Ratings

[daoist_catgirl]

I'm curious how do you feel about ratings? I just started reading a very good novel, the story flowed, good writing, very descriptive yet several people gave it one star. This made the novel's overall rating plummet. I judge for myself and don't let the rating influence me. But it seems unfair to give a story one star without some sort of explanation. As an author does that discourage you or do you ignore it?

 

[FriendlyDragon]

What people like and dislike is entirely subjective. Some people dislike things for reasons that won’t make sense to others sometimes. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and they don’t need to justify it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some people who troll and give people one star ratings just because they can but the majority of people put a one star because they believe the story was one star. As a writer we should ignore it if they don’t add why they dislike it and not let it drag us down. People are unique and we do not write to cater to them all. We write to express ourselves and we share this with others.

 

[daoist_catgirl]

What people like and dislike is entirely subjective. Some people dislike things for reasons that won’t make sense to others sometimes. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and they don’t need to justify it. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some people who troll and five people one star ratings just because they can but the majority of people put a one star because they believe the story was one star. As a writer we should ignore it if they don’t add why they dislike it and not let it drag us down. People are unique and we do not write to cater to them all. We write to express ourselves and we share this with others.

Thank you for your great answer! I wondered how a writer felt. I think it is good as you said to write to express yourself and share with others. I guess in my line of work(fashion design) I like to hear real feedback as to why there is some dissatisfaction. But the way you expressed it makes sense it is their opinion and doesn't need an explanation. I just hope an author doesn't let it affect them.
I recently was reading a really good story on another website and I think the author stopped writing because he allowed some negative criticism to undermine him. I miss his story.. Thank you for your response!:-)

 

[yansusustories]

There will always be people who genuinely don't like a story and also trolls who just rate it badly because of whatever reason. I think every author needs to learn how to deal with that since there's nothing that can be done about it. I could imagine that a lot of authors would be able to cope with the 1-star ratings better if they also saw the other side a little more often. So I think it's important that the readers who like the story make sure the author knows about that. Then again even if they don't we'll need to cope. There's nothing we can do about that either, after all

 

[TwilightForest]

I've grown up as an author in an atmosphere where it's almost impossible to know about the readers' response. At first, it's only the fellow writers and the editor of the periodical I wrote in, who cared to give me a feedback. But I guess slowly a reader base grows up and feedbacks start to sip in.
In the world of web novels there's the possibility of direct interaction between the reader and the author and that can be a bit tricky.
Authors often lament when they get low ratings, but do you hear them complaining when they get higher ratings? I guess, no. So, the point is to be hurt by low ratings or not to be.
Ratings mean feedbacks and while positive feedback boosts confidence, negative feedback tends to sadden. As an author, I'll say it's better to be mentally prepared to be criticised.

 

[taesijr123]

I complain when i get high ratings.
Because it is really hard to tell, since one person hit 5* just for lelz.
On the first few chapters

Getting a Low rating isn't much of a surprise.
As my writing isn't that great.

[Don't have too high of an expectation.
Just write the story you love and pretend the readers and pretty little rating.
NEVER EXISTED!?]

I wish there was a way to remove them.
[As an Author.
I don't really like looking at them.
Due to anxiety of noticing people actually reading them.]

(*Note: They are mostly drafts that lacked edits*)

 

[AionSaturnia]

I think reviews should be obligatory when giving ratings, but perhaps Scribble Hub has the ambition to be a commercial platform. In this case the reader would have to come first.

I am torn on what to think about the ratings I received, as I could have evaluated my own work with any of them depending on how I look at it. It just hurt a bit when I looked at the latest series page and saw everbody else have five stars while I had four. This I felt, discouraged most readers to even look at my writing when I am not sure what I did wrong. I accept the evaluation, but as one willing to learn, it has no real use to me without feedback.

I guess simple ratings are useless for an author overall. What they inform about is simply how much a reader likes something after all, thus making the environment favor easy solutions to make something popular. I guess I should have written badly some smut instead, as it is not like I am averse to the genre. :)

 

[lnv]

I'm curious how do you feel about ratings? I just started reading a very good novel, the story flowed, good writing, very descriptive yet several people gave it one star. This made the novel's overall rating plummet. I judge for myself and don't let the rating influence me. But it seems unfair to give a story one star without some sort of explanation. As an author does that discourage you or do you ignore it?

Ratings is a complicated thing, there are cases where people give 1 star rating simply because of a tag they don't like (NU had the thing where BL novels got 1 star from some people off the bat), and there are cases where people give 1 star to "balance" the rating. Of course the same applies the other way where some give 5 stars to everything they like while others give 5 stars to "balance" a rating. (Personally, I prefer a 10 point system over a 5 star system because psychologically, 7/10 feels better than 3.5/5 despite it being the same thing)

But it is true that low ratings can discourage authors, even from personal experience it is vexing when someone leaves a poor rating without any constructive criticism. And I can imagine that some authors may lose motivation when they see poor rating (It's perfectly normal human behavior, we are pack animals, even if we can ignore the opinions of others, it will always weight down on you somehow).

Now I see some comments about each reader has their own opinion, and that is true to some extent, but that is only from the perspective of a reader. And that totally ignores the overall picture from a community standpoint. Low ratings tells an author that they are doing something wrong, but if they don't get feedback on what that is, they aren't going to be able to improve as authors. (They might assume their story is bad when in reality what needs tweaking is presentation or style)

Of course I know what the counter argument is going to be, if they can't stomach bad ratings, then they don't have what it takes to be an author. Which is also true. That is assuming their goal is to be an author as a job. Which isn't the case for many authors who simply write as a hobby.

Personally, my favorite comments are not those that tell me how great job I'm doing (though I do like these like all normal humans), but ones that point out the flaws in my story or argue with me(yes, argue with me). From personal experience, one of the problems I often see is that when I provide a counterargument to constructive criticism, a lot of readers pull back cause they don't want to "fight with the author". (Maybe they think it'll demotivate me? idk). Those people who fight back against me (I don't mean insults) are the real gems. Because these are the people who truly care enough about my story to the point that they are willing to give up more releases if it means making the story better. So if you like a story, know that is the best gift you can give an author.

That said, as an author, when taking in constructive criticism or any form of suggestions, it is important remembering 1 thing. The one who writes the story is YOU, not the reader. That doesn't mean you shouldn't listen or take ideas from your readers, but you should NEVER let readers dictate your story. Because at that point, it isn't your story anymore. A story where the author lost control of their own story is the worst kind of story (unless it is one of those stories where the readers decide the direction of the story, but these usually get boring quick too).

Well anyways, I may have sidetracked a bit, but the point I'm trying to convey is this isn't NU and we shouldn't treat is like NU. Thus we should ask ourselves not just from the perspective of readers, but from the perspective of the community as a whole. Which means helping authors improve their stories and motivating them, while at same time not giving a free pass where everything is rated 5 stars either.

Maybe a good solution would be requiring for the first 3 months to be reviews only for ratings. Though reviews are also kind of limited with engaging with the author. Maybe there needs to be something in the middle like feedback. So maybe first 1 month is feedback only, then open up reviews for 2-3 months and past 3 months open up ratings.

Finally, I'll end it with this: There is no lack of reading platforms that focus on readers, there is a lack of platforms that focuses on authors. And I think a platform that focuses on authors would inherently bring in more readers precisely due to increase in quality of the works.

 

[feirut]

Face it or not, there will always be a genre that will hit the taste of the readers. And in most cases, if some comes across a story with a genre they hate, they'll rate it low even without reading it.

Frankly, it's better to get immune to ratings as fast as possible. Get used to it. There will always be people who will rate a story just for the laughs or for nonsense. Although there are genuine low ratings, it's hard to gauge if they don't leave a reason why, which most of the time leaves the author unsettled.

Rather than ratings, feedback is more precious for an author. I have seen some that will rate a story honestly and will point out why. This kind of stuff are a Godsend. They help an author grow and improve compared to scores that were given for who knows why.

So basically, if you, as a reader, enjoys what the author wrote, and is inclined to help the author do better, seriously try to leave a feedback. It will guide them or at least give them a sense of direction.

 

[Deleted member 5560]

I find ratings frustrating as an author. Ratings are definitely something that exist for the betterment of readers on the site, and I personally feel that apart from hitting the ranking boards, ratings don't really offer anything of value to the actual authors of stories, which is why I'd personally prefer a flat like/dislike. It feels kind of frustrating - on the one hand, I'd like more people to rate my stories because at least it's some kind of audience feedback and engagement, but whether it's one star or five star, it doesn't actually tell me anything. But on the other, I'm grateful for all the ratings I receive because they do help me with my ranking, lmao.

But while I appreciate any 4/5-star rating, knowing what specific parts of the story made you feel like it was so good would actually be of help, because then going forward I would know if those are elements that I should continue to use, or if I should develop past them.

Like, if someone rates 5-stars and one of the things they really like about the story is perhaps that it's a magic school setting and they like seeing the way the author explores the kind of social hierarchies and quirks that come with that very weird enclosed environment of a school, but maybe the story is only going to be set in a school for 1/4 of the narrative, and then it's going to spread out and become a sprawling adventure epic. Knowing what it is the audience engages with, they can let them know ahead of time, hey, this is basically just a small portion of the story and it's going to evolve in a really different direction. Or they can think about the fact that audiences really enjoyed and engaged with the social hierarchy aspect of the school story and naturally expand into exploring political hierarchies, rather than just setting that entire concept aside and doing a pure fantasy adventure narrative. (This isn't advocating for changing your story just to be what other people like. Write the story you want to write. But if you're posting your story on a website that gives your audience direct access to you, and are doing so because you want people to look at and engage with your story in a place you can directly see it happening, then taking on board their thoughts and playing with the idea of adding things or making minor changes to engage with the community also isn't a ~betrayal of your artistic vision~, it's an extension of it and the way you chose to present it to the world.)

If I had suggest a possible workaround rather than just complaining about the system while offering no alternatives, someone else said they would prefer it if people had to leave a review to rate a story. I don't necessarily agree with that, since again, the ratings system... kind of just doesn't exist for authors. It's something that is only really there for readers. I wouldn't mind something kind of similar, just tweaking it a little - something like doing a flat like/dislike system that people can leave without reviewing as a simple form of audience feedback. But if they want to give an actual 1-5 star rating, then they need to leave a review. I think this helps authors more, but I also think this helps readers too - stories that have a high rating don't necessarily mean that they are universally good. Certain genres, like BL or Ecchi-Harem, tend to get very divisive high/low ratings because people very strongly like or dislike them, and you rarely get any kind of actually nuanced feedback on if the story is actually GOOD outside of it's genre. I personally don't like harem. But I'll read a harem anyway if every other aspect of the story presents something interesting and engaging.

Of course, this system of likes/dislikes and required reviews for ratings could easily be abused with people just leaving reviews to the effect of "Reviewing just so I can rate it, the story is good/bad" or whatever, but people are already abusing the current system in ways other people have already outlined, and people will continue to abuse ANY system you set in place. I just think the question of "who is the ratings system actually for" should be posed, because while I do appreciate the ratings and any kind of audience engagement, again, it just offers nothing of real substance to help me with my story except that people vaguely like it. Which is like... great, I'm glad! But then what if I end up taking the story in a direction people totally hate because I only understood "people like this" not "why do people like this".

 

[NiQuinn]

I don't necessarily agree with that, since again, the ratings system... kind of just doesn't exist for authors.

So wouldn't it be interesting if there was a separate rating system that only Scrub published authors can use? If there was, I know I'd be more attracted to look at that rather than the normal rating system. But it's going to be confusing if that kind of rating system would be implemented. Better have solid rules for that one if it would be introduced (not saying it would.)

 

[Deleted member 5560]

So wouldn't it be interesting if there was a separate rating system that only Scrub published authors can use? If there was, I know I'd be more attracted to look at that rather than the normal rating system. But it's going to be confusing if that kind of rating system would be implemented. Better have solid rules for that one if it would be introduced (not saying it would.)

That's not what I meant, and I'm not sure what the purpose of that could be? If you want to engage with other authors on SH, you could use the SH discord server. There are channels there designed specifically for authors to work with each other and bounce ideas. But the idea of an author-locked feedback system makes me uneasy, actually, because it somewhat smacks of elitism/gatekeeping, and again, I can't imagine what purpose it could serve.

When I said "the ratings system doesn't exist for authors", I mean that as an author, the rating of my novel doesn't exactly matter to me. As I have pointed out, and other people have pointed out, a simple rating with no actual feedback doesn't offer anything constructive. The ratings system, in my opinion, is a tool that exists for the benefit of readers. That's not really a bad thing, there's a higher number of readers than there are stories after all (I think), and readers have a right to know if their peers and the community feel like a certain novel is worth reading. Especially because (almost) every fic on the site is amateur fiction, and most of them are self-edited or peer-edited, not professionally edited, they're all going to be hit-or-miss to an extent. So I think it's a really hard question to post to authors, to ask them what they think of a system which, outside of this one specific mechanic (the story rankings), doesn't really exist to help them or for their benefit, but instead is a review system specifically designed to help readers be more discerning with what stories they choose to pick up.

 

[unice5656]

Low ratings can be super annoying and ruin my mood for a couple of hours, but it's something to be expected and something any writer needs to be able to shrug off. At this point, I actually prefer the low rating without a detailed review, because I've been writing for years and have settled into my writing style and target audience and often the detailed reviews with low ratings comment on stylistic things that simply aren't their taste rather than useful feedback I can use to improve. I can't let either a low rating or negative review discourage me, because I'm not writing for those readers (who are likely not reading past the first few chapters anyways), I'm writing for the ones who leave high ratings and thank me for each chapter release.

In my mind, both the rating system and the review system are for prospective readers to help decide whether a story is for them, and therefore even unfair and biased reviews will be helpful to other readers with the same views. Writers can often glean some useful feedback from reviews, but if you really want to improve your writing craft, you're better off looking for critiques from writers you respect and admire.