Why are Authors and Translators allowed to artificially boost their ratings by delete bad reviews? I have tried to leave 3 star constructive reviews on some of these LNs or Original LNs on this site and they are deleted, with in just a few hours to a day, by the Author. It is very easy to have a HIGH star rating when these Authors are artificially boosting their ratings by being allowed to delete all or most of the 3 star or lower reviews. Some of these authors say that these people are all trolls and ask their 10k-30k+ readers to go leave a bunch of 5 star reviews to offset the bad "troll" reviews (in the author notes at the bottom of the chapter).

For an example the "Author of Endless Path : Infinite Cosmos" keeps deleting all his low star reviews or opinions on their LN. Now I know some may say that the review must be saying something inappropriate or cussing the author out. So, Ill leave an example of what the review was:

"The question I have: Are there ever going to be any normal girls in this LN that arn't going to be chasing after the MC? Why does every single girl claim that all guys are discussing, perverted, lecherous, and only want to grab them and do dirty things to them outside of the MC? It is fine when it is a few or several girls with the MC or chasing the MC, but it is EVERY single girl in the story that is HOT for him.

There are almost no normal girls or guys in the story. All but 2 of his entire guild (Familia) is made up of his Harem of girls that are chasing after him or sleeping with him. Several of the girls he sleeps with only wanted him because they saw all the other girls dating him and sleeping with him. Another girl just wanted to have someone take care of her so she can lay around the house and not have to do anything in life. Why couldn't these types of girls, that have no real relationship with the MC, be used as normal girls in this LN and have them find other guys to have relationships with? This would have made the LN a lot better. At this point it seems that all the normal guys in the LN must not be guys at all, but must be cross dressing girls that like to go around looking and dressing like guys. That is the only reason I can find for why these girls with no relationship to the MC don't go after them instead of the MC."

Anyway, that is the type of reviews being deleted. But, why are the authors allowed to artificially boost their ratings by deleting them? It makes it hard to know if you want to waste your time reading a LN when the reviews and ratings are being manipulated.

    I know what you mean. It's really annoying if an author delete a review especially if that review is constructive criticism. I think WN added this feature because some users kept on posting 1star spam review and they just don't have the manpower to delete those reviews thus they gave the responsibility to the authors. You must admit, it must be quite annoying to the authors to see 1star rating review full of nothing but emojis. So I understand if they want to delete those. 😅

    But of course, there would be a downside. Some authors tend to abuse this 'delete' feature just to boost up the rating of their novels. I wish they just delete those spam reviews and retain the truly constructive ones.

      Sighgray It is to bad there isn't a report system where we can report authors or translators that are abusing the system. If there were enough reports QI/WN could punish them with removing the use of this function for a few weeks or months at a time. This would help to stop this artificial boosting of their ratings.

          SorcererCat because WN gave them that power. Unfortunately, some writers have no idea how lucky they are to receive constructive reviews. Or any feedback to be honest. Imo, it's bad form to delete constructive feedback someone took the time to post. I wouldn't do it regardless of my feelings. That's just me.

            Sighgray I remember one book faced 1 star spam bullying because of it. So, in this respect is understandable to delete those reviews. It's the only power a writer has in that respect.

            I guess troll and spam reviews would be the exception and reason for deleting, since they hold no opinion on the book or author's writing. Their purpose is to annoy.

                Veronica8 I agree. It is just to bad there isn't something implemented that allows us readers to stop these authors/translators from abusing the system.

                  How about those only emoticons reviews? Or just a bunch of letters that really has no words? Just to have a lot of reviews? Or what purpose? Isn't that there should be a system not to allow those kind of reviews right? Spamming to show that a lot of reviews?

                    Elise_Elleneth The only problem in implementing a program for this would be that they just need to get some real words or sentences that don't have anything to do with the LN and spam that instead. I agree though. I really dislike those reviews. It use to be a LOT better on QI/WN and didn't have reviews like that. For about the first 2 years of the site most reviews actually had something to say. There were still some who would only say " Great Novel Great Novel". It wasn't as bad as it is now though.

                    These types of reviews really do make it hard to find legitimate reviews to read and see if you want to read the LN. They also flood out people how leave reviews about what they have read and wondering about if such and such thing changes later on in the story.

                      And some of us can't be bothered to even delete the spam emoji reviews 😂. It depends on the author, but it's unusual for a author who has a novel that has so many ratings to spend so much time and effort to go through and delete bad reviews 🤔 because they'd have to go through a LOT.

                      SorcererCat I am an author myself and I get a lot of 1 star review when the one making it doesn't even read my book that's what I delete 😆 I got a lot of low review too but I let it stay since it's from true reader even though they use mean words and insulting me so I think it depends on the author theirselves

                        8 days later

                        xeacarons I fully agree with you. But they did this to get people to put reviews up on new LNs that have little to no reviews. Maybe if they only gave exp once per LN or had an exp cap on this function it might help out.

                            If authors remove 1 star reviews with 0 chapters read, it should automatically remove a 5 star review with 0 chapters read along with it. Otherwise, it doesnt matter what excuse authors give for removing 1 star reviews, if you're removing one because they didnt read your story, and not the 5 star ones for the same reason, you're doing precisely what the title says.

                              sekmet022 Um, some authors remove 1 stars with 0 chapters read because of the emoji spam and XP spam? There's also some copy and pace reviews that users post on every single novel, indicating they didn't read it.

                                  sekmet022 I do agree with you. The only issue is that it seems that the phone app lets people read the LN and when leaving comments shows 0 for chapters read. At least that is what some people, on WN, have said. And others read the LN and don't login so it shows 0 chapters for them too. I don't know how these people are able to never get their read chapters updated, but it does seem that some of them fall into this situation.

                                      XOMatsumaeohana And authors dont have 5 star reviews with the same thing? C'mon man.. lets not piss on people and tell them its raining, we both know that for every 1 star review that gets removed, theres a 5 star thats just as worthless. The only reason authors dont remove those 5 star reviews with tons of emojis or "expexpexpexp" is because it makes their novel's rating look better. Justify it all you want, i frankly find the double standards fairly amusing, but it pretty much means any author that practices this has 0 credibility/integrity, both as a human being and as an author.

                                      SorcererCat In the end, its not really about the 0 chapters read, since anyone can click "Read" on the novel, then scroll down a couple of chapters so that it shows something other than 0 chapters read when they review. The main problem is the content of the reviews, a 1 star "This book sucks." should share about the same credibility as a 5 star "This book is great". Yet we both know only one of these will be getting removed. Reviews are not actually being used for reviewing, they're treated instead as a comment section to spam in without properly judging the contents of the novel.

                                            sekmet022 I agree with you. Personally I wish they would get rid of both. I want to know why it was GREAT or why it was CRAP. All these spam reviews that say nothing or give no reasons are just a bunch of garbage and a waste of space.

                                              Sighgray I'm ok with self reviews, WHAT I DONT GET THOUGH, is we are allowed to review more than once on same novel

                                              Also even if we cant renove our own reviews dude, please note that a lot of people do review swaps, which is the TRUE FAKE RATINGS. At least with your own review, you are saying off your thought, and starting off your novel

                                                6 days later

                                                All these people that are saying that the author/translator should have this deleting power because of 1 star spam emoji reviews can go suck balls. I don't see them (author /translator ) delete 5 star emoji spam reviews, why should they be allowed to delete 1 star reviews. People should just be able to down vote a review and emoji's shouldn't be considered as letters in reviews.

                                                  Qwertg I agree with everything except down voting. The reason I say this is because then authors will just have 5-10 fake accounts and down vote ALL reviews they don't like. The rest is good though.

                                                      I think sometimes it has to do with the quality of reviews some critics make. It's not an author's fault if some critics give blind praise to crappy works just to get a good one in return. I have nothing about review swaps but sometimes it can be a culprit to the artificial boosting trend.

                                                      I thought CK said that translators couldn't delete their reviews?

                                                      Scrolls up. Yep, he did.

                                                        SorcererCat Well this platform is from China and it pretty much works in the way it works in that country, so if you've been in this business for a long time enough (like me :D), you wouldn't be surprised because that's the way they are overthere and nobody (both readers and writers) ever complains about it like you guys do about many things (not just reviews, you know, many other unreasonable stuff), so they just take it for granted and think it will surely work in intermational markets too ∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿Back there when I tried to complain they were just like "shut the fxxk up and follow the rules"∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

                                                        If you presume those people are qualified as writers with dignities then you couldn't be more wrong. Like I said, they are pimps who treat their novels like street girls and force them into whatever their tasteless customers like. They don't give a damn about the artistic value of literature. Even if WN updates the platform and shut down writers' ability of deleting 1-star review, they will probably just find their fanatic brainless fans in China and call on them to flood this place to add those 5-star spams and pour 1-stars onto whatever novels that are viewed to be "rivals".∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿They are businessmen, not authors, and the vulgar, villain type of businessmen, too.

                                                        Addition: This is only a comment on those authors who delete bad reviews indiscriminately while their works are...objectively speaking, sxxt.∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

                                                          It would be easy to cut down spam reviews. Only allow one REVIEW OF EACH BOOK PER ACCOUNT and allow editing of reviews. And only allow reviewing if you are at least for example lvl2. Problem solved i think

                                                          15 days later

                                                          I wish this wasn't a problem. It's hard to trust a review section when the person with the most skin in the game can get rid of criticism with a couple of clicks. The review section is meant to be for the readers not the author. I know a lot of writers aren't like this and I've never seen the profiles translating novels get into trouble for it, but come on. In what world does it make sense for the author to have the power to look at their reviews and say "nope" to a bad one.

                                                          4 days later

                                                          sekmet022 is there such a function to know how many chapters or how long a reviewer reads before /after sending in their thoughts?

                                                              23 days later

                                                              CKtalon If it's not the author, then, who is deleting those review? And why is it only 3 star less review that are deleted? Why are the review full of smiley & exp but with 5 stars... still there?
                                                              I got one of my review deleted and i don't understand why.

                                                                  Yes, so you are dealing with a story of the type: poor quality both in writing and in scriptwriting, with 250 chapters, all with spelling mistakes, but with a contract with Qidian. I think you have to take this with a grain of salt e_e

                                                                  In four years of writing I have seen this very often, those who write more and faster are the most successful.
                                                                  So even if the quality of the story is shitty, this story will have more visibility than any other. And to get even more visibility, what do we do? We delete all reviews below 3.5 stars.

                                                                  Why would WebNovel punish that? It's all good for them. If more people come to read thanks to the note: 4.6 for exampe, then more people come and use their spirits stones.
                                                                  Same thing with the original authors; WebNovel will not punish them when they are possible gold mines.
                                                                  We're not going to lie to each other, WebNovel may be one of the best sites for writers all over the world, but it's still a money factory.

                                                                  ealdgyth
                                                                  The xp system is fine, but like everything, it's "bad" at the same time. WebNovel wants to be like a kind of video game. They build user loyalty by raising their level and rewarding them better over time, much like in the stories with Cultivation in their tags.
                                                                  If they delete that, they will lose some of their users and moreover the new readers and authors will have no reason to stay, because the site will have nothing different from a site like Wattpad or others.

                                                                      Brainr0t I have no problem with the xp system, except for the part where it's encouraging spam and trash reviews. I wish there was a better way of making readers write reviews. I myself rarely give them, since they take time and effort to write. I give reviews only when a novel is truly worth it, and I have actually read through most of it. I could care less for getting 5 xp.

                                                                        20 days later

                                                                        What I don't like in some reviews, the most favorable 5-star reviews are pinned by the Author to moved it up the Liked list whereas the negative 1-star reviews with the most 'likes' got moved down by such action. I also find several reviewers that gave favorable reviews would post numerous times while the negative reviewers just once. This really eschews the ranking of the novel.

                                                                        What if a second page, featuring only 'Approved' reviews, was made, without getting rid of the actual one?
                                                                        Each page could have an maximum capacity on how much they could affect the ratings (2.5 to 2.5)
                                                                        The Author can only 'Approve' reviews with more than (X) Likes, and were posted by an account over (X) Level.

                                                                        The Maximum Capacity of the Approved Page would be decided by an Average of (Number of Reviews) and (Rating given by these reviews)
                                                                        The Maximum capacity may freely decrease, buy may not increase over 2.5

                                                                        If the author has abused the power to approve only reviews over (X) Stars, the Max Cap may decrease, can be accounted based on [Rating of reviews approved by author] and [Rating of Normal reviews]

                                                                        When a review is approved by an author, it can be Upvote or downvote by readers, but this is limited to those above (X) Level, who spent above (X) Minutes reading novel.
                                                                        If Approved review is downvote enough times by readers who posses these numbers, it may be marked with 'Unpopular' and remain so until upvote enough.
                                                                        Readers (possessing the numbers stated above) still have a Maximum capacity of Votes they can give.

                                                                        Reviews not approved by Author still can receive votes though, and be 'Approved' by the general public. This general public still have to conform to the conditions before voting.

                                                                        I don't know what more to add and whether this would work or not. I'm tired after tipping this much.

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