Webnovel.Forum

Constructive or informative reviews are always a good tool to show other potential readers of what to expect from a novel. I would even say that just a simple review score alone in general can be a decent indicator of what to expect. But for them to be effective, they have to be allowed to exist regardless of the score, outside of the authors reach. If an author is allowed full rights to delete any kind of review at their own discretion, without oversight, the review system and score will lose all truthfulness and relevance.

I wouldn't have even considered writing this, if it wasn't because there is concrete evidence of this happening here. An author of a novel here on WN with a score of 4.8 has deleted my review with a 2.0 score 3 times in the last 2 days. Picture below shows how it looks in my System notifications. I went through 10 pages of reviews, sorted by newest, and found not a single review with a score below 4.0. I'm not sure anyone will believe that to be possible in any scenario, other than it being evidence that author deletes negative reviews to keep his average score high. And this is regardless of the reviews being constructive or informative or not. He deletes everything. I'd be happy to copy/paste my reviews that gets deleted if you guys want, but I don't want to turn this into a witchhunt against the author. He's not the problem, the site allowing authors to delete at their own discretion is.

All of this has been said before by other users on this site, but I feel it should be spoken of every once in a while to let others know what's happening.

To reiterate; review scores on this site are unrepresentative and untruthful to the novels, because authors can delete any review they want to keep their scores high.

Cantiara Nice idea, I'd probably do that in one of the next chapters.

And yes, I understand all the reasons why the system is the way it is now. Lack of manpower and lack of care for integrity, which is a pretty common theme. I also don't have any hope of bringing any changes, especially here on Webnovel. But as long as this is how reviews work on this site, we should always try to shed some light on it. Other users should have the right to know that these problems exists.

Couldn't agree more. Reviews are worthless as a rule, and the whole review system is a joke.

The only way to evaluate a novel here is to start reading it. Usually, a couple of minutes are more than enough to decide whether it's worth your time to continue.

Michael_Ryman
There are actually some people that go around giving nice detailed reviews as to why they scored it the way they did and offer constructive criticism.
These are the reviews to look out for. If you see these with a less then 5 star rating dominating the reviews, then it feels believable.

Arkinslize

Which is why I say that the number is not what matters. The content of the review matters. Some people don't care about bad grammar, whereas some people would find it excruciating to read a horrible machine translation.

So yes, the number really should not matter as it is arbitrary. If us as readers stopped caring about how high the number is, then I'm sure that it wouldn't be as unfair to honest authors. But at the same time, there's no good way to quantify ranking except in ways that people can exploit. You have to do the work of checking to see if there's something suspicious.

Getting stones from friends and family are not what I mean by dummy accounts. It's when you check who has given the author power stones, and you see a list of names that are the same with little differences, like freestones123, freestones345, and so on. And when you check those accounts, they have all been conveniently created at the same time around when the author starts posting the story. Or when the reviews just have a ton of emojis or words like Expexpexpexp, just to fill up the word requirement. If they aren't elaborate enough to hide these obvious flags, then what are the chances that they will come up with a story original enough to please you as a reader?

Arkinslize Those 10 wouldn’t be considered dummy accounts because they’re from real people sending the stone themselves. It’s as you said, dummy are bot accounts.

Fake constructive votes are just hate votes. Sometimes I feel like these also often come from people critical why a story has so many five stars (cough, often due to the reverse fake reviews like emoji ones), so they feel compelled to lower/offset the rating.

I don’t exactly agree with a less than 2.5 star review hurting a young novel to that great of an extent. Perhaps if that was the rating shown on the book, but as a single, perhaps first review, I don’t believe it condemns the book to be not read. At least for me, I’ll read the first chapter just to see why it was less than 2.5, simply because that looks suspicious for a very new story. Of course, this is a case by case situation depending on what the review actually says.

Arkinslize

A 2.5 is kinda hard to achieve.

Language has to be outright abysmal combined with very shaky updates, since you're unlikely to bomb world, character and plot.

If I upload "asdf..." repeated 1000 times daily, then that's five stars for updates. Add four one star components (because "asdf..." repeated 1000 times is utter crap) and you still have a total of nine stars to be divided by five. That's a 1.8 star review.

As an author who's gotten really mean reviews, I can sort of understand why web novel put that review system in place. I used to have to mark, on one of my other counts, that it was abuse and web novel would come along and delete it after a few days. However, usually, those reviews were really not motivating, and some reviews even made authors rage quit because they were so insidious and frankly sometimes untrue. However, I'd also like to add that authors should let constructive reviews remain if they seem relevant, thoughtful, and not destructive.

Frankly, each author's page is like their brand, and what is on that page really matters for their future success. Many lawsuits have been won over people maliciously targeting businesses with bad reviews with money being rewarded to the defendent - or in that specific case the store.

On amazon, I've seen the power of one review on some novels I'm familiar with, and a single bad review can cost an author thousands of dollars. I frankly think that web novel is just trying to protect its authors by giving them the right to delete hurtful reviews.

To be honest, the reviews on this site have also gotten a lot nicer because of this new system. If everyone on this website was nice and constructive before hand, and didn't leave reviews like "Dumb... dumb... dumb... dumb... dumb..." this wouldn't have happened.

If anything, it finally gives authors the ability to defend from the sort of thoughtless reviews that were taking place. Also, not a lot of authors are like the author you described and many keep constructive reviews. I would just think of this new review system as better for author's productivity. It was so hard to write before and deal with these surprise reviews that were just plain mean.

I honestly think webnovel has improved because of this system. However, I do agree that authors should maybe have to give a reason for why they are deleting the review to you as a courtesy.

Her_Shadow

A review isn't meant to motivate the author. It's meant to give prospective readers an idea about the story.

A review is, by nature, subjective. That said, if I hate harem stories I should stay away from reviewing them since I'm unable to discern between such stories.

At the other hand, as a reviewer I have absolutely no obligation to make the author happy. I should give my opinion about the story based on sensible arguments.

Well, I got a bad review that focused on my book from a single perspective that was actually related to a single scene and that got me kinda annoyed. But, the reviewer then went on to talk about his life experiences and the reason why he couldn't read beyond that point in the story and stuff. The longer I read the review, the more I liked the review even though it wasn't a positive review. For info sake, I copy-pasted the review in a word Doc and guess what, the review was actually long enough to fill a regular chapter (1150 words). I straight up pinned that review haha.

StenDuring

I think we're both saying we agree readers shouldn't find a story that's about harems when they hate harems and then leave a review called dumb harem novel... From someone who's gotten close to at least ten reviews like that, ti can be painful. I do think they shouldn't have to respect the author, obviously, but invectives, slights and frankly mean posts should be respectfully be pulled if the author's find them demeaning to their potential readers. Frankly, I think that sometimes it's not only the author that gets insulted, but the readers as well. I've seen quite a few skirmishes between readers that went like this.

"It's not stupid! Read the novel before you review AHole.."

"Screw you... Why would I read a harem novel... Obviously trash not worth reading..."

"Your mother made trash! TRASH TRASH TRASH!"

"I'd drop this novel if I were you..." Another reply... Just saying...

Her_Shadow

Well, as soon as a review says "you are stupid" then it's delete-time.

However, when it says "the main character is stupid" it's probably time to take a closer look at how that main character is depicted.

While an author has no reason to accept personal insults I believe the same author needs to accept when someone dislikes the writing. Disliking the entire genre the story is tagged as belonging to is borderline.

For example, I pretty much dislike litrpg, especially system stories. Before I review one I make absolutely certain the author is fine with it. If I get an OK I'll probably give a rather low character-score. A character knowing him/her -self just isn't the same thing when they fire up a status-display to find out what their personality is like...

StenDuring

I agree with you. In a way, I think the most important thing is that the review is story based, and not based purely on the author's character. If it's based on the story, then I'm fine with it, but when people say "Author idiot dumbass," That review is A class worth deleting.

I also feel people should have to read the story first, at least a little. If you read three words, and go, I hate first sentence, die author... It's pretty amusing but at the same time a little bit useless in terms of story improvement.

Her_Shadow

I've already suggested reviews should be associated with a level three requirement and that stories should be locked for reviews until they're either finished or 10 published chapters long. That way you'd need to be level three and have 10 valid read chapters before submitting a review. Bye bye review-bots.

But hey, here you can review one story more than once but not edit your reviews at all. That's a hard to beat high score in moronicity.

StenDuring

I agree with the ten chapter lock... I hope webnovel can make the system more flexible, but at the same time I'm not a coder. As of right now, I think readers should have some protections put in place for their reviews. If they put in a one day no delete rule, as well as a one review per account rule, plus the ten chapter rule, it would make the system much more balanced.

Either that or they could make it so that reviewers can get ratings from the people that read their reviews and if they have below a 2 their reviews will disappear. As of right now, all that matters is that no one feels slighted.

When I look at reviews, like ones when I'm buying something on Amazon, I always look at the low reviews and high reviews and ask myself, "Are these people being stupid/jerk or are they blindly reviewing?"

Seeing a bunch of these actually gives me the opposite effect. Dumb 1 star reviews make me feel more sympathetic for the novel/product in question, whereas blatant 5 star spam reviews make me pass on it.

Nothing worse than having false advertising gunking up your perception of the subject matter. I don't care if you leave me a bad review. At least, justify why it was given such. Otherwise, people will just think you, as a reviewer, are untrustworthy. Same for good reviews.

Chryiss Those 10 wouldn’t be considered dummy accounts because they’re from real people sending the stone themselves. It’s as you said, dummy are bot accounts.

Dummy account is a pretty ambiguous term, but this is not really true.
Bot accounts are automated, and operates mostly without human oversight. A Dummy account is manually operated, and serves as a reserve account, alternative account, extra account or fake account impersonating someone else. They aren't really the same.

Back to the Review system though, there is one feature that could really improve this site, which wouldn't remove anything, but build on the current procedures in place:

A Trust Factor system.
I'm not an expert in the mathematical calculations nor code behind such a system, but it should be possible.

An author would be able to delete whatever reviews they get, but if they get flagged and judged by moderators to have abused the system, they lose their privileges. A system to regain Trust and privileges should then also be in place, as permanent punishment is unhelpful.

A reviewer would be able to post whatever they want, but if they get flagged and judged to have misused the features or posted with harmful intentions, they lose their ability to post a review for a month (arbitrarily chosen amount of time) and perhaps lose the ability to earn Exp or Fast Passes for a while.

This would significantly improve the current system.

JakeRay I was referring to dummy accounts in the way that the original replier was speaking of them. Of course, you can further separate accounts to main, dummy/secondary, tertiary and etc., and bot accounts. But considering we're talking about reviews, if someone were to review on their dummy account, as in secondary/extra accounts, then I'd be suspicious that it's giving hate reviews because why otherwise wouldn't that review be on the main account? Usually, extra accounts on the reader side are made for getting extra free SS (back in the day) and free passes to read more content. In our conversation, as Arkinslize referred to them initially, dummy accounts to my understanding were being related as the "bot accounts" that artificially boost power stone amounts.

Thus, on the writer side, yes, I'd still equate human operated extra accounts that gives power stones to a certain story as "dummy accounts" in the terminology used for this conversation alone. That writer just didn't know how to make fake accounts through bots so they have to do it manually---I see that essentially as equivalent to one another. In short, I wasn't actually stating dummy=bot accounts in the way that you mentioned and thought I might've meant; it's just to keep the terminology consistent for this particular conversation in order to avoid confusion. As you said, dummy account is somewhat ambiguous. Considering my statement was in reply to Arkinslize, it appears that what dummy account was referring to was understood on both sides.

That kind of trust system, to my observation, hasn't been implemented on any writing platform, so I highly doubt that Webnovel would ever adopt that system considering their current system doesn't even match up to better existing review systems that have a dislike button, editable reviews, and single reviews per user. Before even getting into more "complicated" systems (on a development standpoint), WN doesn't even offer some of the "basics" seen on other sites.

However, since we do have account "levels" on this site earned through exp, as others have suggested previously (iirc, it was StenDuring), WN could use those levels to manage the ability to post reviews and other types of actions. But from the moderation standpoint alone, someone is still judging what a review ought to be deleted or not, so human oversight is still necessary in a trust factor system, making that system essential just boil down to moderation alone with no need for web/app development of trust levels in the code itself.

What I think you might be thinking of is a system like Royal Road's reputation system. Those that get upvotes on their posted content by members of the community gain higher amount of reputation points, so people can easily see if they're respected members of the community. So far, I haven't seen anyone abuse that system on RR, and in fact, it's rather helpful and quite accurate. Still, most of the problem lies in the people themselves. One can only do so much to moderate, judge, and level the field fairly.

Chryiss

There's a fairly simple method (obviously tied in together with automated vetting like using the level system here) that's easy to implement and could be seen as reminiscent of the RR reputation one.

Display the "best" reviews on the site by rank. How to define "best" is another question, but it's doable to handle automatically. Most upvoted, not older than whatever, currently most upvoted (basically a combination of the two previous), etc etc etc. Oh, and add downvoting of reviews as an extra option.

Would it be "fair"? Probably not. The most popular stories would be associated with the "best" reviews, but at least users of Webnovel would have easy access to a ranked list of reviews where the reviews actually look like proper reviews rather than 144 smileys followed by either a five or a one star rating.

Basically, pick the poison that hurts the least.

Chryiss I haven't seen a Trust Factor system on any other platform such as this, but that is because I have never seen a system as it is here on WN. They built it around gaming the system, earning Exp for menial tasks, which degrades the whole purpose of these features. They need some sort of Trust Factor system to restore actual meaning to features such as reviews and comments. Tying Trust together with the current Exp system doesn't sound feasible to me in the way you describe, unless they overhaul the current way to earn Exp.

Moderation could be solved without hiring people. A moderation system like:
Set up an Exp system and a whole isolated Mod Trust Factor system, where flagged issues get sent (in an anonymous form) to ordinary a big group of users on this site, who then decide what kind of fault or no fault lies in the given situation. The majority answer then gets chosen, and the users who chose that answer gets a +1 Trust Factor +Exp, and the users who chose differently gets -1 Trust Factor +Exp. Keep a decent Trust Factor and you can keep earning Exp or maybe Fast Passes (just flinging out ideas), or get too low in Trust Factor (like -10 or something) and be unable to earn Exp through the Moderation system.

It's poorly explained, but I hope it's understandable.

I've seen systems such as these before, so they could definitely work. It's just not in WN's interest to take any such action to implement it, as the work it takes to accomplish would not be proportionate to what it could earn back.

JakeRay That’s exactly the problem. Webnovel’s just not interested in doing that. If they were, they would’ve made reviews only once per account and editable rather than give authors the option of deleting for the sake of not being able to moderate or manage spam or hate reviews themselves as a company. It would be great if the review system improved, but it’s only gotten better in one aspect and worse in the other with the changes they’ve made.

I understand your explanation about the trust factor system. It sounds kinda like a jury system lol. Community moderation might work, but now then it’s a matter of management and communication from that decision group back to the reader or writer, and from being on this site, those are some of the weakest points of WN. I’m also not sure how readers or writers would feel about a select group of people judging since it’s easy for those people to abuse their power or people trying to cater to them. And then there’s the issue of who to choose and do they have the ability to be constructive and unbiased as best as possible. It can be done, but it needs to be super transparent and organized—all of which aren’t strong points by WN or the community here...

In short, we all have many good ideas which could all possibly work, but the problem lies in whether Webnovel is listening and cares to make dev changes to address the review system issue over other things they want to implement.

Chryiss My idea wasn't to gather a group of users, just that a decision wasn't in the hands of a single user. Every decision is taken alone, anonymously. No user is chosen as a decision-maker, a user opts in to the program and reviews flagged cases. As many facets of the system as possible has to be completely anonymous for it to work.