Tomoyuki I am talking about the deletion of reviews to keep the good ones at the top, making the novel reach a 4.8,4.9,5
Is there a way to report someone?
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Hater_Beyond And this is something to be reported? Are you suggesting that authors be banned or blacklisted for such behavior? Because they "wasted your time"?
Tomoyuki Not exactly banned or blacklisted but other limitations could be set for their scammy behaviors.
While authors being able delete reviews that are spam or harassment is important, it also allows some authors to abuse the function. It allows a novel that is legitimately unreadable (e.g. lorem ipsum translated through 5 languages) to have a 5 star rating. This is unfair for authors who have readable novels who do not delete reviews containing constructive criticism because higher rated novels are more likely to get views. This is also unfair for readers who want to rely on ratings to find well written novels.
Hater_Beyond Let me put it this way. You are looking at this from the wrong angle.
If you are unhappy about your reviews getting deleted, you should be requesting that the authority invested upon writers to delete reviews at their own discretion be removed. You should be suggesting ways to implement a fair and impartial moderation system where a third party decides whether a review is abuse and should be deleted.
Not call for a report function or demand some sort of punishment for "scam" behavior. Because right now it seems to me that you are more interested in raising pitchforks and burning writers at stake than you are over questions of honesty and integrity.
Tomoyuki When did I "call for a report function" or "demanded some sort of punishment." A report function or a punishment doesn't have to align with "Limitations" that I mentioned.
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Tomoyuki You should be suggesting ways to implement a fair and impartial moderation system where a third party decides whether a review is abuse and should be deleted.
Isn’t this just a reverse for an option of reporting authors that delete reviews with constructive criticism to keep their 5 star rating? You’re kinda shootin urself in the foot with this sort of argument)
i'd like a banner next to the rating saying: "this author removes negative reviews, do not take into account an artificially boosted rating"
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Sythcake That makes no sense whatsoever. How am I shooting myself in my foot? Royal Road does this, and it works far better than leaving the power to delete reviews to writers. Obviously a third party will be more impartial than a writer who wants to preserve his/her 5 star rating. Even better, they will get rid of those emoticons and fake 5 star reviews that artificially inflates the ratings. Isn't this better than reporting authors, which absolutely does nothing unless you're that determined to ban/blacklit them?
If you're the reader who wrote a super-long review with constructive criticism - which choice is better for you? To report the writer for deleting your review and thus wasting your time, just so, what, you can get him/her banned and blacklisted? Or to have a third party rule your review in your favor and make sure your review stays up there on the site for other readers to read? Obviously the latter, not unless you admit to trolling the author and writing because you expect your review to be deleted. Or you're deliberately wasting your time writing the review just so you can get the author banned/blacklisted.
Hater_Beyond
Then why are you jumping into the conversation and replying to my post, which was a response to 5Head_Osopopototo on why demanding for a function to report the author is irrational? Also you claimed that the whole thing is a "scam", and complained about writers "wasting your time". You were particularly fixated on "scammy" behaviors. If that was not what you meant, then clarify what limitations you want, because right now it sounds like you're disagreeing with me in order to support 5Head_Osopopototo's demand for a report author function.
"Bro just delete your *, your novel and your ideas of a story is a waste of space. You cant write a fucking novel about summoning you piece of horse *..."
"Just delete your story, and fuck off, you piece of ****"
"Kill yourself, ur story is ****"
"What is dis garbage?"
"Fuck you, author! Just kill urself!"
I receive comments like these on a regular basis. Can you guess what happens if you make a report function for readers? They'll just report me for no reason other than they hate my story. I never delete these reviews or comments, but because they obviously hate me, they will abuse the report function to get me banned or blacklisted. So instead of preventing writers from abusing the power to delete reviews, you instead decide to give readers power to abuse. You know, I got driven out of Royal Road because people spammed 0.5 ratings on my story everyday (different from reviews, which are moderated), to the extent I just deleted my account and left the site. And now I'm seeing people here call for functions to allow readers to harass writers by reporting them. It doesn't matter what your intention is behind this, if readers hate my story, for example, they will report me for no reason other than because they hate my story just so they can get me banned.
Probably you guys want to consider the implications of this before suggesting such measures.
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Tomoyuki I feel you may be taking this too personally. Perhaps a report function would be okay if it simply escalated a case to a Webnovel employee to review if the deletion of a review by an author was justified or simply points inflation, whereby in the later case, the author (perhaps after several strikes) has their review deletion ability revoked.
Now before you make the case that there would be too many reports for any number of staff to handle, the reports could first go through some regex matching against a database of deleted reviews. If the ASCII content of the review (to exclude emoticons) does not repeat itself several times in a row, does not have a 90% match to some threshold (let's say 20) of deleted reviews by other authors, and does not contain pre-flagged hate speech (e.g. "kill urself"), then it would escalate to a staff member to determine.
To discourage false reporting, IP bans could be leveraged against the reviewers especially in the case of hate speech. Honestly, IP bans aren't harsh enough for those who engage in cyber bullying, but there's not much else that can be done that would be more severe. Perhaps make their coins cost more?
FREEPALESTINEplz A good novel or a bad is all subjective though. You don't like it doesn't mean others don't like it
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I got 3 1 star reviews in one night because two characters had a boring conversation according to that person. All three reviews were from 'different' level one accounts and said the similar thing.
A point to note is that the conversation is on chapter 247, so a level 1 account already raises certain flags.
Just imagine how spammed this community will be if the authors won't be able to delete such spam targeted reviews with no real constructive criticism or judgement of the story. Anyone would be targeted and forced to delete their account once they are to tired
Ohhh, we need more oil to fuel fire in this thread
Demonic_angel This kind of spam and the botting that happens in WPCs is the reason reviews from Level 1, 2, and 3 accounts, even if genuine, seem like bots and scam if you don't open their profiles to check. :cry:
At least, that's how it is for me.
RABBITICOL Lol I checked their profile. All three accounts were made in March 2020 and haven't even commented on any other novel.
In short, although the power to delete reviews can be used negatively, the positive aspects outweigh the negative. Also, most authors don't delete a useful review even if the rating is low as there is no ratings ranking, fortunately lol So you don't have to worry about ratings or them getting more exposure. It's not like people won't read a 3.9 star novel if the synopsis and the theme attracts them or read a 5 star novel if it's not their cup of tea. I personally don't even look at ratings and reviews when I read a novel
Demonic_angel don't even look at ratings and reviews when I read a novel
I do the same for Originals. For Translations though, I go to the review section on NU first now and check for reviews.
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KoraL If you are going to do that, why not cut to the root of the problem and do it the Royal Road way? If writers feel that a rewiew is spam or abuse or unfair, they report it to the staff, who will decide whether it's fair to delete the review.
Why go in such a roundabout manner and let the writer delete reviews, just for readers to report them? It's redundant. If you're going to introduce the whole report mechanic in the first place, just have the writer report the reviews instead of allowing them to delete them at their own discretion, and then have an additional step of readers reporting the writers for doing so.
Demonic_angel thats not the point, if the author is deleting actual constructive criticism and all the good reviews stay then that may bring him to the front page more likely to bring him views, while other authors who similarly have good reviews but don't delete constructive critism reviews may not get into the front page because of him.