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I see everyone talk about authors deleting reviews, actually how we do it? I don't even see an option for it. I can only delete my own reviews, while in others review, the only option is report abuse.

AI380 There is a dustbin icon right next to the three dots at the bottom right of each review. Click on it if you want to delete the review.

Tomoyuki I guess it's only available for pc version, but thanks for the information, I hope I wouldn't have to a chance to use it.

AI380 Oh, yeah. Sorry, I should have specified. I was indeed talking about the PC version.

Sage_HiddenBear A author can see the review go back and edit his chapter.

Now he have edited his chapter or even part of his story line but the person who gave him 1 star would naturally not know.

That's why review deletion is available. Consider 10 people gave you 5star while out of nowhere 5 people gave you 1 star. What will you do then?

Sage_HiddenBear I totally agree! Authors shouldn't delete reviews unless it's obviously flaming abuse which is, like, the main reason why the choice exists. Though tbh I do wish we can see which aspects of the rating (eg. character, world building etc) specifically they rate not just the average. It really tests my curiosity and patience when I see a review saying my story is perfect and they loved it etc but only give 3.5 stars, like, come on, at least tell me what went wrong QAQ

Lazy_leon

I’m new here, and just sorta skimming though this conversation, but why not let readers update their reviews and ratings? If an author wants his rating changed because of an update, they can PM the person who wrote it. This encourages more communication between reader and writer while fixing both problems.

Also, assuming the review is detailed to the point where the author knows what to fix, people can figure out why a story had gotten bad reviews before the updates. Might even be fun to see that your favorite story used to suffer from larger issues that the author went back and was able to overcome/fix.

As a writer, I think negative feedback/reviews are a good thing. They help improve writing. A comment that reads, “this was good” is useless. One that says, “you miss spelled every other word; I’ll never read this again” at least contains helpful information for the author to improve.

shadowdrake27
Consider an author having 1000 or so bad reviews(less than4-star) will he have to pm every single one of them while also writing a new chapter every day?
Most original don't earn a single penny and are writing for fun and those who do write for cash need to release more than a 1000 words everyday‚ why would the put in so much effort?.

Something are easy to say but to hard to comprehend!

Lazy_leon

I mean, clicking delete 1,000 times is just as hard as clicking reply 1,000 times. Hitting copy paste isn’t that hard either. Hypotheticals can make anything seem hard, so I would ask how many times a book gets 1,000 bad ratings.

If the book has 1,000 bad reviews, let’s say all of them zero stars, and we will assume the book deserves the ratings (they aren’t just spam). In that case, shouldn’t it be hard for the book to change into a five star masterpiece? I get that we are talking about people gaining/losing income, but if a real book is released and gets terrible ratings it can also flop.

I personally would rather have it really hard to earn 4-5 stars, than to have a whole rating system that means nothing because everything is 5-star rated. That is just me though.

shadowdrake27 I agree that people should not delete critical reviews or negative reviews unless they do it to insult people (calling their stories s or verbally abusing the characters/author). However, your point makes no sense. Clicking delete 1,000 times is easier than clicking reply 1,000 times because you have to type a reply. Funny you forgot to mention how it takes a lot more time and effort to type out a reply, read the responses (if they come at all, most people just insult you and never reply when you ask them - I'm speaking from experience here), and then follow up.

And of course, I agree that if 1,000 people think your story is bad, then you're probably doing something wrong, but don't deceive other people into thinking that replying is just as easy as clicking delete. It is NOT.

Tomoyuki

For the purpose of just this one issue, I’m talking about copy pasting a response that reads “I fixed this issue. Please update your review.”

Dealing with irritated readers is harder than not counting their reviews at all. Especially if you are dealing with someone who passionately hates your novel for some reason, but in this one hypothetical case, they are pretty similar. I haven’t deleted a review, but if a window pops up that says “are you sure you want to do this?” My copy paste response probably wouldn’t be that different for the initial response time.

If we are talking real world: would you rather have a long winded conversation with a irrational, enraged reader or delete their comment quietly? The answer is obvious. If we are hypothetically assuming that everyone is using the system correctly, accurately rating, and following up on things, then that one copy paste message would be the only interaction needed. Probably not realistic, but a professional author also probably wouldn’t have 1,000 1 star reviews.

Still, letting the author delete reviews rather than a moderator is, to me, like saying, “books will be more accurately rated if the author can select the rating from 1-5 stars. That way reader variation doesn’t come into play and the author gets the score they deserve.” If money is on the line, why would anyone leave a bad review on their story?

I’m not saying that you made this argument, but that is why I think letting readers change their own reviews is better than author control of reviews. At the end of the day, it probably doesn’t matter. A book can be 5-star rated and be hated by one person. That same book could be loved by another. I haven’t seen a case where the rating has messed up my experience yet, but alas, I’m new here.

I also didn’t mean to anger you. Both ways have their pros and cons, but my argument is centered around the pros of readers editing reviews and cons of authors deleting reviews.

Tomoyuki

Then all that is needed is to make the authors unable to delete reviews? Or perhaps this whole argument is invalid in your opinion because the original post doesn’t accurately describe the problem?

I feel like this is getting out of hand. Are we talking about the real world or the hypothetical 1,000 legitimate, helpful bad reviews?

We never disagreed on what to do with bad comments like, “this MC is stupid. Dropped.” Or “this author can go die.” Nobody wants comments like that. Perhaps a report feature can be used to alert a moderator to delete the ones that don’t deserve to exist (I think that exists).

We are talking about rating inflation by an author wrongfully deleting all the bad reviews and leaving good ones while rating their own story 5-stars. Locking authors from having the power to delete reviews seems like it would solve that one issue. If there is a different issue we are discussing, like what to do if someone makes spam posts, my answer would be different.

I’m also not saying the app needs to change or I quit. Just putting my two cents out there in regards to the above mentioned rating inflation issue.

Tomoyuki

The original post before my response talked about a legitimate review that the author made an update for. He said that the update doesn’t alert the reader, so I suggested that he PM the reader. The response was, in my opinion, something like “what if it happens 1,000 times?” My natural assumption was that all the comments were reasonable and the author already made updates.

The only action I was comparing was searching for all the comments and deleting them vs replying. I think I said “PM” in my original response. A comment would do the same thing, so whatever is easier or preferable works for that.

My opinion on non legitimate comments matches yours. If someone’s problem with a real world romance story is that the author “keeps talking about love.” I think we both agree that the author shouldn’t turn his novel into a mecha-based action thriller. Perhaps the only difference I can detect is that, since I’m voting for authors to not have the power to delete any review, a moderator would have to be the one to take care of this.

Alas, if I have misunderstood something I apologize. I think authors have better things to do than delete 1,000s of reviews as well. Reviews are opinions, and a review system can be misused by author or reader.

shadowdrake27 Yeah, we are agreed on that. I must have misunderstood something, I thought you guys were talking about 1,000 spam one-star reviews. My mistake.