End the anonymity of ratings.

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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Ratings are something strange and mysterious. At the moment, they come for every author, particularly for small ones without a gigantic reader base, out of nowhere like an artillery round. You neither know who, when and why, which is annoying as you can draw no helpful conclusions from them.

Did the person in question rate the story highly because A) it was actually good or B) because they are fangirling and generally give always 5 stars rating independently of quality?

Or in the case of bad ratings, does the person downvote anything per se, do they dislike the genre and your style, or are just they a hard to convince reader? :blob_reach:
 

Rinne

Professional Headpatter
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Yeah, ratings are anonymous for a reason.

First, non-anonymous ratings would add an additional hurdle to even rate in the first place. Some people do not want others to know what they rate. That goes for pretty much every kind of rater.

Second, the potential for abuse is huge. For example, not everyone is a nice person, that goes for people who rate a story but also for authors. Authors getting mad over someone giving a bad rating, whether it was reasonable or not, is a very real situation. Non-anonymous ratings would only give them the tools to harass those people.

Last, ratings can actually be public in a way already. The reading list, if not hidden, displays the rating. That also might tell you about their rating behaviour already.
If you check on your recent readers, you might find some of your ratings. On small novels, this should be comparatively easy to do anyway.
So, if someone doesn't want to hide their ratings, then you can look it up.

More public than this and it would only turn into a ton of drama nobody wants.
 

YuriDoggo

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Heh. On the other hand, I personally don't mind having my ratings public :sip: :blob_happy:
 

Yorda

Villainess Yorda the Virtuous Flower of Evil
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Let's also remove voter anonymity for political elections. That way we can burn people alive when they vote wrong.
 

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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Let's also remove voter anonymity for political elections. That way we can burn people alive when they vote wrong.

Oh, yes, or let´s introduce anonymous denunciations like in the Soviet Union. :blob_popcorn: I heard their judicial system worked fast and efficient.
 

BenJepheneT

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okay bucko lemme tell you why this is a bad idea

so, the rating system now, with its anonymity, it's terrible. borderline bullshit. like who the fuck thought of this, right? but its the best thing we could ever get for a platform like ours

with the current rating system, people just barge in, throw in a one-star whenever they fucken like without even reading your hard-effort. all you could do is just look at your dropped ratings, sigh, and tough it up cause' you a man

now imagine if we slap a name next to the stars

names have power. names are associated with identity. names also leave a trail. an undesirable trail. imagine a fuckboy who got lucky with his big tiddied loli harem yuri story. one day he logs his entitled ass into the site and finds that his story's been sullied by a one star. with the current system, all he could do is cry, suck his thumb, cry some more and grow some balls.

BUT

this fuckboy knows who left a one star on his record. there's a name next to the star, you see. if we based this on the features we get on our statistics, we can be sure that these names would probably have a hyperlink on it. best case scenario, fuckboy leaves a message on the guy who left the star and fuck off thinking he won it all. worst case, he takes it to the forum

first thing the fuckboy would do is name drop. he'd drop the name so often he'd be seasoning his soy beans with it. he complains about how the rating system is broken and that people would just swoop in and drop a one-star without reading. maybe the one-star the fuckboy got was valid criticism and that his big tiddied loli harem yuri isnt a Pulitzer Prize winner. but who am I kidding, does the fuckboy care?

name starts to drop, and attention gets seeked. sooner or later you get this huge arguement by rational people saying "hey maybe your story just sucks bongo dick" maybe it'll go on for a few days, he name drops a thread or two and stops, either he gets banned or moves on to RR or WattPad where he continues sucking his own shlong

now that might seem not so bad but how many fuckboys are there on the site? and if there's fuckboys, how about the trolls? you know soy boys attract trolls like vbucks attract unvaccinated kids.

we dont need that kind of drama. this forum is good for only one fuckboy and that's me. we don't need another.

i admit, this system sucks bongo dick. it's not good, far from perfect,

but it's the best we got
 

LWFlouisa

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On another note, even with the reviews as they are, it's interesting how different the culture here is even from Royal Road.

I know on Royal Road the same book got 3 / 5 score, but here it got 5 / 5. It kind of makes me wonder if they look for different things.

On smashwords there was this one guy, where pretty much brigading authors was his whole thing. ( It's one of the reasons I'll never use that website again to post any of my work. ) I think the problems comes with the fact that it seems like some people, all they ever do is mass one-star book simply for being a "LitRPG". At which point it doesn't really matter who the author is.

And yet I can also see the merits of keeping reviews anonymous.

Webnovel has an anti-review spam feature, it be interesting if there was a way to do that, while preserving reviewer anonymity.

To me at issue isn't ratings in and of themselves ( necessary evil honestly ), but more the reviews like on Amazon, where there is literally nothing stopping someone from plugging their own books as a "review" for your book.

It's completely anti-competitive when they do that. Indicative of them being kind of desperate.
 

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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This opens up the potential for a author to get his readers to brigade another author.
Isnt that already possible now? What is the difference between brigading an author anonymously and openly?
 

LWFlouisa

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Isnt that already possible now? What is the difference between brigading an author anonymously and openly?

Well for example on Youtube, I was pretty much brigaded anonymously. I still knew who it was, but they brigaded me anonymously. ( They didn't like my politics, and wanted to cut me down a notch. )
 

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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okay bucko lemme tell you why this is a bad idea

so, the rating system now, with its anonymity, it's terrible. borderline bullshit. like who the fuck thought of this, right? but its the best thing we could ever get for a platform like ours

with the current rating system, people just barge in, throw in a one-star whenever they fucken like without even reading your hard-effort. all you could do is just look at your dropped ratings, sigh, and tough it up cause' you a man

now imagine if we slap a name next to the stars

names have power. names are associated with identity. names also leave a trail. an undesirable trail. imagine a fuckboy who got lucky with his big tiddied loli harem yuri story. one day he logs his entitled ass into the site and finds that his story's been sullied by a one star. with the current system, all he could do is cry, suck his thumb, cry some more and grow some balls.

BUT

this fuckboy knows who left a one star on his record. there's a name next to the star, you see. if we based this on the features we get on our statistics, we can be sure that these names would probably have a hyperlink on it. best case scenario, fuckboy leaves a message on the guy who left the star and fuck off thinking he won it all. worst case, he takes it to the forum

first thing the fuckboy would do is name drop. he'd drop the name so often he'd be seasoning his soy beans with it. he complains about how the rating system is broken and that people would just swoop in and drop a one-star without reading. maybe the one-star the fuckboy got was valid criticism and that his big tiddied loli harem yuri isnt a Pulitzer Prize winner. but who am I kidding, does the fuckboy care?

name starts to drop, and attention gets seeked. sooner or later you get this huge arguement by rational people saying "hey maybe your story just sucks bongo dick" maybe it'll go on for a few days, he name drops a thread or two and stops, either he gets banned or moves on to RR or WattPad where he continues sucking his own shlong

now that might seem not so bad but how many fuckboys are there on the site? and if there's fuckboys, how about the trolls? you know soy boys attract trolls like vbucks attract unvaccinated kids.

we dont need that kind of drama. this forum is good for only one fuckboy and that's me. we don't need another.

i admit, this system sucks bongo dick. it's not good, far from perfect,

but it's the best we got

The problem that your entire statement is based on the assumption that you cant be toxic otherwise, which is far from truth. As you show partially, you can troll people and harass regardless of the current system.

What does stop you to create a few fake accounts to review bomb a story in the current form and downvote en masse? I can still remember the spam hate thread. If you want to attack, then the system wont stop you. And the fuckboy? So, you want to avoid drama? That is the main reason?
 

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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Well for example on Youtube, I was pretty much brigaded anonymously. I still knew who it was, but they brigaded me anonymously. ( They didn't like my politics, and wanted to cut me down a notch. )

That is my point. The anonymity of the reviews doesn't protect you as an author in no way from being attacked.
 

Yorda

Villainess Yorda the Virtuous Flower of Evil
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I notice on my story that there is one person who is slowly lowering their rating over time. lol
Driving me crazy. XD
The number of ratings don't increase, just one rating keeps dropping over time ...
 

Assurbanipal_II

Empress of the Four Corners of the World
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I notice on my story that there is one person who is slowly lowering their rating over time. lol
Driving me crazy. XD
The number of ratings don't increase, just one rating keeps dropping over time ...
:blob_catflip: Down with the heretics!

Btw, welcome to 4,8 club.
 

Wintertime

King of Nothing
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Jan 14, 2019
Messages
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okay bucko lemme tell you why this is a bad idea

so, the rating system now, with its anonymity, it's terrible. borderline bullshit. like who the fuck thought of this, right? but its the best thing we could ever get for a platform like ours

with the current rating system, people just barge in, throw in a one-star whenever they fucken like without even reading your hard-effort. all you could do is just look at your dropped ratings, sigh, and tough it up cause' you a man

now imagine if we slap a name next to the stars

names have power. names are associated with identity. names also leave a trail. an undesirable trail. imagine a fuckboy who got lucky with his big tiddied loli harem yuri story. one day he logs his entitled ass into the site and finds that his story's been sullied by a one star. with the current system, all he could do is cry, suck his thumb, cry some more and grow some balls.

BUT

this fuckboy knows who left a one-star on his record. there's a name next to the star, you see. if we based this on the features we get on our statistics, we can be sure that these names would probably have a hyperlink on it. best case scenario, fuckboy leaves a message on the guy who left the star and fucks off thinking he won it all. worst case, he takes it to the forum

the first thing the fuckboy would do is name drop. he'd drop the name so often he'd be seasoning his soybeans with it. he complains about how the rating system is broken and that people would just swoop in and drop a one-star without reading. maybe the one-star the fuckboy got was valid criticism and that his big tiddied loli harem yuri isn't a Pulitzer Prize winner. but who am I kidding, does the fuckboy care?

name starts to drop, and attention gets seeked. sooner or later you get this huge arguement by rational people saying "hey maybe your story just sucks bongo dick" maybe it'll go on for a few days, he name drops a thread or two and stops, either he gets banned or moves on to RR or WattPad where he continues sucking his own shlong

now that might seem not so bad but how many fuckboys are there on the site? and if there's fuckboys, how about the trolls? you know soy boys attract trolls like vbucks attract unvaccinated kids.

we dont need that kind of drama. this forum is good for only one fuckboy and that's me. we don't need another.

i admit, this system sucks bongo dick. it's not good, far from perfect,

but it's the best we got

True.
 

BenJepheneT

Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
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As you show partially, you can troll people and harass regardless of the current system.
No shit, but given the anonymity, this is just how far we can go. Who knows how much deeper this shit goes when you slap aname next to the star?
So, you want to avoid drama? That is the main reason?
Mein, of course. The anonymous rating system had made you spend a good 30 seconds writing about how the mods should at least hand out a mandatory Reasons You Chose This Rating survey before making a review. Just think about what happens if someone actually knows who did it. I'm not saying that there's a lot of fuckboys on the site, but one fuckboy can do a lot.

Take politics. If I mention Republican Representative and Democrat Representative, we'd have a civil discussion. Once I name drop Clinton and Trump, oh boy.
 

Zoey

Mustachu
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Oct 21, 2019
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Maybe this is just me but I wouldn't bother rating anything if I had to have my name attached to, I'd be to scare of someone spamming me for my review.
Or I'd just make a throw away account so I could be honest with my review.
 
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