Add Interaction with Reviews

[Funatic]

Hello,

I'd like to suggest that the ability to comment on a Review would be added. This is primarily because of an issue I've come across multiple times in the past, albeit not yet on this site. That issue being annoyed readers quitting the story and then slandering it in every way that comes to their mind, regardless of accuracy.

At the point that such a Review is written, there are, under the current system, only two ways of recourse. One, I can write a PM to the writer of the Review and ask for inaccuracies to be ammended. From multiple experiences, I can tell you that this leads to the Review in question becoming simply more mocking in tone and, if its not already the lowest rating possible, it being lowered to that. This usually leads to action two having to be taken, which is to report the Review and wait for the removal.

Of course, there is also option three "ignore it" but that is, as a writer, absolutely against my interests. The mathematics of one bad Review dragging down the average aside, which I personally don't care about too much but is still an insentive to seek removal, it also means that future readers checking the Review section could be misinformed and decide not to read my story because of it.

I'm not a fan of deleting Reviews, even the extremely low rating and purely bitter ones. For one, because I just dislike deleting other people's words in general. More pragmatic to the situation, it gives ammunition to a resenting crowd, given that their opinion is now being suppressed. I also think there are still some valid criticism to be extracted from a lot of those bad Reviews. Having to decide between having something misinforming written on the very page of my story or becoming (at least a minor) censor because the road of debate is not available irks me to no end.

Having gone over all the negatively motivated reasons why I want this, I also want to say that, aside from corrections, praising thorough rewords through something more than a tiny like button is a better insentive for readers to write them. It would allow Reviewers to ask questions in their Reviews and for me to answer them if they were in the story (Of course with marked spoilers and all that).

So far my rationale.

As for implementation, there are three models I would suggest. I will list them from most to least favourite.

Free for All Review Comment Section - The Review acting as the start of a discussion will simple be able to be commented on like a chapter. I do get that this could lead to shouting matches, it is the internet after all, but I also think that free conversation is the best way to address most things.

Reviewer-Author Comment Section - Only give the Author and the writer of the Review to comment on the Reviews. This would basically make it a public PM exchange, which I don't expect to go much different than my aforementioned experiences. The advantage, however, is that Reviewer being unreasonable (or the Author, also totally possible) is available for people to see. It would eliminate the need to delete negative Reviews.

Author "Super" Like/Dislike - The Author has a special extra button for Reviews on his story that marks a Review as "Helpful" or "Inaccurate" or some other dichotomy of words. Doesn't even need to be limited to two. I personally find this to be a measure short of an actual solution, but its better than the status quo.

None of these systems would influence rating in any fashion. I've come to accept that some people just leave 0,5 Stars on anything that did half a thing they didn't like and even if the Reviews are deleted, they just slap it on as a regular Rating. If the story keeps updating and is good, it will average out somewhere, that's just how it is. It's also not like there aren't people who rate everything that they like five stars. Basically, I'm saying I don't care about the Rating aspect of Reviews (That is not to say I want them removed from them, they're still a part of the opinion, after all). Feel free to disagree.

I'm going to attach a poll just for people make their thoughts on this easily quantifiable in numbers.

Have a nice day,

Funatic

 

[Rellawing]

@Ace_Arriande *hugs* Makes good sense! I appreciate that information. It's a real concern. I did receive a mysterious pile of negative ratings over a short timer when it raised back to 4.6. Not that I think people pay all their attention to those stars. *nods nods nods*

It was investigated and two or three were definitely removed for being obviously fraudulent. True story.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

@Ace_Arriande *hugs* Makes good sense! I appreciate that information. It's a real concern. I did receive a mysterious pile of negative ratings over a short timer when it raised back to 4.6. Not that I think people pay all their attention to those stars. *nods nods nods*

It was investigated and two or three were definitely removed for being obviously fraudulent. True story.

We've all been there at one point or another. Back when I used to lurk in RR's authors-only channel, there were concerns about this about a dozen times a week, especially from newer authors or authors who are only just hitting Trending. But, it was almost always legitimate. Now, the cases where you suddenly get a sizable influx of negative ratings should 100% be reported. Those are the only times that I've ever submitted support tickets regarding ratings on RR, and they also proved to be from the same people making multiple accounts both times. But if it's just one new negative review, even if it's from a brand new account who has never reviewed anybody else before, you've just got to learn to deal with it. I take mental health very seriously, and I genuinely believe that most web authors (or just creators in general) will be much better off and happier when they learn to not put too much stock in negative reviews. Read them to see if there's any constructive criticism offered and take it if you agree with it. Other than that, just pretend that the person doesn't even exist. Replying to reviews--to keep this on topic--only fuels the cycle of negativity and time-wasting, though. The time spent on replying to a negative review could instead be time spent on treating yourself to something nice out of spite for them. Get a negative review from a brand new account? Heck yeah, go celebrate with some ice cream and treat yourself like a queen. Don't bother wasting time on somebody who just wants to bring you down, you know?

 

[Rellawing]

@Ace_Arriande

*warm smiles* That's all very helpful! I appreciate it. It's very validating. I will power on! =^.~=

 

[Moctemma]

I forgot something important. The more invested we are in the story, the more likely we are to give a low rating review, meh stories aren't worth our time, we just drop them.

 

[Funatic]

Even if it is the wrong thing to do, I should have the freedom to hurt my own business. If you know better and don't want to engage in my "harmful" behaviour, fair enough. Doesn't serve as justification to limit what I should be prohibited from doing.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

Man, I am really disappointed. You can see the exact quote in my original post when I quoted Rellawing on this. I even admitted to it being my fault for not making it clear because I was genuinely interested in this topic with you and didn't want to let that ruin it, and this is how you respond? I'm just... disappointed. I was genuinely interested in having this conversation with you. I really did want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you would reply to me in good faith. But, here we are. You've proven what I already figured but tried to push aside for the potential of an honest debate. I'm giving everybody a live example of why you shouldn't bother to reply to negative comments/reviews/trolls. So, thank you, I guess, for proving my point. It's nothing but a waste of time.

If anybody else wants to have this conversation with me, feel free to reply to me. I'm honestly interested in having this discussion now that I'm doing more research on it and am seeing new articles from the last couple of years disproving some long-standing beliefs that you should never reply to reviews / negative comments.

And Assur, if you feel like replying, go ahead. You've just given me all the reason to never take you seriously on the forums, so feel free to get the last word in. I gave you actual effort and even research that proved I might be wrong since I'm trying to approach the conversation as fairly as possible, and you decide to go for logical fallacies and painting me as some sort of horrible liar instead because of one tiny misunderstanding rather than reply to the entire rest of the post. I guess that me admitting there is evidence proving me wrong is also empty air? Thank god for my ego. I'm happy to know that me supplying evidence that contradicts my belief and admitting that I may be wrong is just empty air. That means I must be right, clearly.

The offer to have the last message between us is open once more, Assur. If anybody else is interested, feel free to pick up where I left off. I'm doing more research on the topic now that it's piqued my curiosity and would be happy to discuss in further detail whether this is a good suggestion or not.




I can go to my Royal Road page right now and show you at least 10 examples of negative reviews on my stories from brand new accounts that were only created to review my story and then never log back on again. And reviews from people who are only ever negative and who never leave a single positive review on anything, but have 50 .5-star reviews. People are weird. Sometimes, you just might stand out to them for some reason and inspire them to leave a review or negative rating. Maybe you did one thing that they really dislike but other stories don't. I can't explain their thought process to you. All I can tell you is that this happens and that it's not necessarily vote manipulation nor trolling or just blind hate. Also, poorly-written is subjective and it doesn't have to have anything to do with the quality of your story. However, this is absolutely not an unheard of thing nor even a suspicious thing. What's suspicious is when you suddenly receive numerous negative ratings within a short time span. Just because somebody makes a new account to rate you doesn't mean that it's not a legitimate rating, and I really hope that the standards for removing ratings aren't that. Or, actually, maybe I should hope for that since it would mean removing a whole lot of negative ratings and reviews from my stories...

But seriously. I know how it is. It sucks. I also understand how suspicious it can feel since I used to be there myself, but it's legitimate the vast majority of the time. The healthiest thing to do is do what the rest of us do - leave it alone and shit-talk the person in private to people who you know are going to agree with you. That way you get to vent and let it out of your system without potentially harming your reputation for becoming that person who has to reply to all negative reviews.

You can play the dying swan as much as you want. I am not angry with you because of a simple misunderstanding as you say. Erring is human and excusable. But you were acting with dolus and not with culpa when you steered up what you now claim to be a misunderstanding. I don't believe you.

Anyway, we are not talking here about the future of western civilization, nor the reinvention of the wheel. We are talking here about a very basic thing, implementing a reply function for reviews so authors can interact with their reviewers.

Now your points against it is as far as I understood

a) it promotes harassing. So it shouldn't be done.

b) from a purely economical perspective, it hinders the growth of the site.

Now harassing. You should say rather it promotes the theoretical potential of harassing. Unless, 99% of the disputes devolve into dirty mud battles, your definition of harassment doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It lacks the subjective element - volition- and objective element - duration - to be such and it is just a normal form of communication. That debates will become heated is completely normal, but to define a priori every conversation as harassment and exclude the possibility of constructive ones is erroneous.

Especially, when you have on this site an ignore and block function and the option to even disable your profile. A remedy for light harassment already exists. If you don't chose to use it, then it is your problem. Therefore, I see no reason to adopt a position of complete ban on this matter when according to the principle of proportionability, the interests of both parties should be considered, and not just of the reviewer (and raters) who enjoys an unjustified high level of protection beyond what legitimately serves the purpose. You fear that authors will intimidate their bad reviewers? But how likely is that if we are serious? How often will that happen and is it often enough to justify an absolute preventive protection?

Second point, you know as well as me that the mass of readers is not made up by active reviewers. Even if we shot every commenter and reviewers, scribble hubs growth would be barely stunned with only a small dent in it.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

Even if it is the wrong thing to do, I should have the freedom to hurt my own business. If you know better and don't want to engage in my "harmful" behaviour, fair enough.

Now, this is something that I 100% agree with. I believe in the right to do absolutely whatever you want with your business. However, Scribble Hub isn't your business, and this suggestion is something that affects the entirety of SH rather than only your business. If this purely affected your own business and would in no way potentially have an effect on people's perceptions of SH as a whole, then I would say go for it if that's what you really want. But this is something that would affect the entire platform. I can already picture all the amateurs who really don't know any better replying to negative reviews, having no idea that what they're doing is worse than the reviews themselves. It's still their decision to make, but it wouldn't be a very informed decision, and I'd rather try to help them out than give them the ability to easily shoot themselves in their feet. It would be like giving somebody a gun and telling them to have fun without telling them anything about gun safety. Pardon me for the silly example - I just woke up. But anyways, since this is a private business rather than a public space, we should be discussing how this suggestion would benefit the platform itself rather than whether or not it is a user's right to reply to reviews. Now, somewhere within all those overly long posts from last night, I came across research that proves it could potentially be better for authors to reply to reviews in a way that discourages negative reviews from ever being posted in the first place. I think that would have a negative effect on the platform, though. It's already pretty rare to receive reviews here compared to nearly every other platform. Allowing authors to reply to reviews might actually be better for the author (of course, those studies were also for hotel chains rather than creative arts), but worse for encouraging reviews, and I would love to see more reviews in general rather than less.

So then the question, I believe, becomes: how do we give authors the ability to reply to reviews while preventing that this very thing is linked, in peer-reviewed studies, to decreasing reviews? The whole thing regarding whether we should allow authors to potentially harm themselves by replying to reviews really comes down to Tony's personal opinion on the matter. I'm against it, you're for it. I can respect that. But since this bit is something that has actual peer-reviewed studies put into it, I think it's worth considering how to counter it if you want to go forward with the suggestion.

 

[Funatic]

My story is my business. ScribbleHub is a platform, not a publisher. How I behave in the confines of my story does not reflect on it and should be left to me, as long as I act within the ToS.

Your argument seems to be that having this ability would "ruin" the image of ScribbleHub as a whole. Last I checked, Amazon was still one of the most valuable companies on planet earth and I have never heard anyone bring up its Review system as a negative point towards it. Not even when discussing the very specific marketplace for e-books only. I highly doubt that the majority of readers will give a rat's ass (pardon my French) about the way reviews are handled on the site.

All the amateurs (hell, everyone) replying to negative reviews would be a GOOD thing. First off, amateur writers, particularly the hobbyists, can hurt their story as much as they want without repurcussions because they aren't in it for the money. The severity of the consequences is basically nulified. Secondly, engaging with critics repeatedly is the best way to learn how to handle them correctly. The current one-way-street system only breeds resentment of authors towards negative voices, because they have to encounter the same patterns of behaviour over and over again without a way of recourse, and of those same reviewers, because their thoughts are being removed from the public eye.

The example with the gun is, indeed, silly. A gun can actually physically hurt you, cripple your and kill you. We are talking about having debates on the internet. Its not proportional in the least. A better example would be two students in a schoolyard shouting at each other. One of them is right about whatever the debate is, the other is wrong, but the kid that is right repeatedly stumbles over his words and ultimately makes a fool out of himself. Would it be better if we had never allowed the discussion to happen in the first place or do we let the students actually word-shiv each other repeatedly so they might get better at it?


Decreasing the amount of reviews posted overall might not be a bad thing, if it increases the overall quality.

I agree with you that it would be nice to get more of them overall, but not if the price I have to pay is being prohibited from talking. I'd rather have a conversation once every three weeks than get a letter every three days.


I will not engage greatly with your arguments about this being a privately owned platform, whose health should come before what I should be allowed to do. As you point out, it is the decision of the people that run the site to better it. I wouldn't have made a suggestion if I thought it would make the site worse. There is no incentive for me to do something like that. I made the suggestion because, if you offered me two sites that were the exact same as this one, except one had what I wanted and the other didn't I would, logically, switch over immediately. Judging by the poll results so far, so would the majority of people that have seen this so far.

I will simply repeat: I should have the freedom to hurt myself in whatever way I may choose.

I have yet to see how this decision would bring greater "harm" to the site than the current system. I'm not saying it wouldn't cause any issues, there is no such thing as the perfect system, but I remain convinced it would a vast improvement on the levels of principle, learning, engagement and accuracy.

 

[Assurbanipal_II]

My story is my business. ScribbleHub is a platform, not a publisher. How I behave in the confines of my story does not reflect on it and should be left to me, as long as I act within the ToS.

Your argument seems to be that having this ability would "ruin" the image of ScribbleHub as a whole. Last I checked, Amazon was still one of the most valuable companies on planet earth and I have never heard anyone bring up its Review system as a negative point towards it. Not even when discussing the very specific marketplace for e-books only. I highly doubt that the majority of readers will give a rat's ass (pardon my French) about the way reviews are handled on the site.

All the amateurs (hell, everyone) replying to negative reviews would be a GOOD thing. First off, amateur writers, particularly the hobbyists, can hurt their story as much as they want without repurcussions because they aren't in it for the money. The severity of the consequences is basically nulified. Secondly, engaging with critics repeatedly is the best way to learn how to handle them correctly. The current one-way-street system only breeds resentment of authors towards negative voices, because they have to encounter the same patterns of behaviour over and over again without a way of recourse, and of those same reviewers, because their thoughts are being removed from the public eye.

The example with the gun is, indeed, silly. A gun can actually physically hurt you, cripple your and kill you. We are talking about having debates on the internet. Its not proportional in the least. A better example would be two students in a schoolyard shouting at each other. One of them is right about whatever the debate is, the other is wrong, but the kid that is right repeatedly stumbles over his words and ultimately makes a fool out of himself. Would it be better if we had never allowed the discussion to happen in the first place or do we let the students actually word-shiv each other repeatedly so they might get better at it?


Decreasing the amount of reviews posted overall might not be a bad thing, if it increases the overall quality.

I agree with you that it would be nice to get more of them overall, but not if the price I have to pay is being prohibited from talking. I'd rather have a conversation once every three weeks than get a letter every three days.


I will not engage greatly with your arguments about this being a privately owned platform, whose health should come before what I should be allowed to do. As you point out, it is the decision of the people that run the site to better it. I wouldn't have made a suggestion if I thought it would make the site worse. There is no incentive for me to do something like that. I made the suggestion because, if you offered me two sites that were the exact same as this one, except one had what I wanted and the other didn't I would, logically, switch over immediately. Judging by the poll results so far, so would the majority of people that have seen this so far.

I will simply repeat: I should have the freedom to hurt myself in whatever way I may choose.

I have yet to see how this decision would bring greater "harm" to the site than the current system. I'm not saying it wouldn't cause any issues, there is no such thing as the perfect system, but I remain convinced it would a vast improvement on the levels of principle, learning, engagement and accuracy.

Don't expect too much from him. He has a degree in business management, so obviously he supports shareholder and stakeholder like us. The platform is more important than its creators apparently.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

Apologies for the delay, had to finish my daily writing.

My story is my business. ScribbleHub is a platform, not a publisher. How I behave in the confines of my story does not reflect on it and should be left to me, as long as I act within the ToS.

That's perfectly fair. Though, the whole "platform vs publisher" thing simply doesn't matter to most people. Don't get me wrong, I agree with the stance. The behavior of people on a platform should not reflect on the platform itself. However, let's face it. People like to jump to conclusions without thinking critically about things. But that's not exactly relevant to the original suggestion. I'll just leave it at me agreeing with you and saying that I wish more people understood the difference between platform and publisher.

Your argument seems to be that having this ability would "ruin" the image of ScribbleHub as a whole. Last I checked, Amazon was still one of the most valuable companies on planet earth and I have never heard anyone bring up its Review system as a negative point towards it. Not even when discussing the very specific marketplace for e-books only.

This isn't really related to the topic, but Amazon's review system is under almost constant fire from small businesses / indie publishers. Seriously, there are so many articles online about this. You can find a plethora of them with just a couple minutes of Googling. Amazon has a ridiculously massive fake review problem to the point where entire websites have been created and dedicated to the sole purpose of trying to determine which products have fake reviews or not. There is definitely a ton of room for improvement when it comes to Amazon's review system. However, it could be argued that the review system would be manipulated no matter what they do because of how huge the platform is. But yeah, I just wanted to point out that I see the review system brought up negatively all the time = P. Also, Amazon doesn't exactly have a good image. Just because they're one of the biggest companies in the world doesn't mean that they have a good image. What with the child labor and false reviews and underpaid workers and all that. Almost everybody I know in real life, and most people I know online, hate Amazon and wish that there was an alternative, but it's simply too good at what it does. It is far, far more convenient than everything else. RR's image varies depending on who you ask, as does WN's, but these are still both platforms that people use because it would be foolish not to (well, maybe not in WN's case). I would rather a platform try to maintain a good image while being too good to not use, personally, but such a thing is incredibly subjective in the first place.

But to actually get back onto the main topic, I've never seen anybody complain about the ability for Amazon companies/publishers to reply to reviews, but I also never see anybody use that feature. Well, no. That would be a lie. I have seen a couple of self-published authors from Royal Road respond to reviews they get on Amazon, and everybody agreed that it just made the author look salty that they got bad reviews. That's just an opinion, of course, and you believe that people should be allowed to make that poor choice in the first place. But yeah, like I said earlier in the thread, you have the ability to reply to people on Amazon, but it's an extremely underused system for a reason. Just like how you can also reply to people on Steam. But, again, that's used by less than like 1% of game companies, and if you check out the comment sections on game reviews there since random people can reply to them as well, review comments are pretty much only used for shit-flinging fights that provide absolutely zero value to anybody.

To circle back to Amazon's system, what I do like from it and wouldn't mind seeing is something like its question section, where people can ask questions about the product, and the company/other people can reply to the questions. Though, in the case of fiction, that would basically just be used for asking for spoilers before starting a series. There might be some potential there, though.

Secondly, engaging with critics repeatedly is the best way to learn how to handle them correctly.

The best way to handle them correctly is to read their criticism, see if they offer anything constructive for you to work with, and then shit-talk them in private so that you can vent any negative feelings out of your system without making yourself look salty on the internet = P. However, I can appreciate if somebody wants to take a "no bullshit" approach to it and just openly debate every critic that they get. I don't agree with it, but some people can pull it off without just looking salty if they're funny enough about it. But more seriously, I think it's best to remember that critics/reviewers are for readers, not authors. Review sections are meant to be for readers. There are more readers who will read the reviews than there are authors. Some reviewers might direct a review at an author rather than at fellow readers, but those are people who don't know how to review in that case. NovelUpdates, from what I've seen, is great in this regard. Because they're only reading translations, the vast majority of their reviews are targeted at fellow readers rather than the original author. That is what reviews are meant to be. While you might be able to take some constructive criticism out of a review, the reviews should never be meant for you. If somebody does, however, directly target you in a review, then replying to them is much more justifiable. Especially if they're being a little shit in the review. But the vast majority of reviews I've seen on Amazon, RR, and here, are targeted to readers. We're not a part of that conversation. Honestly, I'd rather see readers be allowed to reply to reviews than authors when I take that into consideration.

A better example would be two students in a schoolyard shouting at each other. One of them is right about whatever the debate is, the other is wrong, but the kid that is right repeatedly stumbles over his words and ultimately makes a fool out of himself. Would it be better if we had never allowed the discussion to happen in the first place or do we let the students actually word-shiv each other repeatedly so they might get better at it?

Pfffttt. I actually really like this example. It is absolutely better than the one I used, but I've always had a habit of using disproportionate comparisons. I should really stop that when trying to have serious discussions. Anyways, while I do agree with the sentiment and believe that we should let people develop a tougher skin and get better at handling themselves, I feel like the current system already does that just fine. Get enough negative reviews and you stop caring after enough time. Furthermore, when it comes to the wrong vs right thing, this is creative fiction. That's incredibly subjective. If the first student says "This is a garbage story that is a complete dishonest scam," then that's not right nor wrong. It's their opinion - their interpretation of the work. The second student is not going to be any more right nor wrong than the first student by refusing their statement. It's subjective. It's arguing over an opinion where there is no right nor wrong. Now, in the case of somebody actually lying - for example, saying "This story has pedophilia in it" when the story doesn't even have a single character who looks, acts, nor is underage, then that's just a straight-up lie and should be reported for removal. That's something that can be objectively proven. But "This story sucks, the main characters are unrealistic and unrelatable, it's full of tropes and unoriginal writing, and it looks like a monkey used its ass on a keyboard to type this," then that's just subjective opinion and there's no point in replying to it since nobody's mind will be getting changed by engaging with that. It might help the author's ego to reply to it, but I genuinely believe it would be better for their mental health and image to ignore such a statement.

Decreasing the amount of reviews posted overall might not be a bad thing, if it increases the overall quality.

Now this is actually what I'm most interested in out of your entire reply. Quality is subjective. Surprise, I used the S word again. How are we defining quality here? Does increased overall quality mean no more low-effort negative reviews, or does it also mean no more low-effort positive reviews alongside that? Furthermore, the people who would normally leave a negative review may just end up leaving a negative rating instead. A negative review can potentially help with constructive criticism. Even without that, if the review is purely hateful and full of bias, the readers will see that and pick up on it. A 1-star rating will hurt your average as much as a 1-star review does. But here's the thing, in my opinion. A 1-star rating will have more of an effect on you than that 1-star review. They both lower your overall rating, but the review may help you with advice, or it may reveal its absurd bias to readers and cause them to disregard it as a low-effort, trash review that deserves to be ignored. So if they see that one person leaving an absolutely stupid review, they may be more likely to ignore a lower score since they might associate that person's review with other negative raters. Basically, let them shoot themselves in their feet. Let them look stupid on their own. This would help the author more than replying to them.

But, at this point, I'm basically coming back to your own logic of letting people make poor choices if they want to.

I wouldn't have made a suggestion if I thought it would make the site worse. There is no incentive for me to do something like that.

I don't think you would have made the suggestion if you believed it would make the site worse, so no worries about that. As for the poll results - to be fair, I don't really take forum results seriously. If you ask people on the forum how many chapters a novel has to have before they'll read it, you're going to get a bunch of people who say something like 100+ chapters before they even think about opening it to read. I've seen this on this forum, RR's forum, NU's forum, and on both SH's and RR's Discord servers. That would imply it's the average standard for people. Meanwhile, the other 99% of readers and authors are too busy actually reading or writing to come and explain their preference on a forum or server. Also, if you look at this forum, you'll see a bunch of people trashing "smut" and "generic isekai" and blahblah. Meanwhile, the stories that make it to Trending the most often while getting the most views...

What I suggest, if you really want to get better results, is to have a poll on one of your chapters. Get a review from the majority of people who are actually active readers who will have a more realistic opinion on this. They're the ones who are more likely to go and look at review sections than those of us on the forum, so their input is much more valuable. Plus, I honestly have no idea what they would think. Maybe I'll ask them myself with my next week's batch of chapters if I remember since I'm curious about their thoughts.

I have yet to see how this decision would bring greater "harm" to the site than the current system. I'm not saying it wouldn't cause any issues, there is no such thing as the perfect system, but I remain convinced it would a vast improvement on the levels of principle, learning, engagement and accuracy.

Fair enough. I think that about wraps up our conversation unless you want to reply to the quality bit since I did ask some questions there. Personally, my perfect system would be removing all numbered review systems. In a perfect world, we would raise children to be critical thinkers rather than drones who can pass standardized tests, and every single review would strive to be as objective and as fair as possible while being thoughtful, helpful, critical analyses of whatever they are reviewing while never leaving a numbered rating on something as subjective as art. If people wanted to know what others thought of a story, they would have to read a bunch of literary essays (but not really literary essays, please) reviewing it. Unfortunately, most reviews in the world are "best thing ever 10/10" or "worst shit ever -10/10."

Also, I will admit that you've swayed me more toward allowing comment sections than how I started. From a personal perspective, I agree with you on pretty much everything, but I'm trying to look at this from a business perspective. Again, if it were up to me, we'd completely remove the numbered rating system and force everybody to leave in-depth reviews that are moderated for quality control. But that's unrealistic to ask for. As for whether allowing or disallowing comments on reviews is a good idea or not - I'm not 100%, nor even 90%, sure anymore. I'd say I'm 60% against it and 40% for it now, with credit to you for raising the latter's percentage. Thank you for actually having an honest discussion about this. I wish more people could debate topics like you.

 

[Moctemma]

Now this is actually what I'm most interested in out of your entire reply. Quality is subjective. Surprise, I used the S word again. How are we defining quality here? Does increased overall quality mean no more low-effort negative reviews, or does it also mean no more low-effort positive reviews alongside that? Furthermore, the people who would normally leave a negative review may just end up leaving a negative rating instead. A negative review can potentially help with constructive criticism. Even without that, if the review is purely hateful and full of bias, the readers will see that and pick up on it. A 1-star rating will hurt your average as much as a 1-star review does. But here's the thing, in my opinion. A 1-star rating will have more of an effect on you than that 1-star review. They both lower your overall rating, but the review may help you with advice, or it may reveal its absurd bias to readers and cause them to disregard it as a low-effort, trash review that deserves to be ignored. So if they see that one person leaving an absolutely stupid review, they may be more likely to ignore a lower score since they might associate that person's review with other negative raters.

I absolutely agree with this. I always check the worst reviews of everything I buy or see, it helps me more than the positive ones to understand the quality of a product. One example is my new chair, most of the one ratings were by people who clearly didn't take care of the chair, it's clear by the comment that they broke it for a rude use. So I trust more in the quality of the chair and understand what could reduce its life.

Personally, my perfect system would be removing all numbered review systems. In a perfect world, we would raise children to be critical thinkers rather than drones who can pass standardized tests, and every single review would strive to be as objective and as fair as possible while being thoughtful, helpful, critical analyses of whatever they are reviewing while never leaving a numbered rating on something as subjective as art. If people wanted to know what others thought of a story, they would have to read a bunch of literary essays (but not really literary essays, please) reviewing it. Unfortunately, most reviews in the world are "best thing ever 10/10" or "worst shit ever -10/10."

I agree and disagree at the same time.
It's always nice to find an extensive review that tells me everything I need to know, but is a hassle to do it.
It can take me a whole hour to write a review of just two small paragraphs, even with basic knowledge on the subject and thousands of stories to base it on, it takes a considerable effort to remember everything in the story to write an accurate review. A perfect review would be one done on your second read, where you analyze it in deep. But who would do that? I certainly wouldn't, unless I was paid for it or I love the story so much it changed my life. So I'm fine with most reviews being a simple opinion of like and dislike.

Now about the search for objectivity. It's impossible. When I do a review of a story I like, not only I'm biased, I also want the story to succeed, I want to attract more readers. So the result won't be an essay with me being as neutral and objective as possible, it will be propaganda; I know it's propaganda and every positive aspect is exaggerated, but that's the inevitable result.
On the other hand, as a reader looking at the reviews, the ones that tell me more are the subjective or biased ones. What I search for in a review is the answer to this question, "will I enjoy reading this story?" An objective review will, most of the time, tell me if the story is well done, while the exaggerated ones will help me to answer that question.


As a side note. While the focus has been the low rating reviews, I would like to point out that here, on Scribble Hub, the majority of reviews preventing me from reading a story or making me decide to drop it are the 3,4 and 5 stars reviews.

 

[ChronicleCrawler]

After reading through all of this, I realized why WN is MOSTLY full of positive reviews. Thank you.

For the Food for thought. Nom.

 

[AliceShiki]

Nom.

 

[GDLiZy]

Imagine getting triggered by one-star rating and review. Been there done that.

You can’t please everyone, and everyone can’t please you either. Negative reviews, or positive ones for that matter, are just noises when they lack actual substances that you can pick up to improve your craft. You shouldn't settle for 'perfection', not that you are perfect anyway. There's always a way to make your writing a little bit better, more descriptive, more concise etc. Settling for things in life means death, per the words of Lenny Belardo.

Then onto the next point: professionalism. The ability to reply to the reviews will quickly ruin the professionalism of the site, even if there are only a few who are toxic and more who are friendly. As per my great Lenny:

Friendly relationships are dangerous. They lend themselves to ambiguities, misunderstandings, and conflicts, and they always end badly. Formal relationships, on the other hand, are as clear as spring water. Their rules are carved in stone. There’s no risk of being misunderstood and they last forever.

Anyway, that's a joke (not so much) but the main idea still stands. The lack of professionalism will discredit the site. So the site won't have reply to review button anytime soon. (not to mention that it also discourage the readers to review bad stuff, meaning no improvement due to getting stuck in a bubble of 'perfection')

To go even further beyond, I propose "enable anonymous review" for even more drama protective way for the reviewers to go all out without fearing the consequences of the harassment from both the authors and the readers. Of course, they can report the bad reviews, but this would eliminate the crowd mentality stuff.

LASTLY:

What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch?

I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills— ops, wrong quote.

Real LASTLY:

The phrase “it’s just a game” is such a weak mindset. You are ok with what happened, losing, imperfection of a craft. When you stop getting angry after losing, you’ve lost twice. There’s always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle. — Ninja

I mean, aside from the joke, this phrase is quite an inspiration, excluding the angry part lulz. There is always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle. If you stopped feeling like shit when reading 2-stars essay about how your story sucks, then you may have passed your peak. You've settled for things. You don't want to improve anymore. You feel that it's okay to suck.

And that's no good.

... enough rambling, I'm going back to writing, see you soon.

 

[AliceShiki]

I mean, aside from the joke, this phrase is quite an inspiration, excluding the angry part lulz. There is always something to learn, and always room for improvement, never settle. If you stopped feeling like shit when reading 2-stars essay about how your story sucks, then you may have passed your peak. You've settled for things. You don't want to improve anymore. You feel that it's okay to suck.

Well, I won't feel angry if someone bashes my novel with a bunch of nonsense...

Or maybe I will, maybe I'll actually get triggered and be like "This dumbass doesn't know how to read!!!" Or something... Though I'd only say it to my private circle of friends.

But regardless, it is important to take criticism into account and try improving whenever someone gives actual feedback!