Hi! I wanted to offer my thoughts too.

There is something that poeple collectively forget. Very few readers can actually give the reviews the authors want. Specific mention on grammar, vocabulary, stracture, world building in a way that helps improve the novel, character and side character building etc. Unless the review system gets more detailed to help guide the reader and give actual feedback to the author not much is going to change on the quality of the reviews.

I agree with many comments mentioned earleir but i still think that the easiest way to lessen the bots would be to change the exp system. Maybe reward the reviewer that the author finds helpful in exchange. I do not like if the author delete a review based on the stars given. If it is a complete troll/bot yes do it. The positive troll/bot reviews too though. I loved the system suggested early on about authors reporting a review, it geting evaluated and deleted or not afterward but it does take a lot of time and needs a lot of volunteers. Another inetesting one is the algorithm for screening the reviews might be easier to set so as emoji reviews get deleted automatically for example or reviews from readers that haven't even read any chapter but go for the exp.

Someone raised the problem of authors exchanging positive reviews. That sounds really bad and hypoctitical when here the authors are pointing fingers to the readers. How can the readers trust any good review under the novels? Unless the review is objective and said author reads the majority of said novel to give constructive review since they can most likely point out the weak points of said novel. Which seems not to be the case.

On deleting the comments.. Well i am conflicted on the subject. I know readers can be really harsh, unreasonably some times. Spams should definetly go and maybe the exp from a comment can be changed but that leaves the problem of where the readers would get the exp they need to level up. Plus, some readers like troling (not a negative sense, playful) or having a hate-love relationship with the author and the novel.

I feel like this is more of a reform of webnovel than a suggestion for improvement. 😅 Cheers!

*exp=expereince

Thanks everyone, for expressing your views and experiences so far. Really, appreciate it.
I'm just going to sum-up my understanding of what is said so far, and the need. Apologize if I get it wrong.

In my understanding:

  • Authors would appreciate reviews to be legitimate feedback of the content.
  • There's definitely a need for content moderation of reviews with quality standards to be in place.
  • Readers need a review system that they can trust. Right now, the review function is a fking piece of sh.t. Not good.
  • There's a need for community moderation mechanisms to actively deal with unwanted reader/author behaviors like spamming, trolling, indirect bullying and cancel culture.

So, now the question is... What if none of the listed is possible from Webnovel management?

As a community, what can we do to work around and deal with the things that bother us with the review system?

Keep in mind, if nothing is to change with the site, we can't rely on it to enforce any improvements towards these points.

Could we all agree to some common rules and practices for feedback? Those that would answer to the four points that I listed above?

Although, it would be hard to live by if WN themselves aren't supporting them.

What are your thoughts?

    Veronica8 I hope that a bot-moderator from WebNovell will appear in the review thread. If the moderation is effective and efficient, then there will be no trolling or bullying on the site. This is one of the solutions to the problem.

    Second, if the site administration for some reason cannot conduct moderation, then a community should be created within the forum. Which will make a list of those short stories that use dubious methods to promote themselves. They will mark the readers of the trolls, inform the site administration about them.

    It will also develop a form for a real, objective review. Or maybe two of its swap options (marked in a different color) and an honest, objective review. And the reader himself will choose the review that he wants to read.
    Since freedom of choice is also part of freedom of speech. Moreover, it will not violate the rights of another person, author or reader.

    Since direct contact with the author may not always have a positive result. All people are different, so one author will agree with the opinion of the community, while the other will swear and swear. At the same time, all community actions must comply with the internal rules of WebNovell.

    I see such opportunities.

        Gourmet_DAO Yes. Bot-moderation would be a good approach.

        Ooh. My brain flashed. The bot holds the questionable comments for the author and an editor to review together. Maybe it sends a comment notification in Inkstone to both where they need to give approval after selecting a few options. This moderation activity would only be for those that fit the criteria to one on the report flag list.

        The outcome of this, is if none or only one party are approving to publish the comment, it stays within Inkstone and goes to an archive folder, so the author doesn't have to see it. But they can still access it if they wanted to.

        Yes. Good suggestions.

            Veronica8 Yes, if the review is not suitable for keywords or forms, then it is not passed until publication.

            The review must meet the selection (evaluation) criteria.
            As a first approximation:

            For example,

            1.reasoned analysis of a text block
            2.How much does the text block emotionally affect the reader?
            3.the text block corresponds to reality, as far as the author has studied the topic, he understands what he writes or not, the depth of the topic disclosure by the author
            4.the novel is the original work of the author or is it a cliché
            5.What impressions does the text block make for the reader?
            6.evaluation of the form, content, grammar, features of the composition, the style of presentation of the material, the skill of the author
            7.Advantages of the novel and its disadvantages
            8.Completeness of plot disclosure
            9.Conformity of the title page to the plot of the novel
            10. What the book is about
            11. Characters who are they? What actions happen to them?
            12. What images do you remember?
            13. Do you recommend reading this novel and why?

            The form of the review should be:
            - calm, in compliance with network ethics, rude statements and the transition to the identity of the author are unacceptable. you need to discuss the work itself.

            • the inadmissibility of unreasonable reproaches as well as praises
            • bringing an adequate assessment of the work, showing by examples, the successful use of new approaches by the author

              @Dannnnz Can you help here?
              Sorry, i run back to the first "spokerman" figure on the Sept'17 post to find someone hopefully with some authority.
              Not sure if they are still active though like out favorite bot here..

                RABBITICOL 🤣🤣🤣 😅 Thanks. I didn't check. There was an active official member around dealling with some bugs a couple weeks (or more) back but i do not remember their name.
                Found them. But they haven't sign in since May. Well, here goes nothing.
                @Webnoveldeveloper

                  To deal with spams, the first option should be a limit on the number of reviews an account can make on the single work. It makes no sense to have more than a review on the same work.

                    Okay first my thoughts about deleting reviews:
                    Reviews are not primarily there to help authors. They are there to help other readers deciding what to read. If I read your first three chapters and your novel is absolute shit I should be allowed to tell other readers that, so that nobody else has to read this abomination. You want to tell me the novel gets way better later? If you are so capable, then fix your first chapters! If you are too lazy to go back and rewrite them, then you deserve the 1 Star review.

                    I agree that the exp for reviews has to go. A lot of people choose one novel they like and write a 5 Star review every day. Hell I do it sometimes. The character minimum does nothing to help either, as most reviews are someone smashing his hand on his keyboard a couple of times to get to the limit.

                    A review system is pretty easy to implement, with no cost to Webnovel! (Now they are listing ;) )
                    Simply get rid of the exp for reviews and make a new tap for "moderators". A bot randomly chooses people with a high activity, long time being on the site and similar criteria and gives them the moderator status. They can earn exp for reviewing the reviews. Maybe 10 exp per day for deciding on 10 reviews. There is an app called "Jodel" in Germany that does exactly that and it works extremely well.

                    Uncle_Sheogorath I don't agree. I am a contracted author, I have been on here for almost a year(I am one month away from a year) my book is completed and sitting at 1.7mill views. I have never had to delete a single review for my novel till this week. And I only deleted it for one reason and one reason alone. This person sent a review that said.

                    "This book isn't good at all, go read something else, don't know what people are raving about." and gave one star.

                    I honestly didn't care at all about it and would have left it until I saw that the person hadn't even got past chapter zero. That freaking irked me. I felt really annoyed and even went and asked my editor if they thought they would ever implement making reviews only open to people who got past you know the first paragraph.

                    Like, let me explain this. You move onto reading chapter one the moment you scroll the bar or flip a page. That means for someone to be at chapter zero, it means they opened up the book, never scrolled/flipped the page, never moved the screen at all. That means they read less than three paragraphs before going and telling people not to read my novel.

                    There is NO WAY, you can get a sense of a story, or someone's writing, in less than 15-30% of any book, let alone the first page. What they did was essentially like walking into a book store, picking up a book, and reading the back of it, then saying nope not interested.

                    Now that's fine, and all, but lets put it this way. If that same person went out of their way to leave a note to tell everyone else not to read it because the book is just trash. But then they never give anyone any valid reasons why they are saying it was. Then other people start to stop reading it, or picking it up at all and reading that book. This domino effect then causes harm to the author, who possibly spent months, or even years working super hard on that novel only to get paid less than .01 cent a word for their effort. An effort which is not easy might I add since basically birthing and creating a whole new world for someone elses entertainment is incredibly hard to do. Also, webnovel books are obscenely long with stories stretched out over a huge amount of chapters to give depth and background to the stories like they are some epic tv production. Yet someone stopped after a paragraph and went nope this is simply trash. That effect is essentially what would have happened here. And that is why authors here despise any star 0 chapter reviews and will delete them.

                    And it is why I deleted that review. My first lower than 4 stars review on my book in 11 months and the person didn't even read the book. And that book has 1.7million reads.

                    So, yes dear, it is possible to have that many views and only good reviews without ever deleting real people's genuine reviews. Because in an entire year and with that many reads I still never get people reviewing with less than 4 stars. And I have multiple books out too. With hundreds of thousands of views. And that was the only bad review I ever got. And it wasn't even from a real reader.

                    But anyway, people saying authors are not supposed to remove the trolls from their books, but instead just let them get attacked seems ludicrous to me. Seriously, for real, if you want to leave reviews that are constructive about how bad something is after reading over 30% of any book. I say have at it. Fly be free.

                    Honestly, though this whole thing could be sorted if they just locked reviewing novels. If webnovel made it mandatory to read at least 30-50% of the novel before reviewing a book was unlocked for a reader. That would really solve everyone's problem. Because all opinions stated would be valid. Because they really, for real; gave that book a shot for the author before making up their mind that it was well and truly awful. I think people walking away from books before that point is fine. But they shouldn't be able to review before then. If they want to read like half a chapter or like 3 chapters and tell people the grammar is bad, they can simply, just comment on the chapters.

                        Veronica8 Hi there, as a contracted author I just want to chime in on one little part. Veronica dear. It would never ever be possible to have an author and an editor sit down and look at each flagged comment together. Ever.

                        Because our editors actually recently revealed on a phone call with the authors a few weeks ago that each editor is in charge of roughly 500 to 1000 contracted novels themselves. Each person has to take care of that many novels! Isn't that insane! They are all keeping track of that many and still helping the authors with their issues. So authors don't get much time with their editors at all.

                        There would be no time with everything else they have to work on for them to take that onto their workload too. But the suggestion was a lovely idea. Just wanted to chime in and let you guys know for that suggestion to ever even be a glimmer of a possibility they would first have to hire about 100+ more people to be editors.

                          JohnnyKbca I actually really like that ability. It is one of my favorite things. because someone who commented something maybe a little negative at say chapter 25, but then reviews again at chapter 150 saying they are glad they stuck it out and that it gets better. Now those reviews are gold to an author. It tells people who are reading. Hey it might be a tough spot here, but keep reading. it gets golden. And people seeing that the persons chapters have gone up shows that they didn't just at some point go back and edit their comment at any point.
                          Oh also it shows that they didn't just give up reading it either.

                            To be honest im fine with authors deleting reviews that are just dumb or don't go into detail of WHY they gave that opinion...
                            Authors should be able to 'defend' themselves from that kind of stuff, ive seen 1-2.5 star novels that i have absolutely loved....the reviews are all subjective after all :D

                            I guess you can start with removing the Write a Review on mission list.

                            A good way to remove those who do review just for the exp.

                            Then limit the user to only 1 review per novel and allow review editing. Some readers will sometimes have a change of heart about the novel.

                              KitKatxKK At least 30 per cent of the book?! Do you actually comprehend how much that is? Let us say I am reading one of those translated Chinese novel with 2000 chapters, to read 30 per cent of it would be around 600 chapters!! So, in my opinion, you are wrong, if the readers find the novel boring after reading at least 100 chapters then he/she should of at least have a right to write a review about it and let other people know. I don't think it is normal to HAVE to read around 600 chapters of 2000 just to have the 'right' to review. Do you?

                                  "I will delete fake positive reviews!!!"
                                  "You delete fake positive reviews? I only delete abusive hateful reviews!"

                                  Me: "you guys recieve so much reviews that you DELETE some of them?"

                                  As an author, I am really bothered by the reviews that are only posted for EXP, It is really annoying, it's like did you even give the story a chance? That includes the infamous "emoji reviews", I deleted a few of those, but there are always people who do that. Other than that, I only had to delete one negative review, not because of the one star, but because the reader was being rude and using swear words in a different language. That also pisses me off. The punk probably has no idea the effort it takes to write a story. I understand if it is not your cup of tea, you can say that, you can criticize, give pointers, but please don't be rude about it.

                                  Uncle_Sheogorath I actually do think this is fair.

                                  If you looked at 2000 episodes and thought hey that's fine. Imma read it anyway, then you should be okay with reading 600 chapters.

                                  Like think about it this way. People used to have to go and pay to read a novel. (Yeah! I know! pay to read a novel... crazy, right.) and when they did they bought the whole book not just part of it, didn't they.

                                  The author didn't ever walk up to them and say, hey, here you go, here are the first 40 pages of this novel for you to sample, How about this, I'm going to tear them out and you can have them before you make up your mind and then I will give you the rest so that way I don't inconvenience you with all the rest of my hard work.

                                  No, you took a risk and you bought a 300, or a 600, or even a 800 page book, and you took it home to read it. If you didn't like it after the first bit of it, And they left a review after reading that book and they read more than one paragraph or a page, because otherwise it was a waste of their money, and effort to go out and buy it.

                                  Now did you waste your time and money on it if you don't like it. Yes.

                                  But is that the authors problem.

                                  Nope. Because likes and dislikes are subjective.

                                  So I do not think that asking someone to invest 600 chapters worth of their time is too much if you already looked at 2000 chapters and thought I'm going to read that long ass story even though, JEEZ THAT'S REALLY LONG. Because you can't complain about the length you had to invest in the story to see if you liked where it was going. You knew it would be long and drawn out process to get through the story line in the first place. Any book with that many chapters has filler episodes and if you didn't want to invest the time then don't click on a 2000 chapter book.

                                  But yeah your point would be valid, If I had said I wish webnovel would require readers to read 90% or the whole 100% of the book before reviewing. Then yeah, that seems unfair to me and you would have a valid point.

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