I rather like the way the reviews work on this site. The weighted averages are a reasonably accurate guide to the competence of the writing, if not to whether I, personally, will enjoy the content of the story. So a rating of 8+ from more than one or two reviewers will indicate that the story probably works, in a technical sense, as a story, that there is some sort of continuity, the dialogue, grammar and spelling are not riddled with basic errors, etc.

Technical competence is straightforward to assess objectively. Beyond that, there are some types of story which I will probably like (e.g. humiliation, mind control, blackmail, modification), and some which will probably be of no interest to me (e.g. lactation, snuff, excessive violence, gay male). Whether or not someone likes a particular theme is wholly subjective.

Inevitably, the single rating conflates the objective rating for competence and the subjective rating for enjoyment, and you could argue that separate ratings for these would be helpful, but as a blunt instrument the rating is not bad. The weighting system means that oddball ratings (perhaps from an author puffing his story with a '10', or someone giving a story a '1' because of a bad review of one of his own favourites) are of limited significance.

Having published my own first effort here last week, I was interested to see that the comments about the technical construction were rather helpful, and I have taken them on board. It was also very nice to get some positive feedback from people who liked the story, both through the reviews and private emails.

The only review that I found unusual was the following one:

Reviewer: rce (Edit) Rating: Jul 29, 2005
Not the kind of master/slave relationship I like. You forgot to mention in the story codes that there would be a F raping the f. I do not fancy stories of lesbian sex and was unpleasantly surprised by this. (5/10)


I can't question the author's preferences, and I would far rather have feedback through a review, including a poor one, than not, but in this case the rating seemed partly to be reflecting the absence of a story code in relation to a secondary plot device. Not an unreasonable point, but not one which it would ever occur to me to make in a review. Still, point taken, and I will try to be more careful with the story codes in future.