@SnuffyBucket
My intent for the story matters more to me as that is the part I control; I don't mind how people interpret my story because I have no control over it
I think this is a good way to look at things. You really have no control over how readers will see your work once it’s out there. The only way to control it is through what you write.
@_sims_Yimi
But I can imagine it's also not fun for the reader. I've experienced that a few times myself. I'd be excited about a prediction/idea I had for a story I'm reading, so I shared it with the author. They then proceeded to explain in detail what was actually going on, and how my theory could not be true. It cleared things up - but it also pretty much killed any enjoyment I had in analyzing the story.
Oof, I feel like I've done this a few times as an author. I am guilty of injecting my own intent into the comments, partly because I like sharing with my reader what my thought process was or what my characters' motivations were, but I get that maybe readers don't want to know all that and just want to enjoy the story and figure out things for themselves. I can definitely see that this would be frustrating.
After reading everyone's comments, I am going to hold off on explaining things in the comments unless someone directly asks for an explanation and leave more up for interpretation by the reader. I feel like I either go from revealing too much or too little and need to be more consistent.
And this sort of leads into @ThePlumbob comment.
But then from the writer's side, say you see someone that really has a completely different idea from where you are going with this, and they keep bringing this up, and you foresee them getting frustrated because of their expectations of the story.
This is also a good point. I really don’t want people to be lost or confused, and sometimes I can see someone interpreting something completely different from what I intended, and leading to future frustration. Then I have to ask myself how much I should reveal. This is a hard thing, knowing what to reveal and when, not just in comments, but in writing in general.
As a reader, I think the author knows their characters/story better than I do, so if I am completely wrong and heading down a path where I will be completely lost, then I don't mind being corrected. I don't mind if an author tells me that I missed something because I know I'm not going to pick up on things 100% of the time, and I learn something that I might not have figured out otherwise. An exception to this would be if it spoils something major, or it's the writer's intent is for me to be lost for a while. On the other side, I don’t want to feel like an author is being a dictator and being like, no you are completely wrong, and this is the only way to see things. I haven’t really run into this in simlit, but I don't always comment on everything I read. I guess I'm lucky and haven't had a negative experience with author comments.