Five comments, one week, same account. One got 221 views. The others got 15, 12 and 9.

I went back through my own numbers expecting the writing to explain the gap. It doesn't.

Same account, same week, roughly the same effort on each. The one that hit 221 is not a better comment than the one that got 9. I reread them. If anything the 9 is tighter.

The only thing that actually differed was which thread I picked.

It runs the other way too. Nine comments inside one busy megathread came out at net minus 3. Twelve spread across normal threads came out at plus 9. Same week, same person, opposite sign. The megathread felt like the efficient move because everyone was already in there, and that turned out to be exactly why it wasn't.

What bugs me is the ordering. The decision that sets your reach happens before you write a word, and it's the part I'd been treating as overhead to get through so I could go do the real work.

The obvious move is to spend on thread selection the time I currently spend on polish.

Has anyone here actually measured this on their own account, or am I generalizing off one week?