Michael’s comment > Likes and Comments
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Also, a lot of the classics are assigned reads in school, so many of those who read them do give them poor ratings because they felt forced to read them.
I think the "Harry Potter phenomenon" may be one reason a ten star system (or, as others have suggested, the option of half stars) might solve, to an extent. I only just joined the site, and naturally the first thing I'm doing is adding my favourite books to the shelf. Obviously I'm going to give all of those a good score, but I know a lot of books that, despite being brilliant, aren't as perfect as five stars would suggest. The thing is, effectively knocking 20% off the rating doesn't seem quite fair either.
I think the ability to give something like 4.5 stars might produce some interesting results for those Harry Potter types of books that only the fans will rate.
You nailed it! Even on Amazon or other consumer oriented review sites, the problem has to do with sampling that will always bias the resulting statistics. Most people who think it was ok/good/so-so won't review, so you have an oversampling of the extremes of the distribution.
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Jason
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May 03, 2012 04:56AM
Also, a lot of the classics are assigned reads in school, so many of those who read them do give them poor ratings because they felt forced to read them.
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I think the "Harry Potter phenomenon" may be one reason a ten star system (or, as others have suggested, the option of half stars) might solve, to an extent. I only just joined the site, and naturally the first thing I'm doing is adding my favourite books to the shelf. Obviously I'm going to give all of those a good score, but I know a lot of books that, despite being brilliant, aren't as perfect as five stars would suggest. The thing is, effectively knocking 20% off the rating doesn't seem quite fair either.I think the ability to give something like 4.5 stars might produce some interesting results for those Harry Potter types of books that only the fans will rate.
You nailed it! Even on Amazon or other consumer oriented review sites, the problem has to do with sampling that will always bias the resulting statistics. Most people who think it was ok/good/so-so won't review, so you have an oversampling of the extremes of the distribution.
