometimes. And the other thing I'm disappointed in is the lack, as Debet pointed out, of a PM system. Sometimes you just want to ask a question or make an observation you don't want to share with anybody but author, and there's no mechanism for that. I have tracked down an author on DW, so there's that. But if they changed their username, there's no finding them.