My understanding that the ability to follow an author was to be able to update your queue with new stories from those followed authors. I believe that blog posts may also be noted somehow or another. What I don't understand is the purpose of following a dead author. There aren't going to be anymore posts stories or replies. Yet, for example, cmsix has over 1200 followers. Do you follow dead authors? If so, why? As for myself I don't see the point.
The 'Follow author' and 'Favourite Author' are kind of the same thing. So following an author, even an absent/archived one is helpful when you upgrade to premier, the authors will be there in your library.
Also, some authors do come back. Like recently the author 'Peter Pan', his stories were archived and everything and now he's back.
The database doesn't have a 'dead' flag for authors...
I can see the use of it as a favorites list. I don't use it that way. I use it to follow active authors to keep up with new material and use bookmarks to keep track of completed favorites. Of the 24 I am currently following all have posted updates within the last 2 years. I need to use the following link more often though. I had to clear a lot of yellow.
Speaking of which, the highlighted items on my following list do not auto clear when I have read the item in question. I am not sure if they are set up to do that or not but a lot of the stories marked as new I had read so I manually cleared them.
I suspect most of those who followed cmsix did so before they knew he was dead.
Premier members could put an author on their 'favorites' list before Lazeez introduced 'Follow Author' at the end of January 2019.
I suspect that in cases of dead authors, those who have either 'favorited' or 'followed' them before they were dead.
I also know of some authors who had written but not published some works before their death and their estate has posted them or given permission for an author to complete and post it.
Don't think that was the case for cmsix though.
In my case, I use it to have quick access to the works without bookmarking each one.
I see your point. :-) easier to deal with one link for ka Hmnd than 259 bookmarks. But then, I have both.
Do you follow dead authors?
I follow authors even knowing that they are dead out a sign of respect to them and their work. It is a way to show others and more importantly new readers to SOL that hey this author has great stories and it is the only way I know to honor their memory and work.
By the way there are many in my list of nearly 200 authors that I have favorited or followed over the years that are either confirmed dead or have not posted for over a decade.
Do you follow dead authors? If so, why?
(a) I might not have known he/she was dead when I decided to follow an author;
(b) authors may have died after I decided to follow them;
(c) I might decide to follow a dead author if I know someone else will be revising or continuing the stories (eg, Lazlo);
(d) I have followed some inactive authors as a sign of liking their work, and hoping they (or nominated agents) will continue or revise their works.
As far as I can see, it does no harm following inactive authors, other than slowing down the database search needed to generate my stream - and I feel confident that our esteemed webmaster would not have introduced the facility without adding suitable indexes to the database to make the search affordable.
(Edited to correct minor typo. They're probly others i aint noticed.)