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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Uncle_Sheogorath

Even you know it's wrong since you read Volume 1.

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

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?

I'm starting to see, from these conversations, that non-content feedback types (e.g spam, EXP gain types) might be okay for the chop.

Deleting genuine feedback on content is frowned upon since it doesn't give readers a healthy view point of other perspectives to the content. The verbatim becomes one-sided.

Then there's the deeper level of what is considered genuine feedback. Just saying, "absolute garbage story" or "love this story" doesn't seem to be a deep enough level for a review, but would be good enough for a comment.

My understanding of what I've noticed so far.

I've just started a thread about why deleting reviews(good or bad) is a bad practice.

https://forum.webnovel.com/d/40472-delete-my-review-hide-the-truth

check it out and give your onions.

chu_chan the reason that nothing changes is because of money, they still make a truck load of it each day, once we hit their bottom line which is their money flow they'll listen. Unfortunately for 10 people against the practice, a 1000 people don't care and support them.