Webnovel.Forum

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.

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.

@yaoyueyi please check for spam content

"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?"

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.

For the readers do they think its okay to delete this.
https://gyazo.com/f635134e483ee8ebbacd3896571e2f50

This is what i get on a daily basis, i honestly think deleting reviews like this are fine.

JKSManga Delete and report as far as I am concerned lol

For sure a delete, that kinda language is unwarranted.

Besides @trolls how much us authors whore is none of your business grabs her lolli and hooker boots and pulls up her spanks. Thank you VERY much.

KitKatxKK If I buy in a physical store I can read the first few pages. If I buy an Ebook I can download a free sample before buying the whole thing. Your argument is simply incorrect.

JKSManga Yeah deleting something like that is fine.

KitKatxKK BTW, do you realize that most novels that have 2000 chapters or more are usually split into books? Some have 10 books over that span while others have each 25 chapters be a book and have up to 40+ books.
Being able to critique a novel series after reading the first book and saying that you don't enjoy the book is perfectly acceptable, regardless if the series has 7-50 books. Expecting someone to read 15 out of 50 books of a series before they're allowed to critique it is asking for a lot. The reviews clearly state what chapter the person had read to as well. So if they read the first book and comment about the series, it should be obvious that they are talking from a perspective of reading only the first book (or in this case of the first 20, 40, 60, 80, or however many chapters.)

JKSManga Yeah. That's not a review at all.

So the option of manual/human moderation seems unlikely due to capacity limitations. We don't know if Webnovel will invest in any automated content and community moderation tools.

What else is there that can address the need?

Last year I also wrote little meaningful reviews to get experience points, but after 3 weeks I got tired of it, it takes a lot of time to get a measly 5 experience points. It's not worth it. Now I write meaningful reviews, read at least 5 chapters. I give stones of advancement. But I give honest reviews or swap. But I don’t write a review every day for the sake of gaining experience. No more than 3 times a week.

N0xiety Yeah that person....how should I put it without being rude? Pitiful? Perhaps pathetic...... I kinda feel pity for him at how controlling and petty his actions are... I mean deleting actual reasonable reviews just because they weren't 4.5 and then playing the victim card that his being abused by 'trolls'. Lol! :(

JohnnyKbca Yeah him and calling others trolls. I believe he may be quite a narcissist from some conversations that I had with him.

RiMad_Heart this site hardly have any novel worth reading. Admin are behaving more like Chinese ccp where you can delete review to improve your star rating.

JKSManga
For sure delete. That comment was unwarranted! What? Who even says that

Gourmet_DAO You are loyal! I got bored of the reviews exp after forcing myself to write two times since i was aiming for meanigful ones. Took some more time for the comment exp. Exp sect is addicting . Now i give reviews when i am personally engaged in the novel but commenting a lot more even between paragraphs. I am not sure what you authors feel but reading the comments in the paragraphs actually gives you real time feedback. And any kind of responce either at the comments or with an author note means a lot.
I am not sure why i am writing this!! This doesn't fit the concept! I had a wonderful day today! Ignore me! I lack sleep! I can not stop laughing! BB!

NightGale35 Yes, you're right, writing a review just to get 5 experience points is very exhausting. It's not worth it! Even to get experience points - a comment for work and a comment for a comment, I write to myself, it's easier.

But up to level 7 probably still half a year - now
Lv 6
3380 EXP required for the level up

Yes, there is a certain dependence, I do not argue :)

I like the comments on the novel, but they are few. So I appreciate my few readers :). The criticism is accepted. I rewrote two novels 4 times. But they need 1 or even 2 more rewrites.

It is good when the author answers - to the reader. But some people ignore the commentators, and then as a reader, I don't want to read that novel, I exclude it from my library.

You write comments, probably like me, because this or that chapter of the novel seemed to me interesting, not realistic, funny, stupid or surprisingly magical! This feeling, emotion! I think so!

NightGale35 But my content is interesting, but here's one problem, English is not my native language, it is a third language. I check on three machine editors, but there will be errors. Besides, now I am lazy. Not updating.

Nevertheless, thanks if you come, I will be glad even for a short visit :)

Gourmet_DAO For a moment i thought you will say that you are not writing in english! Now that would be a problem.
I have read multiple MTL that make google-translate seem perfect! I am trained. Not my first language either. And i shows. ;) If sth is too obvious it can be pointed out nicely. Generally as long as there is flow, you impove and fix mistakes that make the sentence not making sense, i believe most people are fine- if the story is good of course. Don't put yourself down!

NightGale35 Well, usually everyone speaks a second language better than a third. It's just that when a novel is read by native speakers, they treat the text in a snobbish way. Well, or so it seems to me, without even reading the novels, they give 3 stars, not at all evaluating the plot, only paying attention to the grammar.

As an author, I want to share a story, it is interesting to me, besides it is useful, all stories have rich material. This is realistic.

Therefore, thinking that suddenly, or maybe my reader, will have English as a mother tongue, starting to read my novel, he will say what a horror! This is not my cup of tea, what awful English. Therefore, I wrote ahead of the curve that this is not my native language :)

And wait for my English to improve ... it will take a long time. Since while I am writing, I am improving my English a little bit while writing the text.

I wanted to give one of the novels to be edited, but it is expensive, an 80,000 word novel will cost a couple of thousand US dollars. It's impossible. And I don’t want to make money writing, this is just a hobby.

I write because it's fun, interesting, pleasant to communicate with readers, to improve my text block. Grow up as a novelist.

Gourmet_DAO That is novel. :)
Your english is fine, really. I haven't read far -not the best time of the day for the subject- as you may notice later, but there is flow.. and ridginess. You can improve steadily. I am not sure if you write novels in your first language but if you don't, keep in mind that this is double the effort. You learn the language and try to express your thoughts in order to convey them correctly to a foreign person. These are two indivually hard things that you do together. Keep it up!

N0xiety thanks for expressing your view. As long as you're not focusing it on a person or using one particular individual as a case example, it's all good.

NightGale35 Thank! Writing in English is fun! I wrote in a second language but only short stories and two stories about the Great Game, spies, during the 19th century, in particular about Stoggart and O'Connolly 1843. Then I tried to translate and wrote a short story in English.

But my genres are fictitious reality, fictitious history, adventures.

History of the Silk Road
Treasure hunt, almost real, but a little muddied with fiction.
Well, about the farm and cooking.

JohnnyKbca I respect your voice of your experience. Just note that this isn't the thread to highlight any particular experience.