Support Your Local Sheriff

Introduction

No, it's not a film review, though I stole the title from one of my favourite films, and rather than a music video, I have included the trailer for the film.

Since the Leaderboard format has changed, commenting has dropped off significantly, both from the AI spammers (which is good), but also from the excellent Vocal Creators. My heacomments to hearts ratio on a story used to be around 80% on average, it is now down to about 40%.

These are two of my articles on the subject, one recent, one a bit older:

The Benefits Of Leaving Comments On Vocal Stories

Because our notifications are still flooded with publications (and that is going to get worse unless you do not subscribe to anyone, because Vocal is getting new members, and they are publishing stories), we often cannot see that someone has subscribed to us, or left a heart on a story.

While we can go back through the notifications since we last checked, most of those are stories published by creators that you subscribe to, so often I will not know if you have hearted a story, or subscribed to (or unsubscribed from) me. Vocal promised us a filter many years ago, and we can see our subscription publications on our Home page and subscription feed, so there is no need for them to be in the notifications.

The best way to let people know that you have read a story is to leave a comment, and even if it is just an emoji, people can see that you have been there and read the story.

If you are on a Windows machine, when commenting, you can right-click your mouse or press the Windows key plus period:

A text comment about the story is even better, but any comment lets the creator know that you have been there. The chances are that the comment will cause reciprocation, which a heart may not do.

I often share stories in non-Vocal groups on Facebook, and they get a thumbs up or a heart, but I feel that a lot of those may be because they like the story image. Every now and then, I get a reply that tells me that someone has read my story:

This is the story, and it is my most-read story on Vocal:

Conclusion

When you read a story, if you leave a comment, it can benefit you as well as the creator of whose story you have read.

Thank you for reading, and if you have got this far, let me know what you think, even if it is just an emoji 👍👍.