Popup asking for Feedback on low star ratings

[Rinne]

When people give 1* or 2* ratings they rarely give feedback on why they did so, which can be rather frustrating.
I don't want to force them to give feedback but a small popup or something similar reminding them to do so might go a long way.

Just giving a low rating doesn't tell us anything except "I don't like this" and it's not helpful at all. They could dislike it for any number of reasons after all.

 

[Deleted member 9915]

How about putting the two together?
The rating plus review. Or better leave a short comment because as a reader too, I wouldn't be able to give a detailed review.

But in my opinion, I think having rated low like 1/2 is big enough of a message itself. For me, I'd interpret it as them not satisfied with the story or they just don't like the genre. And, I could care less about them XD. I just have to accept that I couldn't please everyone in the world.

I believe that somewhere and someone in the world would risk their lives just to read my disaster-written story. XP

...but it's still cool to know the reason why the reader rated a series high/low.

 

[Azrie]

I think the idea is great because it provides us authors on what could potentially be a big problem with the story, of course, there are people that just give bad ratings because they dislike the genre. However, I must say that if someone dislikes my story because of whatever reason that is not that. I would personally like to know. Maybe I could avoid such mistakes in the future, etc. Maybe just me.

 

[XianPiete]

People will give your story one star just because they don't like things you have written on the forum. I have one person that seems to makes new accounts to give me a bad rating every week, it's kind of sad.

 

[LotusLily]

How about a multiple choice thing for the pop-up?
-I don't like the genre
-I don't like the main character
-I don't like your style
-I don't like your grammar
-Baited into reading by tags
-Other

Choose one or more.

 

[tiaf]

How about a multiple choice thing for the pop-up?
-I don't like the genre
-I don't like the main character
-I don't like your style
-I don't like your grammar
-Baited into reading by tags
-Other

Choose one or more.

That's a great idea, probably even the laziest person would do it then.

 

[Ace_Arriande]

If feedback is going to be prompted (or forced, which isn't being suggested, but generally goes hand-in-hand with these opinions) when the rating is low, then it needs to be treated the exact same way when the rating is high as well. Then everybody gets fewer ratings, and that includes the high ratings as well. The system is perfectly fine as it is right now. This sort of thing gets suggested constantly on every single web novel platform that there is, and sites never implement it for a reason. In a perfect world, every single person with an opinion on a story would leave a wonderful, trying-to-be-objective review of every single story that they read in an honest attempt to help the authors improve or to give them praise where they deserve it. In reality, most people will just lazily 5-star things and the people who dislike something enough to give it a low rating probably dislike it enough to jump through a hoop while the lazy 5-star-givers don't.

Far more unhelpful/undeserved 5 stars are given than unhelpful/undeserved 1 stars. If we're going to deal with low-effort poor ratings, then we need to deal with low-effort high ratings even moreso since they are far more common.

 

[Phantomheart]

I'd love for this to be implemented but just as Ace stated, people barely give out ratings as it is. Low ratings are also removed on the site if they are deemed to be troll ratings.

If feedback is going to be prompted or forced when the rating is low, then it needs to be treated the exact same way when the rating is high as well. Then everybody gets fewer ratings, and that includes the high ratings as well. The system is perfectly fine as it is right now. This sort of thing gets suggested constantly on every single web novel platform that there is, and sites never implement it for a reason. In a perfect world, every single person with an opinion on a story would leave a wonderful, trying-to-be-objective review of every single story that they read in an honest attempt to help the authors improve or to give them praise where they deserve it. In reality, most people will just lazily 5-star things and the people who dislike something enough to give it a low rating probably dislike it enough to jump through a hoop while the lazy 5-star-givers don't.

Far more unhelpful/undeserved 5 stars are given than unhelpful/undeserved 1 stars. If we're going to deal with low-effort poor ratings, then we need to deal with low-effort high ratings even moreso since they are far more common.

 

[YuriDoggo]

If it's low effort enough, people might give ratings that are just slightly more insightful rather than a flat number.

Lotus's can be adapted to positive things too--like rather than dislike.

Super low effort and I don't think it will put anyone off making a rating if they were going to already.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

I think being able to break down things automatically without reader input is preferable. People who throw out 1-2 stars are often haters, upset readers, or something similar. The majority of them aren't going to give insightful responses, no matter how easy you make them.

What's better is being able to see individual stats of people who give ratings like that. For example, what' the latest chapter they read? Did they favourite any chapters? Comments? Where and when? What about the number of series in their lists (not what stories, but just how many).

You can learn quite a lot about the sort of people who give you poor ratings, and if there's accounts that give you 1 star but has almost no activity beyond that, then you know instantly it's a troll to be ignored.

 

[YuriDoggo]

Good point about the distancing from reader input reliance. However, that seems like a lot to be implemented. I think the multi-choice proposed is something more modular that can be implemented more easily and painlessly.

That said, I don't really get what you can gain from the stats you mentioned, at least not explicitly without digging deeper (outside of last chapter read). Most of the stats you listed seems fairly useless when scanned over and not very relevant outside of identifying trolls.

Multi-choice popup that makes giving accompanying opinions easier is likely going to be a better option since there's a much higher chance of feedback, and in a more direct fashion as well.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

I do think that it's easy, but I also think that it's less than helpful.

Either it'll draw people away from rating in genera, or often times they'll just click whatever without actually reading the options. A whole mess of noise indistinguishable from actual honest feedback would be harmful rather than helpful.

I mean, if you get like 60% of the first option which happens to be "not very interesting" which the author interprets as "not enough action", then tries to fix that, only for the reality was that the readers were enjoying the slice-of-life aspects and were actually turned off by the small bouts of action. They cared enough to rate it, but not to actually look at the options in the multiple choice and just wanted to click off asap.

It's kinda an overly specific example, but it's easy to imagine a whole host of similar problems cropping up because of lazy or uninvested raters.

 

[Phantomheart]

A like system could also work, I know AO3 has a similar system using ‘kudos’ you can only kudos a story once and it is displayed on the novel statistics when you browse through tags and search results. There are no likes or dislikes, but you can gauge how appreciated a story is according to those statistics. Favorites are much different seeing as how most people favorite maybe one chapter of an entire story if they are not zealous readers. A one time like feature might be best applicable to a site like Scribbke Hub. Especially since a lot of drama and arguments arise out of the current rating system. Example:

 

[Rinne]

Suddenly the thread blew up.
I suggested a non-forced simple reminder popup because it doesn't force anyone.
Yes, people go on about rating something low simply because they don't like it or for any other arbitrary reasons, but people like that would probably simply find other ways. They exist and we have to live with it. That's the internet for you.

But there are also some people that might rate low because of legitimate reasons. And often these people don't leave actual feedback either.
A simple reminder can often make a big difference, even if it looks, well, simple. Some people just need that small reminder to leave feedback. And I think encouraging a few people to leave voluntary feedback would go a longer way than forcing everyone to give any feedback at all.
Because that would most likely just be something like "omg this sucks so much lololol".

Just like Ace said, the more you force others to leave feedback, the less they would leave any feedback at all, including a rating. But a reminder is not exactly any enforcement.
A small popup or a small text that appears below the rating saying something along the lines of "Don't forget to leave some words to the author!" would already be enough. Of course, that works for high ratings too. Positive feedback is also welcome.
And while a multiple choice option is an interesting idea, it shouldn't be mandatory either. People are lazy, and they will stay lazy.

Just my few cents since this went into a different direction than intended, though I guess not completely unexpected. I didn't want to make yet another big discussion about whether the rating system is good or not, whether it should be replaced or not. I like the rating system, I just wanted a little something to make it a little better. Not yet another discussion of a topic that has been chewed so much it's already liquid.

EDIT: Currently when rating we have a "Thank you for rating this story a X!" message displaying.
Just adding a single sentence to that really shouldn't be an issue, right?

 

[Jemini]

I think being able to break down things automatically without reader input is preferable. People who throw out 1-2 stars are often haters, upset readers, or something similar. The majority of them aren't going to give insightful responses, no matter how easy you make them.

What's better is being able to see individual stats of people who give ratings like that. For example, what' the latest chapter they read? Did they favourite any chapters? Comments? Where and when? What about the number of series in their lists (not what stories, but just how many).

You can learn quite a lot about the sort of people who give you poor ratings, and if there's accounts that give you 1 star but has almost no activity beyond that, then you know instantly it's a troll to be ignored.

I sorta get the impression the mods have that kind of stuff visible already. I have been noticing some of my lower star ratings disappearing, and I somewhat suspect it might be because the people who gave them were identified by the mods as trolls and had their accounts deleted.

 

[Tony]

I sorta get the impression the mods have that kind of stuff visible already. I have been noticing some of my lower star ratings disappearing, and I somewhat suspect it might be because the people who gave them were identified by the mods as trolls and had their accounts deleted.

Not only lower star ratings, but we also take care of the higher ratings if it's deemed fake. You don't notice the higher ratings disappearing because it's normally the author themselves trying to give their own stories better ratings.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

Not only lower star ratings, but we also take care of the higher ratings if it's deemed fake. You don't notice the higher ratings disappearing because it's normally the author themselves trying to give their own stories better ratings.

Ah, I have seen that happen a few times for the low ratings on my story.
That said, I haven't really noticed it for the high ratings, but then again, the low ones are the ones that make a real impression since my story is almost 90% the same rating.
I'm sure I'd notice the highs gone if it was the reverse, but then again, I'd have probably committed seppuku with my account if that were to happen.

 

[Jemini]

Not only lower star ratings, but we also take care of the higher ratings if it's deemed fake. You don't notice the higher ratings disappearing because it's normally the author themselves trying to give their own stories better ratings.

On that subject, there was a feature request for removing your own rating at one point, primarily for authors who have accidentally rated their own story. You are in an interesting trap once that happens, because you can't take back the rating, and you don't want to rate yourself with a low star, so you just wind up rating yourself 5 stars.

My thoughts, if it's only the single rating from the author's main account then it probably doesn't make that huge a difference, but having that option would also make things more honest. If you do include a feature along these lines though, maybe just something where the author can't rate their own story, then I would like to suggest another feature for the author to update their statistics. Right now, your statistics do not update until your story has been interacted with in some way (comment, rating, or chapter post.) Since I have already made the mistake almost half the authors on this site likely have, I have started changing the rating I have given to my story and then refreshing the page in order to update the statistics.

Yeah, now that I write everything out, I don't think either of those are particularly big issues. One doesn't make a huge impact, and it also acts as a work around for the other issue. It's just a strange quirkiness of the system to bring to your attention in case you ever get the time to consider it.

 

[Ninetailed_Furball]

An alternative is just to make rating removal universal, not just authors.
While it's rare, a "remove my rating" button might be useful for people who decided that their rating was premature, or they rated something that they didn't intend to.

Admittedly, the former is probably nonexistent, but the latter might not be so.

But then again, that presumes that there's more than a handful of people who actually care.

 

[Jemini]

But then again, that presumes that there's more than a handful of people who actually care.

Yeah, I'm guessing about the only people who actually care are the author themselves having accidentally rated their own work. (It's actually incredibly easy to do if you access the site from your phone.) And, again, just one biased rating is probably not going to make that much of a difference. The problem would be authors who make fake accounts just to up-vote their own series, which appropriately get deleted as Tony just said.