I am grateful, but who the heck is giving out these 5-stars ratings???

[Hans.Trondheim]

I'm new around the block so I wouldn't know much about the history of RR. But I think this is a good point.

Out of curiosity, I checked on the reviews of some of the top stories posted on that website, The Perfect Run, Mother of Learning etcetera. And the negative reviews on those stories are absolute nonsense, complete garbage with no real substance to it at all. One might wonder if these people have even read the story.

And based on some of the negative reviews that I've personally received there, it really does seem like there's a whole bunch of jealous a-holes running around with smurf accounts trying to bring down the competition just because they themselves were never good enough to achieve any sort of success. Or perhaps they were just warped from receiving a similar treatment in their work?

A lot of the .5 to 1 star reviews are just people cherry picking some minor, inane flaw a story has and magnifying it to make it seem like it's a bigger deal than it is. Oh? You have a female protagonist who had one empowering moment? Mary Sue! Everyone, we've got a Mary Sue here!

It's baffling really.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

View attachment 35976

Some kids never had their mother wash their mouth with soap and it shows

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I think we live in a world where 5 stars is often the only rating really seen as positive. That's unfortunate for all sorts of reasons.

Yeah - corporate America seemed to adopt the view that outside reviews that are less-than-perfect indicate a failure (but internal reviews that ARE perfect represent someone being lazy and non-critical)... And it seems to have leaked out to the rest of society.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

Some kids never had their mother wash their mouth with soap and it shows

That's just one among the many bad experiences I had with RR.

There's this one time I got low ratings because the rater can't take the bullying depicted in the 1st book of my 21-volume work.

 

[beast_regards]

I'm new around the block so I wouldn't know much about the history of RR. But I think this is a good point.

Out of curiosity, I checked on the reviews of some of the top stories posted on that website, The Perfect Run, Mother of Learning etcetera. And the negative reviews on those stories are absolute nonsense, complete garbage with no real substance to it at all. One might wonder if these people have even read the story.

And based on some of the negative reviews that I've personally received there, it really does seem like there's a whole bunch of jealous a-holes running around with smurf accounts trying to bring down the competition just because they themselves were never good enough to achieve any sort of success. Or perhaps they were just warped from receiving a similar treatment in their work?

A lot of the .5 to 1 star reviews are just people cherry picking some minor, inane flaw a story has and magnifying it to make it seem like it's a bigger deal than it is. Oh? You have a female protagonist who had one empowering moment? Mary Sue! Everyone, we've got a Mary Sue here!

Not jealous.

Desperate.

Fresh stories get undeserved 0.5 too, they just die from it.

The visibility of your story on site is directly proportional to the rank you have, and rank is calculated based on ratings where only the perfect (5) matter and rest are damaging. Many stories are sunk, and subsequently soft-deleted (by being virtually invisible, almost as they never existed) simply because someone landed them a single .5 review.

Algorithm demands a constant endless grow, your story must constantly grow in followers, in rank, have a constant influx of positive (5-only) reviews in order to exist, while others must drop.

This creates a bucket of crabs situation where all writers are trying to pull everyone else down in order for their story to rise...

Or do it as a revenge for them never making it after their story was destroyed by the same nonsense reviews destroyed their stories. A single rating could destroy a story, regardless of its objective quality, given freely out of spite and maliciousness.

Since ratings could kill your story, there is a constant cycle of revenge, retaliation, trolling and organized campaigns to destroy other stories, making the entire site absurdly toxic. Others engage in "pain sharing" - I got hit, thus I hit everyone else.Rating wars if you like, which some could wage with bots.

It's very common for authors to hit the stories above in rating so their own could rise, because the spots on the top are limited.

 

[melchi]

If there is bread in your novel quack doctor will give it 5 stars.

 

[Hsinat]

This makes me more incline to remove my story from RR. So far as an amateur author who recently got a 5-star review on RR, (it's a pretty decent review.), I have seen the top-rated web series bombarded with such disgusting comments. After some reflection, I am in a dilemma whether to keep my story up or not. Please give me some more insight as I just started out new here.

Edit :-

(I believe there's more con as to pros).
Should I keep my story up till the end of this month because I had submitted my work for a magazine? I need help and advice.

Some kids never had their mother wash their mouth with soap and it shows

Don't bring their mums into this. Seen some mums are the nicest people, but their kids are the absolute worst. From personal experience. No offence, just kinda rubbed me off.

 

[ZebraUnicorn]

This makes me more incline to remove my story from RR. So far as an amateur author who recently got a 5-star review on RR, (it's a pretty decent review.), I have seen the top-rated web series bombarded with such disgusting comments. After some reflection, I am in a dilemma whether to keep my story up or not. Please give me some more insight as I just started out new here.

Edit :-

(I believe there's more con as to pros).
Should I keep my story up till the end of this month because I had submitted my work for a magazine? I need help and advice.

As someone whose story was at the top of Rising Stars for a good week and a half, I can tell you that the trolls and griefers don't move in until you get more exposure. Your story isn't big enough to warrant that sort of attention just yet.

And even then, trolls crave attention, they can't help but to announce themselves. So most of them you'll be able to root out just through diligent monitoring of your comment section and blocking any obvious trouble makers. And I do recommend just blocking them, don't bother engaging. The first rule when it comes to trolls is not to feed them.

That said, some people can come across as passive aggresive or ambivalent, but not necessarily malicious, so use your best judgement. The really dogged ones will just create a smurf account to harass you anyway, so no point spending too much energy on these people.

I can't tell you what to do, only share my experiences. The final call is on you.

 

[Hsinat]

As someone whose story was at the top of Rising Stars for a good week and a half, I can tell you that the trolls and griefers don't move in until you get more exposure. Your story isn't big enough to warrant that sort of attention just yet.

And even then, trolls crave attention, they can't help but to announce themselves. So most of them you'll be able to root out just through diligent monitoring of your comment section and blocking any obvious trouble makers. And I do recommend just blocking them, don't bother engaging. The first rule when it comes to trolls is not to feed them.

That said, some people can come across as passive aggresive or ambivalent, but not necessarily malicious, so use your best judgement. The really dogged ones will just create a smurf account to harass you anyway, so no point spending too much energy on these people.

I can't tell you what to do, only share my experiences. The final call is on you.

Thanks pal, I will keep in mind.

 

[deweyan]

Coincidentally, after I made this post and subsequently posted a chapter on the same night, I got 2 more 5-stars ratings and an influx of about 400 page viewers.

Any of you responsible for that? Not complaining, I like numbers going up mwahahah!

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

Coincidentally, after I made this post and subsequently posted a chapter on the same night, I got 2 more 5-stars ratings and an influx of about 400 page viewers.

Any of you responsible for that? Not complaining, I like numbers going up mwahahah!

I saw you on trending at one point (don't remember when, but it was in the last three days or today), so it's not surprising

 

[deweyan]

I saw you on trending at one point (don't remember when, but it was in the last three days or today), so it's not surprising

Saw yours too at some point, also, congratulations for your french girl system novel! You are surely going to get a following with how many people favorited the 'few' chapters there are.

I hope I and many others can get to that level and higher so many others can experience the fluff and spices of drama I wrote in mine and the adventurous journeys others did, though with the speed of each one's writing, that'd be quite some time but until then, keep on writing, authors!

 

[Valmond]

Coincidentally, after I made this post and subsequently posted a chapter on the same night, I got 2 more 5-stars ratings and an influx of about 400 page viewers.

Any of you responsible for that? Not complaining, I like numbers going up mwahahah!

What about in the other direction?

Ya know, on RR I made it to the front page of trending a few times. I also made it onto the hit list of peeps a few times as well.

 

[AmbreaTaddy]

Saw yours too at some point, also, congratulations for your french girl system novel! You are surely going to get a following with how many people favorited the 'few' chapters there are.

I hope I and many others can get to that level and higher so many others can experience the fluff and spices of drama I wrote in mine and the adventurous journeys others did, though with the speed of each one's writing, that'd be quite some time but until then, keep on writing, authors!

Thanks, I was very happy too !

Yep, keep on fighting authors !

 

[Iri.Mosaic]

Jesus. It's Jesus. He's a big exponent of new authors!

 

[Kamael89]

I tend to give the book I read 5 stars to encourage the author. Not always, though.

 

[Decaded]

I tend to give the book I read 5 stars to encourage the author. Not always, though.

Bad practice. You should give them what they deserve, in your opinion. Spaming 5* left and right makes the rating unreatable.

 

[Arkus86]

Bad practice. You should give them what they deserve, in your opinion. Spaming 5* left and right makes the rating unreatable.

I once dug a little into the novel distribution by rating on SH. Some 60% of all novels have full 5-star rating. Just over 30% is in the 4-4.9 range, spread roughly equally to both sides. Less than 10% is in the 3-3.9 range. And almost no novels under 3-stars.

 

[Cookiez_N_Potionz]

I'm also grateful!

 

[CharlesEBrown]

I once dug a little into the novel distribution by rating on SH. Some 60% of all novels have full 5-star rating. Just over 30% is in the 4-4.9 range, spread roughly equally to both sides. Less than 10% is in the 3-3.9 range. And almost no novels under 3-stars.

Mine have, in order,
0
0
5 (one rating)
4 (two 5s and two 3s to get that)
5 (6 ratings)
5 (2 ratings)