• Suggestions

  • Review scores on this site should be reworked or ignored

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.

Screenshot

    JakeRay WN's review system is not optimal, but authors like these are a part of the problem as well because they are abusing the system, which was designed this way at the first place because of some limitations in site moderation.

    Just copy and paste your review as a chapter comment. They can't delete those.

        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.

            JakeRay
            It quite obvious that authors that behave like those that you mention are out to achieve something, and have no qualms about using anything that is available to prop up their own scores. That's why many of the "good" novels have such fake 5 star reviews.
            Anything goes when it comes to attracting the attention of those that are looking for good material to read. Of course, having a rating as close to 5.0 as possible is one way. Having lots of "reviews" and stones is another way.
            So, what can we as readers do to combat this?
            1) Be skeptical about the rating to begin with. Scroll down to see what kind of reviews are given. If you keep seeing 5 star ratings with mindless gibberish as reviews, then they are likely getting boosted by people they know that haven't even touched the book. I, for instance, will delete these kind of reviews because they just look bad and offer nothing of substance.
            2) Are these same people giving out loads and loads of power stones for the novel? Are their names suspiciously similar? Congrats! You just found a novel that is being boosted by dummy accounts! That means that they have no confidence in their own writing to gain fans on their own!
            3) Despite the stellar rating that the novel has, does the first chapter just seem off to you? Does it make you wonder why anyone would keep reading? Yes, there are people that will continue to keep reading to try to understand why this rating is "so good", but don't be fooled! That's exactly what they want you to believe. You have no obligation to do anything for the author. Makes sure to leave your comments about why you think something is off or doesn't work, because they can't delete paragraph and chapter comments. That will serve as a guide for others who have fallen in this trap and missed the previous two telltale signs.

            If you run into any of these, then the question that you must ask yourself. Should you continue? Should you try to support or help out an author that obviously doesn't care about your feedback and is only trying to snag a coveted contract so they can boast about how awesome their writing is?

            I wouldn't. How about you?

              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.

                    kazesenken

                    For the dummy accounts, it depends on the number. I get about 10 power stones daily i think from my brother, mother and a few others friends that want to support me. If that's what you call dummy accounts, indeed they can be considered as such, but in the grand scheme of things it is nothing. I won't appear in any power ranking with these fews stones.

                    Hundreds of power stones daily from fake accounts are another story, but it is quite easy to recognize.

                    For the 10 reviews that allow to get a rating and be better referenced, i think except for R-rated/WPC stories they are mostly fake if you got them before chapter 100.

                    But for constructive reviews, there are also many fakes ones, which explain why they are deleted in my opinion.

                    For example, someone will explain "constructively" why your grammar is so bad and your novel unreadable because of it, to justify a 0/1 star review. If he was following the review rating system, he should at most remove 1 point from grammar and give at least one for update stability.

                    Real fairness, is in fact quite rare. For a young story if your first review is a 2.5 or less, it doesn't matter whether your story is in fact good or not, no one will read it because of this single review.

                    And for contracted authors it is even worse when money is involved and you depends on it to live and feed your family.

                        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.

                                kazesenken

                                Sorry for the late answer, but yes i agree with you. I haven't seen these accounts with similar names yet, except the classic 'daoist23392' and so on.

                                Chryiss

                                These fake constructives notes are indeed probably hate votes, but they have the intelligence to make it respectful in appearance. It makes it harder to delete them.

                                For the 2.5 as a first review, it depends of many things. For example, if it's to complain about the grammar for example, the author is probably already aware of this issue. If it's about character/world background developments, it is rarely objective.

                                Take a book like Hunger games. The characters, world building and descriptions are so minimalist and yet it is a bestseller. Once again it depends on the targeted audience. I would have already judged this book as average when i was 12 years old.

                                A 2.5 constructive review can be good if the author just write to improve or for fun. For those that have deeper goals, maybe they will lose weeks or months of viewerships just because of this.

                                There's quite a few good stories that are buried because of one isolated review.

                                It's sad because the really bad stories thrive easily instead. They have their trusty 'exp reviews' and a good stream of readers to push them up. Not eternal, but enough to give them the momentum they need.

                                I thought a lot, but i still didn't find an original story on webnovel that worked with such a bad and slow start (except the ones contracted and then promoted actively).

                                      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.

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