Why do ratings matter?

[D4isuke]

For me, I don't... as long as it hits <4/10 , then it's literally a TRASH. Whenever some underrated anime/books are seemed enjoyable to me, I ignore the ratings and proceed anyway since I really don't care at all if it's worth time to savor.

If an author like me care about ratings, I would say that it might be best/worst advantage to go all the way around, and I think it's unhealthiest way to execute it. It's either go with the flow, analyse the contexts, and stay logical and emotional.

 

[weakwithwords]

[ attempting translation ]

Why ratings don't matter

For me, it doesn't. Something below 40% is considered trash. Other people's ratings don't matter if I find something enjoyable.

As an author, ... [ contradictory statements, needs excellent luck to parse intended sentiment ]

 

[Ral]

Average rating? In a way, ratings are meaningless. It is a numerical value that doesn't reflect a measure of anything. It is not quality. It is not popularity. It is not anything!

No one really knows what it is. At most it feels like it is a vague amalgam of various things. At times, it is just an opinion of the few. At worst there literally is no rating.

It might be moderately useful if everyone who check the story would give a rating. At least it provides a reflection of what the people think of the story. Considering that authors screams foul if they receive a handful of bad ratings, it is not going to happen.

There is literally no story here that is rated less than 4/10 rating (2 out of 5 star).

As for those "underrated" stories. I'm really confused with this term. Every time I looked at those so called "underrated" stuff, they are actually rated highly or, at least, not rated poorly. The way I see it is that, they are just less popular.

Also, authors here aren't salty about the average rating, but those individual ratings. They receive a few bad ratings that pulls the average rating from a perfect 5 to 4.7 and they scream foul.

Do average ratings matter? As a measure of value? No. They practically means nothing. Individual ratings? No. They are extremely biased and tells you nothing about why. Do they mean something to other the readers? Well, yeah. They do discourage most readers from reading if the average falls too low . . . but that doesn't really matter much now because they never are low. Do they matter to the authors? Well, ratings tell them nothing. They receive dozens of 5 stars and that means what? Then when a few shows their dislike of the story by leaving bad ratings, the authors would focus on those few and make a fuss about it. It is just to show how little the authors value those 5 star ratings when even receiving just a handful of bad ones amidst dozens of 5 stars is able to greatly affect them.

Not to mention all the ratings bombings and the like.

So no. If it is possible to just turn the ratings off, at least personally; If there is an option here to make it go away, I would get rid of it.

 

[Mihou]

Okay, I somehow didn't understand the OP's message.

 

[Ral]

Okay, I somehow didn't understand the OP's message.

The OP provides a question in the title but provide a complete opposite topic in the body. The question poses as if he will give reasons why ratings matter, the body tells you that authors should not to be hang up with ratings.

Still, I agree. Those ratings shouldn't be valued at all.

 

[D4isuke]

Okay, I somehow didn't understand the OP's message.

The OP provides a question in the title but provide a complete opposite topic in the body. The question poses as if he will give reasons why ratings matter, the body tells you that authors should not to be hang up with ratings.

Still, I agree. Those ratings shouldn't be valued at all.

^ This.

 

[jabathehut]

A system of likes may be more beneficial than a system of ratings, especially a system of likes that consists of liking the story for various tags, for example if each tag on a story could be upvoted individually and stories instead showed a total like count

 

[binarysoap]

What is a rating system supposed to mean?

What is a rating system supposed to mean? Does it determine the worth of a story? Popular belief indicates such, except it’s a flawed system. The stars are supposed to tell us, the potential readers, what the technical quality of the story might be, which frankly isn’t true. When you see a...

forum.scribblehub.com

more stuff here

 

[K5Rakitan]

Mine is trash because of the subject matter.
If this had happened to me ten years ago, I might have felt insecure over the quality of my writing, but now I'm enjoying infamy.

 

[AliceShiki]

Well, tbh, they don't really mean much.

All that ratings tell you is how much said story is liked by the average user of the site you're posting your story at.

That said, some readers do care for rating, so having a high rating is nice.

 

[AkalE]

I know that as a reader I should be happy with the fact that so many aspiring and hobbyists are putting out content for me to read for free, and I am.
But I cannot rate every story I read -starts. I'm sorry.

It's just that if the first story I read had a few spelling errors and I gave it a five-star, I think it would be a disservice to give another story full of plotholes 5-starts as well!

 

[aattss]

For me, as a reader, ratings are somewhat useful to help predict the quality of a story, at least in combination with the summary and tags. Figuring out how to filter out what's promising from what's not is pretty important due to Sturgeon's law. That being said, just because a story has a rating of 4.8, doesn't mean I won't drop it out of disgust at the second chapter or get bored later on or not pick it up in the first place due to not being interested by the summary, but generally speaking I'll find a story that earned a 4.6 rating to feel better written than one with a 4.1 rating, and anything below a 4.0 isn't worth checking out without some credible reason to believe the fic has a high likelihood of being better than the rating would suggest. Of course, ratings are inaccurate if there aren't enough of them, but I personally don't check out stories that are new/short until they've gotten longer. And ratings are useless on sites where authors can delete bad ones to inflate their score (which is probably part of why I don't check out webnovel.com anymore even with AdBlock). And ratings mean different things on different sites when said sites have different audiences with different expectations.

 

[Nyaa]

Why ratings don't matter:
I don't trust other people. Hater bandwagons can lower the rating of a good story; fanboy bandwagons can raise the rating of a crappy story; some people nitpick insignificant details; some people over-or-under rate to try 'correct' the average in their opinion; some people rate incorrectly just to troll. Ratings are also subject to fraud when someone with an agenda runs a human or bot campaign specifically for the purpose of influencing a rating.

Therefore, the rating has no bearing on whether or not I'll pick up a story. I want to see the appropriate tags and a good synopsis.

Why ratings do matter:
When I use the tag search, I sort by rating. It's at least more useful than sorting alphabetically or by latest update (which buries completed stories). A higher rating will make it more likely for a given story to be seen.
(I do at least run the search again - by popularity - to find what the haters were trying to hide.)