Yes Authors Can and Will Delete Reviews/Comments - Open Sounding Board
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.
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.