Vindictive Reviews

[Clevernick]

I think the opposite happens, too.

I'm well aware of how few reviews stories get, and my responsibility to review more of them myself to make it up. But when I come across a story that sounds like it was told by a 10-year-old with a learning disability, I am usually reluctant to post the "2" or "3" it deserves.

Why? Because
a) I'm new here and maybe the story really deserves a "1" or a "4". I haven't calibrated yet.
b) Author of said piece o crap story may decide to avenge themselves on my own stories, which would not only piss me off, it would reduce my readership.
c) I am not feeling generous enough toward the author to give them the advice they really need, and they wouldn't appreciate "go back to high school" as feedback anyway.

So I say nothing. Call me a coward.

Assuming that others feel as I do, there are probably several really scathing reviews out there unwritten, and some overrated pieces o crap as a result.

[TomOfSweden]

I think the opposite happens, too.

I'm well aware of how few reviews stories get, and my responsibility to review more of them myself to make it up. But when I come across a story that sounds like it was told by a 10-year-old with a learning disability, I am usually reluctant to post the "2" or "3" it deserves.

Why? Because
a) I'm new here and maybe the story really deserves a "1" or a "4". I haven't calibrated yet.
b) Author of said piece o crap story may decide to avenge themselves on my own stories, which would not only piss me off, it would reduce my readership.
c) I am not feeling generous enough toward the author to give them the advice they really need, and they wouldn't appreciate "go back to high school" as feedback anyway.

So I say nothing. Call me a coward.

Assuming that others feel as I do, there are probably several really scathing reviews out there unwritten, and some overrated pieces o crap as a result.

That's not being a coward, that's being smart. There's no point in pissing on someone lying down. It cannot add anything. Stories that bad are always painfully aparent, and if it isn't to the author they've got more serious problems, and nothing you say can change that. The people we like reviewing is off-course the stories we like, (or we wouldn't have bothered finnishing it, would we?) so then it's about helping an author making something good better. Reviewing I think should be fueled by selfish greed. We encourage authors we want to see more of, and we help them to get even better. There's no brownie points for helping people you don't care about.

[TheVariableX]

It's a piece of bad luck for someone who objects to something in your story to bother and give it an unjustly low score.

For stories that manage more than a score of reviews a mechanical solution to the problem is to simply cut the bottom and top 10% of scores before crunching any numbers. I vaguely remember reading how the averages are calculated and I don't recall any such cropping.

I share peoples hesitance at any form of censorship. I suppose the method I suggested above could effectively remove the persons voice but their opinion would be there if you went looking.

The real solution however does not involve maths or social ethics but us.

If you take the time to read a story and you enjoyed it then take the time to review it. Even a small % of the readers of many stories would make up a reasonable pool for scoring purposes. This is something I was pretty slack on while lurking, but something I have recently attempted to remedy.