Okay people, I have an idea.

I was scrolling through the new stories list, when I noticed something, that I've seen before. It has come to my attemtion, that a lot of stories are being scrolled over, and ignored. As evidence by the view counters on stories. However, that's not all. A large amount of the stories that have a high ratio of dislikes to likes, have very few, if not any comments at all posted on them.
The issue that I have derived from this is actually more serious than I originally thought, when I first noticed it.

As writers, we LOVE feedback. We thrive on the knowledge of other people approving our work. When you post a new story, you want it to blossom and be featured and have tons of likes, and views, Right? No one writes to get dislikes. The issue here, is that the commenting ability is being horribly ignored. I'll even admit that I barely ever comment, if at all. However, the like I said, the issue is that barely anybody comments on stories. The problem that arises from this, is that writers, like you and I, have no idea as to what can make the story better, or what we should do to fix it. Stories with large amounts of dislikes have only one or two comments. And even then, only a few are constructive.
It can be seriously demotivating for writers to have there stories shot down, without any knowledge as to why.

For example, I think I read a story a while ago, that had about 13 dislikes, to 1 like. So I thought: Is this story really that bad? After reading it: yes it was pretty bad. However, the idea was sound, the plot was sollid. The only thing wrong with it, was grammar and spelling. That can easily be fixed with an editor. There were quite a few comments on it, but one persons comments stood out to me. Now that I think about it, It was the first story posted on this group. One commenter in their comment wrote (I can't quite remember exactly, but,) stuff like: your mentally challanged, you shouldn't even be allowed to write, as a matter of fact, you shouldn't even be allowed to sit in front of a computer.
Now the author, bless them, stuck up for themselves. However, the comments this one person wrote, were so toxic it made me sick to my stomach. I apologized to the author for the comment.
I didn't stop there though, I looked at the profile of the person who posted the comments. They had 800 followers, quite a few storries, and looking at the comments on the profile, seemed like a nice person. It made me so mad. What kind of respectable, mature, and honorable person, would do that. It downright sickened me.

(Im ranting. I know, I'm sorry. There is a point to this.)

Now, I take no claim to fame. I'm not popular, my stories are disliked as much as the next guy's. I'm not a professional writer. Im a 17 year old teen in high school. But, even I know that nobody, should have to be ridiculed like so, over miniscule errors.

The point of this is:

Know that writers DO read the comments. If you like a story, comment on why. If you dislike a story, comment why. Even if you read a story that you could care less about and would like to ignore it, and will never read it again, comment on it.
It doesn't have to be much.

For example:

I like your story, keep up the good work.

I didn't like your story, here are somenthings to fix, or tips to try...

I disliked your story because...

It helps us out a ton, when you write comments like that. So I propose we of this group, do this.

For every story you read, whether you love it, hate it, or otherwise, leave a comment. Its not hard. This site would be so much better for newcomers if we did so. I know there's not many of us, but the purpose of this group is to make the journey easy for new writers.
If you already do this, I thank you.
If not, please do so. It makes more of a difference than you think.

Thanks for reading,
~BattleMaestro~

As someone doesn't get very many comments I agree with you wholeheartedly we as a community of writers need to more constructive with our criticism, here's the problem we're overshadowed by the more popular writers that have fans that will defend them so the more hateful comments get thrown at the newbs the small fries the up and comers that want to just write and get recognised not harassed for bad grammer.

3868729 I must admit I don't comment as much as I used to ever since I downloaded an epub reader... Basically I would download the epub of all the stories I intend to read and that's that... that's bad attitude on my part and a habit I intend to change.

3868759 I also intend to defend the new writers and tell those idiots who can't do anything constructive to shove off. (trust me, you get plenty of experience on reddit etc.)