Hey Michele, I also did some investigation and came up with the same conclusion that "reads" are only counted when someone scrolls all the way to the end. That was easy with this story but when people add several box links at the end of their stories, I think people are less likely to scroll all the way to the bottom. And, quite honestly, that's their choice.

In fact, I really don't bother looking at the number of reads for this reason. It doesn't seem worth worrying about. As for the number of comments relative to reads, some people comment 2 or 3 times so adding this up is important.

Personally, my life feels too short to worry about numbers like these. I prefer to gain insight into how much my story resonates with people through the quality and content of the comments themselves. My personal take.

This is the story I wrote on the stats investigation: https://sallyprag.medium.com/do-you-only-earn-if-someone-reads-to-the-end-of-your-story-218b2e6409b3