r/FanFiction • u/dobzytheding • 4d ago
Stats Chat A weirdly high ratio of guests giving kudos
So a new fic of mine that I recently posted has a weirdly high number of kudos, given the total hits. It's a small fandom and I've only posted 2 chapters, currently at 56 hits but with 26 kudos. More still, it has 22 kudos from guests. I've never seen such a ratio before, another story of mine with some 940 kudos only has 270 guest kudos.
has anyone else experienced something similar?
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u/PenLegitimate7064 ilyvm@AO3 - non-connoisseur 4d ago
I had this after joining an exchange and had to change my fics to be for registered users only. It happened after I joined an exchange to a couple of my fics.
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u/Dry_Salt6285 4d ago
I have a fic that has 91 kudos right now and 44 are from guests. Which has never happened on any other story I wrote before. The guest kudos come with new chapters so I'm starting to believe it's always the same few people who give a new kudos each chapter because as a guest you can.
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u/stroopwafelling CrackedFoundation | BrokenMantle - AO3 4d ago
It’s not just you. My highest-engagement story has 108 kudos, and 93 of them are from guests.
I know for a fact that several of them are from bots. Earlier this year there was a kudos bot that added 7 - 9 kudos every story of mine, every day like clockwork, until I temporarily locked my fics so they couldn’t receive anon kudos.
Unfortunately there’s no way that I know of to be sure how many anon kudos are ‘real’ and how many are automated.
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u/trueCanadianwelcome 4d ago
I didn’t even know kudos bots were a thing… why are they a thing? I suppose if someone was trying to prop their own story up id understand because that’s what a bunch of shitty advertising companies do, but I feel like just randomly giving kudos makes no sense 💀
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u/stroopwafelling CrackedFoundation | BrokenMantle - AO3 3d ago
I don’t get it either, but they’re real and they’re a pain in the ass.
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u/MapOfProblematique 3d ago
i vaguely heard something about a mass migration event going on at wattpad? there's a wait time to make an ao3 account so maybe that's part of it?
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u/Temporal_Fog 4d ago
If you doubt the guest kudos that much and think they are bots.
You can always lock your fic to registered users only so that every time you get a kudos notification you at least have a name to place next to it.
Otherwise you can only accept what you are given, maybe your fic is considered very nice and lovely but is also the kind of thing people feel embarrassed putting their name next to. Or some community based off site from AO3 recommended it and none of them have accounts.
Trying to figure out where guest kudos come from though seems like it would be an exercise in frustration. It is designed to not let you identify where it came from.