Most authors here in Webnovel are not typing to improve but typing to earn money. Here in this website, there are only a few authors who respect constructive criticisms but the rest? Hell no. All they care about is their stupid ratings and bullshit five star reviews. I reviewed a fanfic yesterday and poof, it got deleted. The author even said he appreciates all forms of criticisms, and then in the next day he deleted my review. I'm getting triggered by WN's system here. Don't give the rights to the authors to delete their reviews. it's a waste of time to depend on rigged ratings.
Yes Authors Can and Will Delete Reviews/Comments - Open Sounding Board
Most authors here in Webnovel are not typing to improve but typing to earn money. Here in this website, there are only a few authors who respect constructive criticisms but the rest? Hell no. All they care about is their stupid ratings and bullshit five star reviews. I reviewed a fanfic yesterday and poof, it got deleted. The author even said he appreciates all forms of criticisms, and then in the next day he deleted my review. I'm getting triggered by WN's system here. Don't give the rights to the authors to delete their reviews. it's a waste of time to depend on rigged ratings.
20 days later
I reviewed a novel called "New Age of Summoners". The novels grammar and storyline are terrible beyond comparison, at least until the 100 chapter after that I dropped it. I wrote a 1 star review because of the grammar and storyline and it got deleted. I saw a few other 1 and 2 star review at that time. I revisited the novel site today and found my review deleted, but not only mine but all reviews under 3 stars are nonexistent. The worst thing is that the novel has a rating of 4.6 even though its terrible and got many negative reviews before. The support didnt give ashit when i reported this. This system is incredibly stupid and broken.
Dyrem Omg yes I hate looking through the reviews and seeing the same three people give five stars with only EXP!!!! as pretty much their Entire Review. It’s such a waste like, at least add something, anything!
Dyrem Omg yes I hate looking through the reviews and seeing the same three people give five stars with only EXP!!!! as pretty much their Entire Review. It’s such a waste like, at least add something, anything!
To be honest, I rarely bother reading reviews much less rely on the star rating. Most reviews are either trolls being trolls or authors/fans rigging said review section. What I usually do is simply go to the Browse section and select a genre I'd love to read (i.e. romance, fanfiction, comics) then select either Updated or Collection.
Updated = I can see that said novel is still active or new
Collection = Number of possible readers = It got to be good if lots of people read it? (I rarely use this method)
Then I read around 5~20 and sometimes up to 40 chapters (depending on available chapters) based on how engaged I got to a novel. Some may consider that 5~20 chapters aren't enough to check whether a novel is truly good or not but this is why being able to write a good Prologue/Intro is a must, it allows the author to hook in readers.
Back when I still used the review function, I honestly tried to write a constructive criticism free of bias as much a possible with a clear format
2stars = I don't plan on reading the novel in the future
3stars = I plan to revisit the novel and see whether the author improved or at least tried to improve on what irked me away from the novel (i.e. grammar, character, plot, etc).
4~5stars = I plan to read the novel up to the end unless there's an unexpected development (i.e. author dropped, somehow it got worse(it's rare but it happens), or simply it went to a diverging path I didn't like).
Sadly, most if not all my reviews of 3stars and below got deleted... Hence, I stopped using it.
Well, I'm an author myself and all I can say is if reviews are done, I'll be more than willing to keep them for the constructive feedback. But if a review is done just to point out that the novel is bad which differs from most, then I might consider deleting it as the review doesn't even specify why, but just, "it's bad", something along those lines I would say. Never deleted a review before, but I guess that's the type of review that would honestly be unappreciated.
14 days later
As I've read each of the comments in this discussion, I came up with an idea. Why don't we make a discussion by the name of UNBiased Rating System. In this discussion we'll have both readers and authors in the discussion where feedback, both negative and positive are allowed. In this case, authors can't delete the posts of other people's opinion and people can express their true feelings. At the same time, we can report any messages that are deemed to be unnecessary.
Future_M_Animator sounds like a normal review system 
It's a good idea. There used to be a couple of critique groups on Goodread that did this once upon a time. Not sure if they run anymore.
Useless discussion since not everyone has the same preference. Even Harry Potter still has many haters not to mention the author in wn. Even if you said that book not worth it and give 1 or 2 star review. It still doesn't mean that book did not have any worth since many people are still willing to read it. And also why the readers always want to leave their low review even though the author delete it. Sometime the review even hurtful that the author stopped writing because of it and the readers did not even feel anything after destroying one author carrier or possibly his/her future.
Future_M_Animator Your link to discord does nothing
yeah, I have no idea what happened, but i'll delete the comment and post again soon.
yeah, I have no idea what happened, but i'll delete the comment and post again soon.
As a reader who's spend thousands of dollars on this site deleting reviews just puts me off your story. Writers who delete reviews for the stats are the norm and I avoid them. Like the author of the vampire novel deleted a crap ton of negative reviews once his story started getting advertisements on the app and readers with different tastes started reading and didn't like it.
Tbh basically all the authors delete any real reviews that have criticism. I think it was a mistake giving authors the ability to delete all reviews at will. It should have been way more limited. Idk any of the top stories basically delete reviews. Only translations don't give a fuck unless they're fan translation the contrqct where they dont get commissions for chapters and instead get paid by coins spent.
I know there was a problem with readers bombing negative reviews before and author would spam bad reviews at each others stories before it was implemented but now it's like reading fake reviews on Amazon or the app store. Just makes me think those authors are pathetic.
So, I am Crazy_Beast and this is an alt, as my name is already taken by someone.
Honestly, I don't care to delete any reviews, even they are trash but I would when it spams.
I can reply with trash reviews, but HOW THE HELL WILL I REACT TO SPAMS, this giving me no option to delete them.
I am linient in exp comments, sometimes readers become mad for exp, and I can allow some but not a my every chapter, and only if he/she is a loyal reader, which I don't have yet.
For swaps, I am pretty sure swaps are kinda shady.
As a writer, I too take books to review, but before reviewing I read the first chapter, even if it's beyond my genre. As first chapters are important, but I am very sad why other authors don't do it.
I would nt be asking for swaps if peeps review it, but most of our readers or my readers are lurkers, So I have to ask authors for swaps in the past, most of them are spams or random repeated lines, but some did give me an honest review.
There are even some writers who don't want any criticism on WN, but rather in personal, so they can improve without affecting their book, but asa dumb writer, who is re writing his book for the third time, I like to show others the critisism, and also let them see that I worked hard to fix it.
Depends on the content of the review. That's my answer! Senseless reviews without content, criticisms, or any value needs to be deleted. I do not really care about my ratings since there is no perfect novel. What I care is that for people to actually give insightful and constructive reviews no matter how much they hurt. The type of reviews where it really try to reach out to the author.
If I am just reading emojis I might as well delete them!
a month later
Zetheryl I used to put real reviews that I'd write for ten plus minutes for. Then I put 1 stars and fives consisting of 'Horrible english' and 'good novel' with enough spaces to fill the character limit. Then I stopped all together. No use putting anything below a four and no point in adding to the spam of "EXP".
It's not like I need exp inside this app.
Zetheryl I used to put real reviews that I'd write for ten plus minutes for. Then I put 1 stars and fives consisting of 'Horrible english' and 'good novel' with enough spaces to fill the character limit. Then I stopped all together. No use putting anything below a four and no point in adding to the spam of "EXP".
It's not like I need exp inside this app.
a month later
Yeah there's definitely authors out there straight up abusing this. I know one story in particular almost all negative reviews are deleted. But the 5 star reviews posted by the same people over and over stay up lol. I bet his story would drop almost below a 4 if he didn't prop it up.