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?

      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

          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.

                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.

                        Tomoyuki Well, some people do want to get on the front page and if Webnovel staff see a novel that is highly rated won't it have a better chance to get picked?

                            FREEPALESTINEplz I don't think good reviews get anyone to the front page. Only power stones have the power stones have the power to bring someone to the page on rankings. As for featured, that's mostly from contract or trending. Not because of reviews. Reviews basically have no importance when deciding the front page featured

                              FREEPALESTINEplz What does that have to do at all with what tomo just said? The editors hand pick who is on the front page. Do I need to retype that into simpler terms for you to understand the underlying meanings?

                                  Tomoyuki That makes no sense whatsoever. How am I shooting myself in my foot?

                                  Because they are both report button options. P.S. Obv I was just screwing around with you on this one. Too bad u didn’t get the joke.)

                                  Tomoyuki 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.

                                  I completely agree with you on this.

                                  Tomoyuki Isn't this better than reporting authors, which absolutely does nothing unless you're that determined to ban/blacklit them?

                                  But for whatever reason, we have the system that we have now and authors that delete reviews with constructive criticism to keep their 5 star ratings SHOULD be banned.
                                  The author’s right to delete reviews is akin to a policeman carrying around a gun. He is expect to use it for protection but when he intentionally uses it to shoot down an innocent, you’d obv expect him to go jail.

                                          Tomoyuki I don't care about getting into the front page. It's meaningless. Also, the Webnovel staff are the ones who chooses which stories get into the front page, they don't just randomly pick the highest rated stories.

                                          Lilliny What does that have to do at all with what tomo just said? The editors hand pick who is on the front page. Do I need to retype that into simpler terms for you to understand the underlying meanings?

                                          Now correct me if I’m wrong, but they’d obv pick among the more popular novels? And for a novel to become popular, they’d obv need to start off by having a high rating..

                                                Tomoyuki Why I replied to your reply of 5 head? To give a reason for why someone would want to report.
                                                But when I said "Limitations" it doesn't have to include reporting from your pov or can include the report from someone else's pov. Basically, whatever solution tops at the end can replace that, to prevent the deletion of constructive criticisms.

                                                    Tomoyuki I wholly agree that it would not be optimal, but with "delete -report - review" fewer deleted comments reach the review stage than with "report -review" alone thus Webnovel could hire less manpower, which they may find optimal.

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