Feedback is the fuel for many Story Hour efforts; most folks have day jobs that write these, and while many make it look easy, I know for myself that comments (for good or ill) from people who are reading mine help me to shove that fat, lazy slob that is my muse off of the couch and put him to work in the few hours I get to do it.
I personally havent had a problem with people just tossing a 'bump' into mine, most people at least comment in some way, and irregardless of how I may quip or joke I take every single last comment seriously, because one of the reasons I post a SH is to make myself a better writer.
Pimping or promoting a Story Hour is one of the ways that people actually hear about it also. Putting a link to it in a sig, mentioning it in another forum thread, or merely posting in a story hour itself if you are a well-known member of these forums has a great effect. There are many Story Hours I would have never seen had they not been in someone's sig or been mentioned by them in a thread that I participated in. Piratecat was nice enough to post a couple small, succinct comments in my Story Hour when it was first getting off the ground which not only made me feel that I was at least not completely wasting my time and everyone's bandwidth, but I also credit with drawing several folks into taking a look at it (thanks again, PCat
). Things like that were especially helpful for me because I was writing something that was so far removed from what the average reader of Story Hours seemed to prefer that I worried that no one would ever notice it.
I like to see the interactions between the characters/players in the story and the author also, some very good conversations about playing and fun tangents can come from that. Sure, pure self-aggrandizement and bumping for the purpose of just keeping a story on page one might be annoying, but I've rarely ever noticed it, at least to levels that it bothered me in any way. I guess I probably just ignore it if I'm actually interested in the story, or I don't read stories that it is a major issue in.
And as par as quid-pro-quo, I am honestly more likely to check out a story hour if the author has posted a comment in mine, but not *just* because I feel like I need to return the favor. Admittedly, I will read a story hour if someone has read mine, but I wont post something unless I feel like there is something I honestly need to say. If that's bad, than color me bad, but that just happens to be part of the dynamic for how I follow stories/threads is sometimes, and when I read something I enjoy I like to give encouragement; there are a lot of good stories on these boards and several have faded away because people frankly didnt appreciate them.
So I can see how self-pimping by an author or the SH's players can get out of hand or annoy someone, but without some of it I probably would not have found some of the best stories on these boards, and helped encourage those little-known 'fringe' authors to post further efforts in other Story Hours.
I could post a couple of good examples of this phenomenon, but then I'd be pimping
All that being said, maybe I should start a thread asking how people most often find out about a Story Hour that has become their favorite. Or search for one, I'm sure this has come up sometime recently and I just dont remember.