Stars in Your Reviews - the Goodreads Conundrum

[jacey]

This is for all you people who read and review or add star ratings on Goodreads.

I just read a review of Charlie Stross' first Laundry book on Goodreads and I noticed that though the review was positive the reviewer hadn't given it a star rating. I was talking to another author after my first book came out and she said she was happy to review books on Goodreads, but she didn't feel it was fair for her - as an author - to give star ratings. I can thoroughly sympathise with this feeling. When your own books are up there for comments and reviews, you suddenly lose your taste for slamming some poor fellow author with a stinker, however what she hadn't realised was that not giving a star rating when you review effectively means you've given the book zero stars.

I don't think Goodreads explains this, and I only realised when I added it up. As a very new author I had so few starred reviews that it was obvious the reviews that hadn't been starred had pulled down my average rating as if they were zeroes (despite the reviews being positive.)

My feeling is that Goodreads should be asked to display a warning that says: Please note any review without a star rating effectively counts as a zero stars review. This would actually be a bonus to some folks who begin reviews with: "I'd like to give this book no stars at all..." Effectively you can do that.

My point is, however, that it would be useful for people to know that declining to give stars at all is the same as awarding zero out of five to a book you may have quite liked.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Yet another reason I don't do goodreads reviews. I know it's problematic for me as I do want good reviews myself, but the site is so strange, so cumbersome, and so alienating for me I can't bring myself to do them.

[seawasp]

Ow. I did not know that. I don't think I've ever declined to give a star rating, but I know a couple of people who have, and I'm pretty sure they didn't intend to rate the books in question as "Zero".

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Yup, it happened to me twice. Both times good reviews, but zero stars. It's not desperately important once you've gathered enough reviews that a single one doesn't skew the average too much, but early on it can make quite a difference. I know the reviewer in question didn't mean to award zero out of five to Charlie's book. And I know Charlie will have so many reviews that it really won't make much of a difference to his average, but all the same anyone declining to add a star rating should know what it means.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

That's ignorant of them. The x-number-of-stars is what's called a Likert Scale, and people who imply you can't give no stars are right: it's 1-5.

I have the usual problem at work with people who try to calculate means using these things (best to stick to median), but the really bad thing to do is to calculate a mean including the nulls as zeros. The nulls should be nulls, excluded from the denominator as well as the numerator.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the technical explanation, Del. The average seems to be achieved by a simple 'take the number of stars and divide it by the number of reviews.' Unfortunately the reviews that don't allocate stars are counted. Seems bonkers to me. So two five star reviews and two no-stars-allocated reviews would show a star average of 2.5.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Urggggh. I thought that no stars bypassed their counting. (I 'review' my own stuff, confining comments to talking about the writing process, and do no stars. But then I don't look at it again, so I had no idea of any of this. Argh.)