I would like to point out that the moderation option is important for a review. At least to highlight the obvious trolls and those who are engaged in bullying. With good moderation on the site, when the rules are followed, then there will be no problems with insults and the creative activity of writers will not be broken. It is possible that in the forum, you need to have a moderator who, when contacting him, would respond to such a message within 5 working days.
Yes Authors Can and Will Delete Reviews/Comments - Open Sounding Board
On the subject of quantity and posting the same review to the same book more than once. Personally I couldn't be bothered.
It doesn't bother me if my comment or review was deleted. I know it was read and noted and that's enough for me. My book review was an impression I gave the writer. What they do with that impression is up to them. If they want to delete it, so be it delete it. No skin off my back.
This is my view on writer retaining feedback.
So why do peeps post the same book review again once it's deleted the first time?
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Veronica8 Human nature is difficult to understand. Perhaps a sense of your own greatness? can there be dissatisfaction from an excess of emotions? who knows?
I got messages a couple of times. that quite normal 4 star reviews have been deleted, as well as my comments around 24. It's unpleasant, of course, that your work is so appreciated. But I'm not sure who deleted the review as there is no such feature right now. I can only guess. Well deleted, and deleted, I have no intention of coming. post over and over again, something.
All people are different. They think differently, they look at the world differently, they have different values, but personally I am not interested in this, I adhere to network ethics and I don’t care about who deleted my messages. This is his right, my right to ignore him.
Probably, the whole point is in the level of a person's perception, whether he adheres in real life - politeness, observance of moral norms, ethics or not. Since he can afford a politically correct, not tolerant opinion on the Internet, it means he is like that in real life. He or she.
I have a different culture, a different upbringing, I don't want to just offend people with words. Some people are atheists, others believe in something of their own, there are believers, all different.
It seems just that some people have the concept of "inner conscience" and they do not seek to offend strangers, to impose their vision of the world on them.
Communication, dialogue, allow people, if not to come to one opinion, then at least understand the other side and agree to a compromise, or simply disagree with each other with his own opinion. But without fighting, verbal diarrhea, swearing. Then nobody's mood will spoil.
In my faith there are concepts such as sin, it’s a sin to offend people, for this on the day of the last judgment, there is a possibility of going to hell. So why would people spoil their mood and harm themselves?
Politeness is better than rude.
We have a saying that rudeness hurts everything!
We live on the Silk Road. Therefore, we have a psychology of traders, merchants. And they will never be rude, then there will be no trade.
And in our history they traded with different peoples of three continents, so it was stupid to swear!
But of course, now globalization is taking its toll, many carry knives with them, there is little restraint, if they don’t like something, they can cut it with a knife. But this is also nonsense. People transfer the permissiveness of the virtual world to the real one. And they are wrong, ruining their lives. Politeness takes the city,
Veronica8 I think some automated moderation might help a little. Like no use of emojis, or no words repeated more than once, even though I have seen reviews with incoherent words that did not make any sense. I also thought there was a minimum word count but in the last couple of days I got 2 reviews (from the same person who changed their nickname) saying "EXP" that's it. Maybe the EXP system is the issue.
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Smh, the last spamming troll shows up! Now, this thread has devolved into a witch hunt.
If someone wants to post a 5 star to my novel for Exp why would I ever delete it? I'd probably gain an angry 1-star spammer in retaliation. Spamming trolls and their one-track minds smh.
Gourmet_DAO Very insightful. Yes, some good understandings noted. Thank you.
Dan_Ryder @N0xiety @JohnnyKbca
Thank you for sharing your views. You all have expressed some insightful and valid view points, which has highlighted what does and doesn't work well with Webnovel's review system. We've all faced some form of feedback dissatisfaction whether here or elsewhere. I think it's important to acknowledge your feelings of these feedbacks. Take the best from them and ditch what doesn't have any value or meaning to you.
And the last thing I want this thread to be is a witch hunt. However, if you choose to continue to draw out your grudges here. I can't stop you. Be aware that Yue-bot will likely shut this thread down if you do.
It'll be shame to lose this chance for other insightful understandings from others who share similar experiences to yourselves.
yaoyueyi unstickied the discussion.
Veronica8 I can't speak for others, but I do it first because the review is there for the writer and also to any future readers; and second because, if I took the time to read a work and gave it my honest opinion, then it isn't right to stop me just because the writer didn't agree with it.
AriaKang If you don't have a fanbase it's almost impossible to get the 10 reviews on a new novel for a score. Readers don't use the forum, so authors have to band together to get reviews. My premium novel has over 100 paying readers, but only about 5% of them have ever left a review. That's how difficult it is to get a review.
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Veronica8 I apologize beforehand, but i have to give an answer to Dan. Also none of my comments are just for the author, they are also for other readers to read and comment on. At least that's how i see them. I throw it out there, author can read it, or not. Other readers can also read it, and like or comment on it. I actually mostly don't expect authors to even be able to see it because of the sheer ammount of comments the author gets. Even if it sounds like directed at the author, i mostly don't even expect the author to ever stumble upon it. It is good if the author does, but is also fine if he doesn't. If i want author to most definitely hear a thought of mine, i will reply to one of his comments, or i will just go to discord.
I also think that the disagreement between Dan and i is actually quite relevant to this topic is it not? Please do rate this comment of mine if you can. I ask others here too, please do rate it. We are after all partly talking about delete worthy comments here is it not? If we can't give examples, how can we do that?
This was a paragraph comment btw, not even in the comment section. And the reason i spammed this like 5 times is because Dan deleted it without care in the first place. I know that you don't want to take sides, but you can tell your thoughts on this comment objectively without taking any sides right? Just as an example. It should be fine to share my first hand experiences in this topic i assume? I know that i was being a tiny bit sarcastic towards the end, but was it really delete worthy?
I don't claim to be a saint or something, and i do have way worse comments compared to this in other novels. Some may even truly warrant a delete actually, one can write hurtful things when angry, tho was this particular comment really bad enough to warrant a delete?
And for you Dan_Ryder you very well know the reason why i spammed this comment. And i hope you can guess why i was obviously pissed. It isn't nice when your comments are being deleted one after another without any care. You haven't even dained a reply, just delete and move on. If you don't care about my view, ok fine, just leave my comment alone. Maybe other readers will agree or disagree, it is not just up to you. But i guess that's what i am to you, a bug you can just crush because you have all the power and you don't care about my views. But i refuse to be silenced, so my only choice was to spam it like 5 or so times as you delete each time quickly, and i gave up the stupid game bewteen us after that...
Oh btw, you can post the other(my last comment to you) that i spammed as you delete it so everyone can see. Tho i already posted that comment in the other thread while dissing your actions, but you can post it here too. I obviously wrote it in anger, tho i believe even that wasn't anywhere close to being delete worthy...
In before @Dan_Ryder cries in a corner because someone gave a genuine review that was not 5 stars on his novel. #GrowSomeBalls #StopBeingSoChildish
TheSleepingTadpole What's childish is spamming someones novel because they delete your content. Like all the above trolls have done.
Uncle_Sheogorath Towel you two have valid points. I rescind. It may work for buying novels in the physical, but online I accede that it is much different. I do, however, think that it be an absolute requirement you at least get past chapters 1-10 before you can leave a review. Because if you are not giving it at least that much time, then you are not actually judging the story or getting a feel for it. You are just not liking their grammar, syntax, and flow. Which is fine, some people can get past poor grammar, others cannot? But if you can’t comment on the actual quality of the storyline because you have not given enough time to read through it. Then I honestly think those people shouldn’t be able to comment at all. If people are sitting there going, but what if I want to tell people it has poor grammar? Well, I think people can read how well the English language is used in a book themselves. I, personally, think that it doesn’t need to be noted on its own or pointed out by someone who only read a chapter or less. I think the ones who have invested lots of time can comment and note that if they would like to. So leaving a review after at least getting a bit of the story in first makes sense to me, but I do understand if others do not agree with my viewpoint, as we are all different after all. Anyway, I digress. Thank you guys for your kind explanations. hugs
Dan_Ryder please stop sending purposefully and vehement worded messages at the people who are just trying to show examples of what you are talking about. That is the very reason for this thread. Veronica8 and @yaoyueyi even said that they were unsure how long this thread could remain open before it descended into the chaos of accusatory replies. So I hope people can remember this is supposed to be a safe space for everyone.
AriaKang I would like to say, and I hope you understand and do not take an offense to what I am saying. But Authors have every right to go and read and review books on here too. Most people are authors because they share a love of reading. They also dream of traversing through original worlds all while being curled up in a ball, or splayed out under the blankets, but regardless still inside their own world here on earth. They live for the imagination and creativity they may or may not be brave enough themselves to release through writing. While others read to enjoy the prose and the evocation of feelings, one can experience because of the stark pages of someone else’s story. Please try to remember, before telling people to stop reading books, that Authors may be readers and were more often than not readers first.
Ah, anyway, have a great day guys.
Concerning certain people's actions...... we should be completely objective and not spew 'accusatory rude' words at each other especially without rightful evidence.
Removing the XP from leaving a review would eliminate 90% of the spam reviews. There is no reason why a single account would need to leave multiple reviews (rather then updating an existing one) for a book so I suggest limiting reviews to 1 per account per book. Also you should be able to contribute to a novel's score without having to leave a comment. 1 star contributing reviews should not be removed, though removing offensive comments themselves is okay. The only exception would be for obvious boting / multi-account from a single IP which should result in bans, not just review removals. At the time of the ban all reviews should also be automatically removed.
The categories for review stars are also bogus. I would suggest a standard ranking system with the subcategories eliminated entirely as the reader should determine what the weighting is rather then preset categories. If the novel is unreadable then that fact would weigh the highest when determining the score such that the other categories make no contribution. For translated novels the translation score should be entirely independent from the novel score so dissatisfaction can be correctly attributed for an otherwise good novel.
Example rating system:
(1 - Highly Not Recommended, 2 - Not Recommended, 3 - Satisfactory, 4 - Recommended, 5 - Highly Recommended)
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camy011 We have been wanting the one review per novel for each account restriction for a long time. For years actually at this point. Could never get Webnovel to care. Would have been such a simple restriction, probably wouldn't take more than a few hours for their programmer to handle. But nope, years passed and still the same old.
Same with removing the xp mission for posting reviews, it was stupid from start and it was pretty obvious what it would lead to. Anyone with half a brain could foresee the outcome. Webnovel actually deigned to remove it for a while because of overwhelming complaints, but i guess whatever genius must have replaced the semi intelligent manager in Webnovel thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce it! Top tier genius move there. People pretty much gave up any hope after that stupidity...
I also think that comment and reply XP should also be removed with it tbh. Tho i wouldn't hold my breath about it, i have also given up any hope of Webnovel caring. These are just empty words echoing in a circle in the end. It never reaches the target...
KitKatxKK It's the truth and I've posted proof of each one of them being spamming trolls.I had to deal with each of their harassment for days. Still dealing with harassment from one of them right now.
Each of these trolls is well known within the community for being spamming trolls. I'm not the first or the last author that has received harassment from them. And you're going about defending their actions. Shame on you.
If WN had a moderation system they would have been banned long ago before I even encountered them.
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What I find truly frustrating with this review system is that we all have the same rating, good or bad stories.
My 4.8 is genuine (I don't say it is worth 4.8 though. 4.8 should be a near perfect masterpiece) : except for 1 star review at chap0 reading status, I've deleted every 5 stars spam reviews. I only keep one from each reader since we can't check our readers' profile anymore either.
It is frustrating because with this review system, my rating becomes worthlesss and even worse people will accuse me to manipulate my ratings. A too good rating basically becomes your worst enemy to bring new readers when it should have been the most trustworthy indicator to decide if a story is worth reading or not.
The problem is that even if you can prevent authors to delete bad reviews, there's still ways to keep a good rating with bots and alt accounts.
I have a long list of novels/authors that I could mention here that keep every 5 stars spam reviews and/or delete bad reviews(even legit ones). I could even give you a few that I suspect to use bots/alt accounts to drown their review section with spam 5 star reviews.
Now even if Webnovel doesn't have enough staff to create a real moderation team, there's one thing to implement that would fix 80% of the problem: Readers should only be able to review a story once. If at some point their opinion of the novel changed, they can just edit their former review.
Believe me... That's the first step.
KitKatxKK I agree 100% that one should read at least 10 chapters for a review (barring that each chapter isn't incredibly long, 10k+ word chapters and the novel only has 16 chapters - Looking at you The Lazy King... Great novel.) The earliest I've dropped a novel is 12 chapters, and that was only one novel. Others I've read at least to 30-40 before dropping. But those have always been because I personally didn't enjoy the route the story was taking and had nothing to do with the quality of the story. So I don't leave negative reviews since its purely a subjective reason for me stopping to read, and probably not that useful to others.
And when it comes to poor grammar... It doesn't really bother me. I notice it, but I've read so many translated novels that have awful grammar that I've given up caring about it. I just correct the grammar to myself and move on. If they want people to report bad grammar so they can fix it, I will sometimes attempt to make note of it and leave it as a comment so that it can be fixed for others.
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Arkinslize I like your thoughts just that there is a small problem. Readers can not edit their review. I already checked just now. I can delete the review, yes or reply to it but not edit. Additionally, i had to look for the review manually since i have no access to my own comments and review history, after the last update, which is another issue. Therefore, a good suggestion it is just needing a few small changes here and there to implament.
I like writing a second review on novels i love or feel that are underappreciated. Sometimes i may even forget that i reviewed a novel in my library. But again this is personal opinion and i am all for one review per novel as long as i can find it and somehow delete it or edit it.
camy011 The last one could be added on an update and have quite a possitive impact! I have read many reviews were the reader has nothing bad to say speciafically for the novel but it doesn't suit their taste. They ususlly leave a positive review give or take a star but they clearly do not recommend the novel. That could balance things out.
camy011 I actually really like to see how someone might have gone from just not loving it as of chapter like 29 to loving it so much they want to own everything about the novel by say chapter 152. To me having that chapter tick is like a really cool progression and also a motivator. I wonder if there is a way they could keep that chapter progression tracker and still make it so that you only could leave one review. Maybe if they auto put in what chapter you were on every time you edited your review. I dunno how this would work. It's just a pipe dream.But I like the multiple reviews for the chapter progression stats alone, But that's just a me thing. This is the only place I have seen it before and I really like it. XD
SIDENOTE and unrelated to anything. I really wish they would bring back the women to men novel readers shown on the novels front page again. I loved seeing what the audience ratio was made up of. Even if it was 90% unidentified, knowing that actually still helped me gauge my reading decisions on here sometimes. I know they still show the graph wheel for authors on our author stats. But I liked seeing the little people half/fully filled with color and sitting on the front page chilling.
What can I say. I like cute things.
giggles
Signing in for the participation reward
AriaKang is just salty cause her books are so bad every author leaves a bad review. Don't listen to her. Authors have every right to be a reader and review other book. If the book is bad, they will point that out but Aria thinks her novels are so good that she doesn't deserve any bad reviews. If that was the case, she would already be at the top or rankings but she is not. I wonder why. Cya.
Arkinslize I have the same problem, iin the last two days i have had three people rate the story one star with 0 chapters read, saying so many fake 5 star reviews so giving one star.
And i have left them up, but they don't even bother to check out the other one star reviews who have said the same thing
Dan_Ryder Shaming tactic really? :( objective....Please
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Self-absorbed readers who think too highly of themselves don't understand the simple fact that one star reviews insulting a novel is incredibly hurtful to the author. Whereas, the reciprocal where the author deletes a review is nowhere near the same to the reader.
The author spends hours and hours of their life producing a unique work. Even if some of the criticisms in a very negative review may be warranted it still does not change the fact that it is incredibly hurtful for novice authors who don't have a large base of support to offset the negativity. The reader has thousands of books that they can read if they don't like a certain one. There are also thousands of readers that will read a novel and have thousands of different viewpoints. Why does the reader think his thoughts are so important that he must make himself heard?
In a perfect world we would all agree to not harass authors even if we dislike their novel and authors would agree to not delete comments and reviews. But it's impossible for this to happen as there are bad actors in every case.
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john_john_OO Why does the reader think his thoughts are so important that he must make himself heard?
john_john_OO The author spends hours and hours of their life producing a unique work.
So according to your logic, someone who spends hours and hours to create something does not deserve critique or anything negative in return and the person consuming it has to either like it, then he is free to voice that, or shut up?
Well-founded reviews with several hundred words of 4 stars have been deleted to boost the ratings on this site. It is the exp-system which creates fake-reviews and are responsible for this problem. Anywhere else you can only leave one review and edit it, but on this site there are so many nonsensical review with just some random emotes and 5stars, but of course since those boost the rating, they do not get removed.
The reviews and the star-system should be an indicator for how good a novel is, which is absolutely not the case if the author can moderate their review section. Authors publish on this site to get feedback or in ideal cases earn money. You have to keep in mind though that once you publish something you are not only presenting it to others, you are in fact inviting them to have an opinion on it, but by deleting their opinion you are trying to censor it. So in return I am asking what makes the author think he is so important that he can censor others opinion?
I agree with people who say you have to read at least 30-50 chapters of a story to be able to write a review and I also agree with people who say authors should not be able to moderate their reviews.
Most people stop after they left first their "negative" review (most of the time it is negative bc it is below 3.5 stars), in most cases it is just when their opinions get deleted they turn into "trolls" and "vengeful" creatures to "harass" the author.
The sum of negative and positive reviews should determine how your work is perceived and graded by the audience and as such the reviews should be able to express that not your selection of allowed opinions.
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john_john_OO Indeed giving out 1-star reviews is insulting because the novel must be utter crap in quality and with broken English. The lowest reasonable score I believe that can be given is 2 stars e.g. decent writing skills however the character development is poor with a bunch of plotholes ect. Personally I have given 1-star reviews when the author is extremely aggressive and hateful towards its readers, mostly when they delete 3-star reviews just to keep their fancy 4.8 stars and over. In terms of 'hurtfulness' well that's subjective. No matter how hurtful it is to the author it isn't completely the reader's fault if they give actual reasonable rightful reviews which outline the 'CLEAR' faults of the novel that can only benefit the author in the end. Only actual hateful 'trash' reviews(Insulting the author etc) I would consider negatively 'hurtful' towards the authors who put lots of effort and hard work into their novel and then being insulted.
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chu_chan You miss the elephant in the room by a mile. These low read count, low score reviews don't even reflect the paid content of the novel. Contracted authors write to sell a product. We are required to give readers ~100k of free words before the novel can go premium. That's an entire free book.
These low reviewers never bought our product in the first place.
An example would be if you owned a steak restaurant and distributed some hamburgers for a charity event.
This is what it's like dealing with spamming trolls:
I didn't enjoy their free hamburgers!
I bet the steak tastes disgusting in there!
Sir, did you ever try the food there?
No, but he's telling me to leave!
I have the right to free speech!
I'm going to hold a picket sign outside the restaurant!
Sir if you would just try the steak your opinion would surely change?
No, the hamburger didn't sit well with me I'm going to make sure no one ever tries that steak!
Sir aren't you a vegan anyway, why did you even eat the hamburger?
Yeah, but I came here expecting a premium salad!
Well, we don't sell salads here sir!
I don't care I wanted a salad!
The author should stop serving steaks every day and go make me a free salad!
But, sir... That doesn't make any sense.
My free speech makes sense!
So you're a vegan that likes salads that got a free hamburger, and are complaining about the steaks.
This is 'Merica!
That's what it's like dealing with every spamming troll.
A great example would be @JohnnyKbca who's currently on a mission to spam my novel. I clearly pointed out why his review was misguided. Even gave him the relevant chapters to read to why his opinion was wrong. Nope, continues to spam the same copy/paste low review 50+ times.
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Dan_Ryder You miss the elephant in the room by a mile. These low read count, low score reviews don't even reflect the paid content of the novel. Contracted authors write to sell a product. We are required to give readers ~100k of free words before the novel can go premium. That's an entire free book.
I guess you just think everyone should like stuff they get for free and cannot accept it when people actually tried it and do not like it. What you fail to realize is that 100k free words is a benchmark to the site to show your ability to produce that much in a set time, it does not however by no means indicate anything about if the reader likes it or why you should have a right to censor their opinion.
Also you are always going on and on about paid this paid that. I can and did borrow books from libraries and read them, so did I pay for that?
No!
Do I have to like it?
No!
Can I still have an opinion about it and post it to amazon?
Yes!
People do NOT need to pay for something to be qualified to have an opinion about something. YOU as an author INVITE people on this platform to read your product for FREE. And when they do they can have an opinion on it and they can choose to not like it.
I just had a quick look at your "Devil's Rise" 77 reviews and 4.9 rating atm.
A lot of those 77 reviews are 5 stars and a lot of those are random emotes, nothing substantial. Why are you not living up to your own standards and delete those nonsensical emotes? or what about the reviews below even 30 chapters but have 5 stars? (Edit: Several are even Reading Status: C0, only emotes and 5 stars.)
The double standards!
About that guy who you said is on a mission. How about you just leave his comment and how you point out where he was misguided and leave it for other readers to decide on if you are right or he was? Just invite the readers to judge instead of trying to censor his opinion?
And about your example with that vegan person, no real meat-lover would care about a vegan standing outside a steakhouse crying.
I get it you are proud of your brainchild and want to have success. I wish you all the best.
Dan_Ryder Review misguided? What does that even mean? Opinion wrong?! Are you thought police? Opinions can't be wrong on this sort of thing as long as they a backed by some sort of logic or evidence and displayed politely, there no one 'RIGHT' review. The problem isn't that his opinion is wrong but because he gave YOU a lower score then you like, therefore, you deleted him are called him a troll. Some people as you say spam their previous reviews because of deletion as they feel like you spat on their faces for the thoughtful reviews that they put an effort to write to let you and other readers know. Also, I am not talking about trash reviews like 1 star or without any actual reviewing,
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Uncle_Sheogorath
Even you know it's wrong since you read Volume 1.
It is strange that everyone is trying to argue a "must read X chapters" what if the novel is literally all lower case words, no punctuation, spelling errors, etc? Oh let's pretend that such novels do not exist.....
The reason the "experience" system exists is because it makes users remain on the platform for longer, helps authors who are trending by forcing readers to leave a review, comment, like, read, etc.
The main issue is that authors who feel that they deserve 5 stars no matter what, will always complain about anything lower which would make WN's jobs much harder. Why would WN remove a system that is currently in place to force readers to interact more, and why would they want to stir the pot with authors who think they are perfect?
Gourmet_DAO English is not my native language, it is a third language.
That's amazing actually.
JohnnyKbca that makes sense. Thank you.
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Veronica8 it's not for you to decide whether or not the review is fair.
Deleting a review just because you don't agree with is an A move.
Like it or not you are biased towards your work, and deleting reviews just proves that.
I've personally researched extensively into the matter as my review of a particular novel novel was deleted 4 times by the author just because I gave him 2 starts and he didn't agree with me.
While I agree that there should be some sort of moderation for reviews or at least requiring to have read a certain chapter before showing the review to the public, I don't agree that the author should be the one to moderate.
I can prove it to you that you can leave absolute gibberish texts as a review and get away with it 99% of the time if you rate it 5 stars.
Well, what can I say to the people that sensor the word fu*k but leave the word nigga alone, as if a racist slur ok
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Dan_Ryder so you lock someone out of the fundamental ability to express their views just because they are not paying for your work?
this is exactly why we need to get the god like power out of authors hand and give it to a responsible and sensible 3rd party.
you are failing to understand that you are not the product, if i leave a one star review it's for the novel not you.
And if the novel can't make me intrigued in 40+ chapters, why should i even bother to pay for it?