Thoughts on word count

[Ice 0]

Are word counts helpful? Do you think they push some members away? How do you go about making sure that they are followed without it taking up a ton of time(since setting it in mybb counts the table code as well)?

[Huskerdust 625]

Helpful to what, exactly? I’ve never liked word counts and I steer clear of sites that have them in any form (ie; post matching or give what you get). In a single thread I can go from one line to a thousand words. It just depends on what’s happening. More action oriented threads have snappier posts. Conversations don’t need to be fleshed out with a thousand extra words to pad some arbitrary word count. 
 

also. I just find they suck the creativity straight out of me. I’m too busy counting words to get properly into the scenario. It’s too much like writing essays in school, which I don’t miss. At all. 
 

that said, that’s personal preference. Some people just can’t role play without the challenge or promise of posts of a certain length and that’s where word counts come in. Staff should be reaching out to people with similar mind sets about rp so they’re on the same page, rather than trying to cast the widest net to catch as many players as possible. That way, both staff and members are happy. 

[Byrn 102]

I am of the same mind as Zozma. Sites with word counts back in the day scarred me pretty good. It’s a lesson I learned. We more or less allow our members to delegate what they expect from each other. I have zero intention of keeping up with who all is writing how much. As staff, I have much more meaningful and worthwhile ways to expend my energy. 
 

Honestly, I find that story lines progress much quicker without word counts.

[Morrigan 1,826]

As I always say, build the site for the people you want to join, not for the people that you think you should expect. If you want a word count because it makes you/your staff more comfortable, implement one. You won't get people that don't like them.

 

If you don't care about one liners etc then do no word count. I will state that A LOT of "no word count" people don't like "No word count BUT" rules. What I mean by that is "No word count but at least 1 paragraph/more than one line/match your partner" etc. Its a skeezy way circumvent the "no word count" rule and still provide a minimum.

[Cheshire 2]

Word count tends to steer me away. How much I write tends to depend on both the subject and who I'm writing with. It simply depends on what I'm working with. Word counts would have me adding extra fluff to the post to make it at times.

 

Like the others said, it depends on what you want for your site. That's my two cents on the topic.

[Ice 0]

Thank you everyone. It is something that is currently being talked about on my site. We have allowed members to put in their input but they are a little more charged then I would like.

[ThriftStoreTeeth 78]

Personally, I'd say a word count isn't going to stop me from joining a site I really like, but it is going to affect how active I am on the site in general, and a site with a word count is one of the first ones I'll drop if life gets busy. It might make your site a bit of a harder sell to the general public, but if its what you/your members want, then I'd say go for it but be aware that it can open you up to new problems.

 

I've also got some personal experience when it comes to adminning sites with word counts years ago, and found it more hassle than it was worth. Situations can and will come up where a member is 5 words short, you let it slide, but then down the road when someone is 50 words short, they're going to throw that back in your face. It can also lead to situations where specific members feel like they're being targeted if they're often just a little bit short on the requirement, and just general ugliness. It gets even worse when you try and dictate a line or sentence requirement over a hard word count. Between the fact that a responsive layout is going to change how many words you can fit on a line, and that a grammatically correct sentence can be a single word, requirements like that become nigh impossible to enforce without wanting to throw your computer out the window.

 

There's also basically no way to make checking word counts easier/faster without setting up a mod that won't let members post if its below a set number of words, and that's just generally a bad idea. You'll hit situations where the system bugs out, someone counts the number of words wrong, or something else, and now its your fault that they lost their post. At least, in their mind it is. Simply put, there's no shortcut on this one, and its something you're going to have to keep on top of quite aggressively.

 

Lastly, I also have to wonder why you're considering implementing a word count. If its to mitigate situations where there's nothing to respond to, this isn't going to fix it. Its not hard to crank out even a thousand words of fluff with nothing to actually respond to, but hey! It met your word count. Plus, some writers can pull something out of a one-liner to reply to whereas others need a little bit more. If its a case of your members having a preference for longer posts, this will come through naturally and there's not much of a reason to enforce it. I may be missing something here, but the only reason I can see for having a minimum word count is to go "look at how advanced we are!" which can be quite off-putting for a lot of people.

[Deacon Frost 196]

Now; emotionally I am not concerned about the number of words I get from my partner. If they go "here's your reply I'm sorry it is a little short" I'll 95% of the time be like "that's okay love you love your writing thanks for the reply lemme go read! YAY" and not give a damn. But at the same time... I've taken the time to write out posts that are three or four paragraphs and felt really PROUD of them, like... "this presented my character's rich complexity so well" only to get "She nodded" as a response. 

 

It crushed me. 

 

I don't care if someone writes a couple of fast lines or a tiny novel as long as I feel the interaction between our characters are there. Like there's an exchange of creative energy going from me to my partner and back. 

I have a really hard time feeling that my partner put any kind of effort into their reply when I get nine or ten words back after I gave them a couple of paragraphs. 

 

I don't know if I am necessarily pro-word count because I don't want to make people jump for some arbitrarily set bar and add a ton of filler that has nothing to do with my character. But I do want some sign that a person is into their character and enjoying the process and I just can't feel that with a tiny response that feels like it was tossed out in twelve seconds while they read their phone on the bus. 

 

Maybe that's selfish of me? Either way its my problem not my partners. 

[Dragon 673]

I don't care for word counts. They usually won't stop me from joining a site unless they're over 250 (that's just begging for useless fluff that serves no purpose other than the writer stroking off their own ego), but I'm progress oriented. I need my threads to start at point A and end at point Z, not start at point A and end up stuck on C or D because the other player is so stuck on numbers that they burn themselves out, and keep pushing it off until a few days turns into weeks turns into months. Higher the word count, higher the probability of unfinished threads.

 

Word counts in and of themself are also meaningless. Quantity has absolutely zero correlation to Quality. 

 

I loathe  being given a multiple paragraph reply that gives me nothing to actually respond to. Character introspection is useless for plot progression - my character can't read the other characters thoughts, and players get pissy when the other character responds to things they aren't supposed to be able to know. 

 

And, as @ThriftStoreTeethhas already described pretty thoroughly - from a staff perspective, word counts are a straight up PITA to enforce. 

[Morrigan 1,826]

On 6/19/2020 at 5:10 PM, ThriftStoreTeeth said:

that a grammatically correct sentence can be a single word

I want to add to this. That a grammatically correct paragraph can also be a single word, especially in creative writing. The only time a 2-3 sentence rule is in effect is normally on standardized writing papers.

[DivineRabbit 64]

My position on the word count is that you give what you get and that depending on what is going on at that point in the story - sometimes less can be more. 

 

I love writing longer posts but in some scenes its not something that always works. I tend to tailor my posts to who I am writing with. 

 

Now I do know that word counts with certain number of words in a post min. Can be a turn off for me. I like the fluidity of creating length or not because it is what works in the story.

[Prophetess 137]

I typically don't like how word counts can force me to look at numbers instead of what I actually want to post conducively to any story that I'm in. So my logic is if I won't do it I don't expect my members to either. Thus there is no word count. I've written lengthy fluff posts because that's what some sites demanded. I did it at times because some "challenged" me to do so. I've been in the position where I wrote "lays there..." because in that particular situation that was all that was needed. Adapting to those I have written with through the years has given me the ability to do both, but I like my freedom. So personally I can't do word counts, but that may be someone else's cup of tea.

Edited June 24, 2020 by Prophetess

[Somniac 207]

I use a personal annual word count to pressure me to keep writing regularly. It has graphs, is color-coded, and shows tangible goals that I will eventually reach if I try.

 

That is helpful to me. They're my goals, they serve a very specific purpose, and I can meet them in a variety of ways.

 

Site wordcounts are more like getting locked into an exasperating phone plan to me. You gotta pay 200+ words each post to get a response, and guess what! The extra words don't carry over. Fuuuuuuck.

Edited June 26, 2020 by Somniac
Post doubled.

[ChrisOwl 59]

I do not like word counts and don't have them on my site. I tend to post anywhere from 200 words to 2000 words depending on what is needed for my reply (the long ones are when flashback stuff gets put in usually). I don't like having to watch the number add up though even though I know I will always hit a 200 word count. I tend to talk to people about it when I'm writing with someone new, much like I talk to a person about what other things are going to come in handy for writing with them; What rating level we want to do, what triggers we don't want to hit, how active or often we tend to post on a usual basis, if we are writing a ship if it's a closed/final sort of thing, etc... just all things that are nice to know that reduce my own writing anxiety when threading with someone new.

 

I think telling site members to "communicate with each other", and modeling which questions they could ask when starting to write with a new person goes a lot further as an admin than adding extra rules about word counts, activity levels, etc when it comes to having happy members. People just like to know what to expect from another person so having members comfortable to ask each other those kinds of questions when they start to write with someone fresh is just so much easier than as an admin, having to look at peoples posts and make sure they are using the proper number of words expected.

[Belle 53]

We don't have a word count, and we've somehow ended up with the full spectrum of players, from people who occasionally just post a gif for comedic response, to people who write 4+ paras a post. Because there are no rules to what players have to produce, they naturally govern themselves and gravitate towards those who play the way they like to. There are questions about habits, preferences, and limits in our intro templates so players can lay out what their expectations are from the beginning.

 

Funnily enough, even players that start out with the expectation of a minimum word count very quickly come to appreciate the benefits of having no rules about it, and whilst they may begin with a strict 200-400 wc for themselves, it often devolves into an as-needed posting style, where one post might be 2 lines, and the next 500+ words.

 

I would never join a site with a word count or a culture/expectation of posts of a certain length. I find the assumption that longer posts are superior pretty ridiculous, especially after having observed so many players who are incapable of moving a scene no matter how many words they're doing it in. As far as I'm concerned, when it comes to rp, you don't bring value to the table by endlessly chewing the scenery or ruminating on your feelings to make up an arbitrary number of words, you bring it by being active in posts and willing to share in steering things forward.