Webnovel.Forum

No matter what book or original work you where to read the rating will never be below a 4 and have only found two stories that even dipped into the 3 rating. I can get it if its a more popular series which gets voted for often having a high rating but a lot of original works are just not good be it with how they tell their story to making the story flat out impossible to follow. It makes it extremely hard to pick something to read when you dont know if its going to be a bust or not.

Mookashea It's coz people like to give reviews without even reading the stuff. You'd get it from reading the reviews - things like "I hope this is a good story" and then it's a five-star review. It can get annoying. Don't rely on the stars. Read the reviews and see what the people who actually read it have to say about it.

Mookashea. Yeah nobody gives honest reviews I got yelled at for giving a 2.5 review to something I honestly thought was garbage. But just know that you should review as you feel as long as its an honest review and others be damned.Egos need to be deflated and feathers ruffled sometimes.

Mookashea
Multiple reasons.
1. Less popular novels tend to have an inflated rating. 99% of the time a book's rating will drop as it becomes more popular. This is likely because readers that pick up newer novels are the type of people more willing to encourage newer authors. Also, there is much less content to judge a book on at the early stages, and readers that only read the more popular books tend to be more picky
2. The rating system encourages higher-rated reviews. Even if a story is absolute trash, if it updates daily then there should be 5 stars given for that specific category. Many awful stories also have excellent writing quality, and many great stories have terrible writing quality. This all adds up to legitimate bad reviews usually scoring 2 or 3 stars. Combined with the good reviews, the scores naturally lean higher than on many other sites. Of course, some readers will give one star reviews, but their feedback probably shouldn't be taken as legitimate, as one star reviews are almost never made in good faith. How bad would a story need to be to score a single star in writing quality, stability of updates, story development, character design, and world background? Anything below an overall score of 2 stars is practically impossible if a legitimate review is being made in good faith.
3. Community. Different novel sites have different communities. For the most-part (and there are a lot of exceptions to this), Webnovel readers tend to be fairly friendly. They may be less harsh in their feedback in order to encourage authors and/or translators. Other novel site communities sometimes take the opposite approach, believing that harsh criticism is best for the author.

Honestly, I don't think Webnovel really has an issue with the rating system though. Power ranking based on power stones can be a much more accurate metric in a lot of ways. Also, once you're familiar with how books tend to be rated, then it's fairly easy to judge a book. Anything under 4 stars is probably awful except to the most dedicated fans, unless it's review bombed by trolls (which happens way too often). 4.1 to 4.2 star stories are usually just okay. 4.3 to 4.4 are probably around average. 4.5 to 4.6 are above average. 4.7 and up is reserved for the best stories. However, it's important to keep in mind the popularity of the book as well. The less popular the book, the less reliable these scores become. You can easily dock 0.4 to 0.8 stars from an unpopular book's rating to get a more accurate guesstimate of how good it's likely to be. This is because truly good 4.7 or higher rated books will likely rise in the rankings quickly, resulting in the score either adjusting to what it should be or it truly being good enough to maintain its high ranking while popular.

As a real example of the above, I like to use my book, Steampunk Apocalypse. It tended to hover around 4.8 stars in the first few weeks. This was because there was little content to judge, only dedicated readers were looking into the newest books, and new authors tend to participate in review swaps. Now, my book jumps between 4.3 and 4.4 stars pretty steadily, which I think is fair. I'm of the personal opinion that the beginning of my own book is pretty bad, but it improves drastically by the 2nd volume. But despite quality going up as I continued writing, the score dropped due to increasing popularity. Most poor ratings will come from the first 3 to 15 chapters, so this makes perfect sense. So now, I just pretty much assume any new book I read that isn't in the top 100 has a legitimate rating 0.4 to 0.8 stars below what is listed, and if I'm wrong, then the book will likely grow in popularity and prove it =p.

SnoozySloth I agree with your overall statement but I have to disagree on 1* reviews not being taken into consideration if it has a valid explanation why and does not just spam "dis sucks" over and over. Since reviews are always going to be with the individuals bias having some tropes in the story or overall bad writing is a big factor for people making the story overall enjoyable.

Mookashea
If they're following the rating system as it is intended, then one star reviews should be extremely rare to the point of almost being nonexistent. This is because of the ratings for update stability and writing quality. For a story to score 1 star in update stability, it likely isn't being updated anymore, which means it also isn't popular and likely isn't being read by many (if any) new readers. So, assuming a story is being updated daily, then that right there bumps the overall minimum score up to 1.8 stars overall (5 star + 1 star in each other category divided by 5). Writing quality is debatable. There are quite a few non-native English speakers that have poor writing quality. But even then, if they can write in English (even if horrendously) then it likely deserves between two and three stars in that category depending on just how bad it is. Yet despite this, some reviewers leave 1 star in this category even if a story is written by a native-English speaker with decent grammar and story flow. I've also noticed that if you check the profiles of these low 1 or 1.5 star reviewers, they almost exclusively leave negative 1 - 1.5 star reviews on books. The other three categories of characters, world background, and story are all plausible for actually scoring 1 star since they are far more subjective. Even then though, how bad do they all need to be to score 1 star? This is why I say anything beneath a 2 star review is illegitimate, as the reviewer is either not making the review in good faith or not following the rating system as intended. That's not to say some of their written feedback within the review won't be legitimate, but in my experience that tends to be exception to the norm.

So, in summary, you only need 5 stars in update stability and 2 stars in a single other category to score an overall 2 out of 5. Going based off my own writing, it's really the 2 through 4 star reviews that are most valuable. On average, they tend to leave more useful information on both the pros and cons of the story. Reviews below 2 stars are usually either spam or trolls. Those that do leave legitimate reviews beneath 2 stars rarely, if ever, leave good and accurate feedback.

All of the above being said, I do believe the current rating system could use improvement. I sometimes question whether update stability should really be part of a book rating when it has no real impact on the actual story itself. I understand why it's included, but I don't really agree with it. I imagine that removing update stability from the review system would result in more accurate scores across the board, and a lot more stories would likely drop into the 3 star range if it was removed.

SnoozySloth Agreed, I think the review system can use a overhaul. Like one review per book and not letting people delete reviews even if they are troll reviews they should not have that power.

Mookashea You probably didn't get review bombed by an obvious troll willing to do anything to achieve his purpose. Past a certain point, yes, the reviews made by an angry troll could be swallowed in the sea of good reviews. But when you are at the beginning, have a good start, meet the 30~40 reviews with some good chapters on your bag, and fell a massive drop of 0.4 ratings, out of the 4stars range, because seven 1 star reviews appear, you are enjoyed by the fact you can report those reviews.
On this point, webnovel only side with the author. It can be abusive, where people report 2 stars reviews, even when they are truly constructive. But when 7 different accounts wrote the exact same message with only one additional emoji, you love that partiality. The worst is when you politely ask the reviewer to remove the thing kindly, because it is no use, and the answer is "Duh Duh people don't care about ratings, you should not, so I am going to keep your rating low Duh Duh".
Webnovel is system pro-author all the way down and it is a choice. As your quality of reader, you regret this. But some times, you will find agreeable to do things you would find shameless or disgusting as a reader. Maybe you will never will, but I am certain some unlucky ones will experience some bad situations.
And yes, trolls have multiple accounts. Just a few months ago, the entire forum was trying to ban a troll that was spoiling a certain novel. In the end, it was found that he had 8 different accounts, and was dodging the mods with all of them. So 1 review 1 account is not the miracle solution. If you angered the wrong person, this will not stop him/her.

Innovation Yes but this issue has been either resolved or mitigated by other websites with similar review systems in place. From pure ip bans to better moderation over reviews. However with these solutions the 5* emoji reviews would also get taken does as not seen as a true review ( which imo is for the better ) This problem was also resolved on similar sized sites as this one. In the end I think they just need a overhaul of their system to make it fair and balanced with protection from spam reviews for the authors.