Reader engagement and notifications
When you read a story in the public library, you can respond to it — comment, like, bookmark, and subscribe — and DragonWriter keeps you up to date through notifications. This page covers both.
Comments and replies
You can comment on a story in two places. The story's public page has a thread for comments on the story as a whole, and — inside the reader — each chapter has its own thread and comment box at the foot of that chapter's page, for feedback on that chapter specifically. Type in the box and choose Post comment to add a top-level comment; each comment has a Reply option for a single-level reply beneath it. Comments are plain text — any markup you type shows as text, not formatting.
Whether your comment appears at once depends on how the author set up comments:
- Open — comments appear immediately.
- Moderated — your comment starts as "awaiting approval" and appears once the author (or staff) approves it. You can still see your own pending comment, flagged as awaiting approval.
- Disabled — no new comments; existing ones stay visible.
The author's own replies are badged Author. You can edit or delete your own comment or reply within 15 minutes of posting it; after that the edit window closes, though you can still delete. Deleting a comment also removes its replies.
Comments stay attached to a story across re-publishes — updating the published copy never clears them, and a chapter's comments follow that chapter. If an author later removes a chapter from the published copy (by deleting it, or by leaving its scenes out with the scene-status filter), the comments on it aren't lost: they move to a Deleted-chapter comments section at the end of the reader that only the author and staff can see, and they re-attach to the chapter automatically if it returns in a later publish. The author can delete them from there if they're done with them.
Liking, bookmarking, and subscribing
Under a story you'll find three toggles (they're hidden on your own stories — you can't like, bookmark, or subscribe to something you wrote):
- Like — a public appreciation; the heart count shows on the tile and the story page.
- Bookmark — saves the story to your personal My bookmarks page (reached from the library head) so you can find it again.
- Subscribe — sends you a notification whenever the author re-publishes the story with changes.
The reading activity feed
The library's Recent activity page keeps two short lists for you: the stories you most recently liked, and the stories you most recently opened. It's a quick way back to whatever you were reading.
The notifications inbox
The bell in the navigation shows your unread count and opens your notifications inbox. Unread items are shown in bold. Selecting a notification marks it read and takes you straight to whatever it's about — a comment on your story, a reply, a re-published story you follow, and so on. Mark all read clears the unread state on every notification at once.
How notifications reach you
Beyond the in-app bell, notifications can also reach you these other ways:
- Email digests — instead of (or as well as) the bell, you can have notifications emailed. Email frequency is a single global choice: immediate, a daily digest, or a weekly digest. Digests are timed to arrive in your own morning based on your time-zone setting.
- Web push — notifications can be pushed to your device's lock screen or notification centre. Push is always immediate and is per device, so you enable it separately on each phone or computer you use.
- Matrix direct messages — if the site has Matrix enabled and you've linked your account, our bot can DM you notifications there. Like push, these are always immediate. The Matrix column only appears in the table below once you've linked your account.
Which notification types reach you, and by which channel, is up to you: every type has independent in-app, email, and push switches (plus a Matrix switch once you've linked Matrix). You set all of this — and enable push on the current device — on the Notifications tab of your account settings. By default the bell is on and the rest are off, so nothing changes until you opt in.
Reporting content
If a comment, reply, or forum post breaks the rules, choose Report from its ⋯ menu. You'll be asked for a short reason (10–200 characters) explaining the problem, which goes to the moderation staff along with the content — not to the author. Each item can be reported once: once you've reported something, your menu offers Withdraw report (to take it back), and everyone else sees Already reported until a moderator has dealt with it. You can't report your own content.