On ratings
Mar. 4th, 2003 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sarea
While I totally have my own healthy LIKE ME!! complex, and think that a ratings system, which serves a purpose I understand in theory, actually makes a writer focus on the wrong things, I also get that there's not a rhyme or reason for why people do/say/feel things. Maybe that's a fatalistic viewpoint, but at least I'm not flipping out over getting a "9" or whatever, or thinking that that's somehow reflective of my writing skill. There are any number of reasons that someone gives the rating that they give, and imo there's really no point in dwelling on it when I don't know why, and even if I did, there would probably not be anything I could do to change it, and here's the key -- nor would I want to.
Here's one scenario: Say I just read a 500-page story in which the writer clearly spent eons of time working on it, and it was just fabulous and blew me away. I give that story a "10." Then another story comes along -- say, a 5 pager, which is utterly delightful and cannot possibly be improved in any way, because of what it is and what it was trying to accomplish. I might give that story a "9." Why? Does it deserve a "10"? Maybe. But how can I make them equals? In my head, whether it makes sense or not, despite the fact that I fully enjoyed the second fic, I cannot possibly in good conscience equate it with the former. Does that mean the 5-page fic was lacking in any way? Not necessarily. As I said, it could be perfect in every way for what it was, but that doesn't change my preset notions. (And that's not to say that everyone thinks that way, either. But some may.)
Or maybe, the first story had house-elves in it and I love house-elves, and the second story didn't, so that's why I gave it a higher rating. Does that mean the writer of the second story needs to "improve" it by including house-elves? Or maybe, my sub-ship preference is actually Ron/Hermione and not Harry/Hermione, so I "deduct" from the final score because I didn't really enjoy that part of it, but I liked the Draco/Ginny so much and it was the majority of the fic, so the H/Hr doesn't affect the final score that much. Does that mean the writer should change her story to R/Hr instead of H/Hr? If she did, you know what would happen? Half the reviews that were 10s suddenly turn into 9s or whatever.
My point is: It's utterly pointless to stress about this or even dwell on it for any length of time (, says she who is writing an LJ entry about it -- look what you make me do). Nines and tens both clearly indicate that the person enjoyed the story very much, and the difference between one or the other is negligible, because it's likely due to something I can't control. It's the feedback comments that are really of any value.
I think the ratings system ought to be abolished. Instead, institute a recommendation system like Ephemeral does. That way, people who don't like to leave actual feedback comments can still show their enjoyment of the fic by recommending it, and I think it's infinitely more helpful to see how many recs a story has (particularly in relation to how many hits it's gotten) than how many stars it has. Why? Because you could also say that a ratings system is necessarily skewed. Usually if you enjoy a story, you'll rate it highly, and if you don't, you won't bother rating it at all. So nearly every fic has a high rating (if you read at AFF.net, notice that every fic has 4 or 5 stars), which tells you nothing. Also, I'm not sure how it works on Portkey: Can you leave a rating but not comments, or do you have to leave a comment when you do a rating? If it's the latter, the results will definitely be skewed. If you can leave anonymous ratings/recommendations, it'll likely be more accurate as to what people in general thought of the story. Not fool-proof by any means, but it gets closer.
Here's one scenario: Say I just read a 500-page story in which the writer clearly spent eons of time working on it, and it was just fabulous and blew me away. I give that story a "10." Then another story comes along -- say, a 5 pager, which is utterly delightful and cannot possibly be improved in any way, because of what it is and what it was trying to accomplish. I might give that story a "9." Why? Does it deserve a "10"? Maybe. But how can I make them equals? In my head, whether it makes sense or not, despite the fact that I fully enjoyed the second fic, I cannot possibly in good conscience equate it with the former. Does that mean the 5-page fic was lacking in any way? Not necessarily. As I said, it could be perfect in every way for what it was, but that doesn't change my preset notions. (And that's not to say that everyone thinks that way, either. But some may.)
Or maybe, the first story had house-elves in it and I love house-elves, and the second story didn't, so that's why I gave it a higher rating. Does that mean the writer of the second story needs to "improve" it by including house-elves? Or maybe, my sub-ship preference is actually Ron/Hermione and not Harry/Hermione, so I "deduct" from the final score because I didn't really enjoy that part of it, but I liked the Draco/Ginny so much and it was the majority of the fic, so the H/Hr doesn't affect the final score that much. Does that mean the writer should change her story to R/Hr instead of H/Hr? If she did, you know what would happen? Half the reviews that were 10s suddenly turn into 9s or whatever.
My point is: It's utterly pointless to stress about this or even dwell on it for any length of time (, says she who is writing an LJ entry about it -- look what you make me do). Nines and tens both clearly indicate that the person enjoyed the story very much, and the difference between one or the other is negligible, because it's likely due to something I can't control. It's the feedback comments that are really of any value.
I think the ratings system ought to be abolished. Instead, institute a recommendation system like Ephemeral does. That way, people who don't like to leave actual feedback comments can still show their enjoyment of the fic by recommending it, and I think it's infinitely more helpful to see how many recs a story has (particularly in relation to how many hits it's gotten) than how many stars it has. Why? Because you could also say that a ratings system is necessarily skewed. Usually if you enjoy a story, you'll rate it highly, and if you don't, you won't bother rating it at all. So nearly every fic has a high rating (if you read at AFF.net, notice that every fic has 4 or 5 stars), which tells you nothing. Also, I'm not sure how it works on Portkey: Can you leave a rating but not comments, or do you have to leave a comment when you do a rating? If it's the latter, the results will definitely be skewed. If you can leave anonymous ratings/recommendations, it'll likely be more accurate as to what people in general thought of the story. Not fool-proof by any means, but it gets closer.
