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.