Commenting on your own stories… I have noticed that a number of authors on this site have started replying to every readers comment on a story with a comment of their own. Since we can no longer vote for stories, this tends to give a totally misleading impression of the popularity of a story. For example I see a story with 20 votes and think "this might be good," and browse the comments, only to find that ten out of twenty have been posted by the author. This is a misleading practice, somewhat akin to a politician repeatedly voting for him/herself. I have heard from many authors who don't do this that they regard these "reply-comments" as cheating.