So I recently Madea review on a novel, I was less than impressed with. Mind you I normally don't give reviews, but this one was sooo bad (the part that I read at least). I was open, honest and completely transparent with my review, though of cause I found the book bad. I then kept getting messages from the author telling me I needed to read more of the book in order to change my opinion, sorry but why should have have to stomach through have of the book in order to find something I finally like. So the whole time I kept telling her, no I'm going to keep my review the way it is. It got to where she was TELLING me I needed to change my review because it was completely wrong (in her opinion). Finally I said enough I not changing it, and since she felt that my review was sooo wrong she should just make a review or something to state her case. Since like I said I felt there was nothing wrong with what I put. I tagged it as spoilers, I gave examples of what I was talking about and I repeatedly stated that it was my opinion before, during and at the end of my review. I also felt that I needed to make a review about it because there were no other negative reviews, just positive ones. And I felt it would be better to tell my opinion so people would have a better understanding of what they were getting into. Anyway I then get a notification that not only has my review been deleted by the author, but all the messages as well. I am mostly writing this to vent cause I am furious. How do you call yourself an author when you can't even take criticism? You should be ashamed of how childish and petty you are! Anyway is there anyone else who has experienced something like that?
Authors deleting reviews
Tomoyuki also, I did think of that, but I also made a comment to her saying that it was not always a bad thing to have negative reviews cause for one it gives people a better over all picture, and second if a product has only positive reviews people might start to doubt the credibility of the reviews. She may have not looked that. Though I was just stating it from my own experience
Gem4Life Yeah, that's right. If a story has nothing but positive reviews, I tend to suspect something. I prefer stories that have a mix of both positive and negative reviews because they provide a more balanced and overall picture. Of course I don't mean negative reviews that are just 0.5 or 1 star reviews insulting the writer or calling the story or characters stupid or retarded without actually explaining what they didn't like about the story or characters, it has to be legitimate and fair criticism, or I won't take such negative reviews seriously either.
Gem4Life I was just asking because some people tend to read the first chapter and go off into a rant about how terrible the story is, and I think that's a bit unfair.
And there are those who post nonsensical reviews like "WTF is this trash?!" when they didn't read the story at all (their reading status is Ch. 0).
Lol, thnx for the support, that made me feel a lot better
Yea, I thought so too, but it was supposed to be the wedding night, just it was a forced marriage to a man who killed the woman's family, and then out of no where she was OKAY with sleeping with him, just because her body responded to him. I felt unwell reading that
Gem4Life I actually prefer readers like you who honestly say their opinion on what the state of the story is, anyway, it's up to the author if he/she can't handle constructive criticism. I believe you have said your point nicely and so, it's up to the author is he/she will take it as a sign to improve more or not. Failure makes us grow, so is the negative feedback.
Aysel_Inara I don't feel comfortable making that public. I'm sorry. If you ever come across it, I don't think it'll be hard to figure it out.
For what it's worth, I have only received a single negative review on my story. I deleted it. I didnt do so because I cared about criticism. I did it because it contained a wall of graphic offensive content and a flurry of spoilers without being tagged for spoilers.
Dont be that guy (because they are always guys).
Gem4Life If this was an honest review, which allows the author to improve his weaknesses, strengthen them, then I welcome such reviews. If they are written in order to show the pros and cons. And not just reveling in their knowledge of English.
For example, my content is interesting, but the English language leaves much to be desired. I have reviews on three stars, I accept them normally. They were on one star, they just wrote there - that the novel is bad, that I, as an author, are bad, that with my knowledge of the English place I have no place on the site. I deleted it. Since he did not read the novel, he did not understand the essence, if my English were native, I would not laugh at other people with poor knowledge of my native language. As I would understand, the fact that a person is trying, wants to share his thoughts, and he will improve his language as new chapters are published, he will learn English in practice. No need for a person to take away interest in the language. Yes, he does it poorly, but you can understand the essence, one way or another. If it were not interesting, readers would not read.
If you are honest with yourself, if you respect yourself, then you will respect others. This is the norm. I do not delete such reviews, the rating is not so important to me yet, my readers and my desire to share information are important to me. Which I find interesting not only for myself but also useful for others.
I just wrote about this one small chapter in the work devoted to thoughts on writing novels. This is my subjective opinion.
Thanks.
How many stars did you give :star:
I'll think from the other side of spectrum.In my personal opinion ten chapters are not much to judge a story . Secondly, if it was the author's first novel,sure she'll feel bad about a review criticizing her story she put her heart on. They'll most probably improve as they write more . You should've given her a positive review, like 3 stars and telling her the things the story lacked and things she could do to improve .
Nah I can't imagine a story where theres sex ten chapters in, even in a sequel. That story's pace seemed way off. I've read erotica, and the sex, like the 'secks secks', doesn't happen until right before or after the climax. This is because we've watched the two love interests develop and grow to like eachother, so it feels like we the reader are being rewarded for being with these two characters through the book. From what I understand, this chick was forced to marry this guy because he murdered her family. Yikes.
At least make it like beauty and the beast, where they're alone together because of a good reason. Or make it interesting where right before the ugh... 'honeymoon' she stuffs a fork into her underwear and pokes his eye out. I'd read that. Please someone write that.
We cannot decide that. A person should delete any kind of reviews or not is his/her decision.
While I get your frustration, I can't say much because I do not know what kind of a review you had dropped.
You read. You didn't like. You wrote a review stating the same. Your job is done there.
The writer read. The writer didn't like. He/she deleted the same. Her job is done.
Look honestly, I have got no reason to defend anyone and I won't do that either. There are a bunch of things in the world that we do not like. Again - that doesn't mean that they aren't good. (The reference is general.) They maybe good. They maybe not. It's a subjective thing but do we get stuck on something that we don't like? No, right? We move on and ideally, we should because that's not our stuff to change.
A couple of things like the writer should be ashamed of not being able to accept the criticism is quite disappointing to read. You went too far really. At least that's what I feel. Come on, people. As humans, we have different capacities and capabilities. Not everyone can deal with criticism well. Not everyone can deal with negative comments well and it's okay. Sooner or later, everyone learns. Life has a way of teaching everything to everyone! Besides, we cannot force and teach someone who isn't willing to learn. Let everyone learn at his/her pace.
Months ago, I had come across a tale on some other platform where a rape was justified and glorified. I didnt read it to be honest. One of my readers had reached out to me back then and she had told me that there was this kind of a story that she was reading that had made her feel nauseated.
I did check it out and I was awfully upset. It didn't go well with me. The author had said that the girl falling in love with her husband who had abused her and raped her was justified because apparently the ML had a bad past. I believe this is the lamest reason that a lot of people use to write, justify and glorify rape. What's even more awful is the fact they majority of writers who find writing such stuff is okay are girls. I used to get a little too worked up back then. Perhaps, as angry as you are, right now but now, I have accepted that I cannot change anything and I shouldn't try either because that's not my work to interfere in.
The only thing that people who do not like such stuff can do is - stop reading and look for something better. That's about it.
Clowniac Yea, I get that, but for me at least. I believe in being respectful till I can't. First thing I did was tag spoilers. Let readers know that I read a few of the chapters. (I believe it was actually 9 after I went back and checked). and the only used examples from the story, most of which I just gave an obreviated example so that way if people wanted to read it, they would not feel that I gave it away for them. I did say that I found certain characters rapey (cause I did), but that was the only offensive content I used. And I said cause I had a major problem with it
Gourmet_DAO Yea, I get that, but I said none of that. I based my review on the characters and the story itself. Be er mentioned the grammar, the author or anything offensive like that. Like I told the author. I wrote my review for other people like me, so that they would have a better understanding of what is in the book and can then decide for themselves if they want to read it. If the author did not understand that, I don't know what to say. I did not give critcs in the since that I think you mean: letting them what they could have done better and such. Because I did not feel that it was my place. I don't know what they invitioned for their story. But what I did do was write down the parts and aspects of the story I did not like, why I did not like them and tried to give good examples to show what I was talking about
Gourmet_DAO as you can imagine it was a long review
Demonic_angel I think it was like 2 1/5 stars at most. Which thinking back is the one part I regret. Cause there was some aspects to the star counter that I could not give a review on cause I did not know: how frequent is the author update. And world setting. And since I only read a handful of chapters I did not see much world development. So for those I did not vote at all cause I did not have anything to give. That more than likely brought the rating down a lot more. And had I thought about it more U would have realized that.
LostInFictions I never said the writer should be ashamed. I said I wrote this post to vent. Which is what I did. I am so mad because even after we messaged back and forth and while I refused to delete my review, or change it to make her happy, she still goes and takes it down. Just because SHE does not like it. I'm sorry, but on any other page an author does not just take down a review they don't like (I hope), just because they don't like it. Why because that just creates a false narrative and in the end I do feel it reflects badly on them
LostInFictions thank you for that, but I feel I should clarify, there was no actual rape ( at least not were I stopped) , there was a sexual assault (but not from the ML), the reason I say it felt like that, is because it felt like she was given no choice (and mostly she was given no choose, exp. In marrying him). Her feelings did not appear to be taken into consideration at all. Since he supposedly loves her, I thought he should think more about how she would feel in having to marry into the family that murdered her own. But again there was no actual rape
LostInFictions
Abuse is an easy way to write cheap romance. But isn't that what reviews are for? So that you know what you're getting into?
If I click on a romance, the synopsis has no red flags, and its got 4.8 stars or whatever, I'd want to go see what other people think about it. If the author is deleting reviews that reveal that they're writing a bad story, don't I have a right to know?
And even if I don't read those wonderful, wonderful reviews and just jump in, am I not allowed to let others know what they're going to read?
You say it's within an author's right to delete reviews of 'any kind,' but that allows an author to abuse the system. If a user sees only good reviews that tells them nothing about the story, why even give users the option to review anything. Think about what the word 'review' actually means! What does it mean to review something? How good is it for us to leave a 'review' of what we just read! Not just showering an author in glitter and cotton candy.
I'm pretty sure the deletion option was just to combat spam as Webnovel has like... not enough moderators. The delete button was never intended to shield an author's fragile ego, nor was it a place for users to bully authors. I do understand that sometimes as an author its hard to tell when someone its just taking a dump on what you felt was hard work, but in the end its up to you to walk away and cool off. Try to understand what the reader was really trying to say. Were they really taking a dump, or was there just no toilet paper?
xcares I'm not sure if that's fair. If you're too lazy to write a proper review and explain, then you shouldn't complain if people delete it.
It's like me complaining about getting a F grade when I'm too lazy to write a proper essay. If you can't be bothered to elaborate or write, people are not going to bother with your review/opinion.
Ah! Completely okay
I'm sure he/she will improve this behaviour.
Gem4Life Then I see no problems to delete the review. Since there were no insults, the transition to the personality of the author. And you just pointed out that IMHO that you did not like and liked. Any review of the classic scenario should first begin with praise to the author, and then indicate weaknesses. Well, we were taught at university at lectures on teaching methods. The rating is probably important to those who receive money under the contract and who is a free author, it is likely to him, well, personally it’s not so important for me yet. I just started writing, I know that I have mistakes, but when I write new chapters, I learn a little, change my style, and try to improve the text. So this is still a long way to popularity and giving the rating great importance.
- Edited
Gem4Life Oh, I am very sorry but I clearly remember you having written that the author should be ashamed of not being able to take the criticism because had I not read that, probably I wouldn't even have commented.
It's not that I don't know where you are coming from. I know. I know it all. Have been there. Done that. In the time span of three years that I have been writing on different writing platforms, I have been through it all. The anger. The frustration. The disappointment. Everything and honestly, if you ask me how I would feel if someone deletes my review - of course, I would be a little upset. I would be annoyed. Perhaps, will rant for days at home (where nobody cares about anything related to this writing stuff though) but eventually, I would make a note of it that I wouldn't go back to this author and his/her works again. That's my personal choice.
Because, I know - getting worked up in this scenario is useless and that's not going to change anything. Even if I get irked up if someone deletes my review - what's that gonna do? Nothing to be honest. Will that author stop deleting negative reviews? I don't think so.
My sole point was - getting worked up for it isn't going to change anything. We should rather invest our energy where it would be useful is all that I meant to convey.
Cheers.
Gem4Life I was talking about some other story.
Lilliny You know that. I know that. Everyone doesn't and we can't help it. Do you really think that if we sit and try this explaining to people - they are going to understand?
People understand only what they want to and this case, they would never want to understand this. Let me give you a quick example. I have come across plenty of plagiarism cases back then when I was even yet to step in the world of writers and everybody - everybody who I had asked to take down his/her work - refused to do that until I spent my hours and days explaining to them that plagiarism is a crime. Even recalling that exhausts me for it was crazy back then. No matter how nicely I tried to explain them - they wouldn't even feel sorry for stealing someone's work.
I am not saying things just like that. It's from the experiences that I have had. It's okay to get upset over this system. My point is - that's not going to change anything so it is futile.
I have always looked forward to people pointing out my mistakes. (That isn't always easy to accept though.) I go in slightly depressed zone and suffer from writer's block if any reader tells me that my update is boring and that's so natural to feel if I have spent hours crafting that update. It takes me a while to get out of that mindset and start editing again to make it less boring but I keep everything. Deleting comes in the option only if someone is absusing me because that's something that I can accept. (Fortunately, hasn't happened to me so far.)
Having said that - I know where you guys are coming from and believe me I know what it is. What I said is simply on the basis of a fact that it doesn't change anything and if it doesn't, there is no point in investing your energy on the same. I believe, everyone's time is too precious to invest in the stuff one doesn't like.
Cheers.
- Edited
LostInFictions I understand that, at this point I'm over it. Now im just responding cause I like to hear other people's take on it, plus it beats a boring weekend/ weekday. And I feel ride not responding at this point since I'm the o one who made the thread ( first time ever). But thanks 
also, you're right. I went back and I did write it. When I originally wrote I felt like that. But afterward I lost my anger and got over it. When you wrote that, I really did forget writing that at the end of the post, but I'm going to leave it there because it was my genuine emotion at the time. I was very upset (so upset I didn't go back a proof read for any typos and errors 'shake my head')