Poll

Please, DO IT.
It's something you should have thought about MUCH earlier... and a recurring subject in many threads, BTW.
I'm used to 10-based voting systems, but I even think the best one is 10-based with half votes like 7.5 allowed - so I'm always feeling (very) limited when I rate a book here.

People not liking half stars are NOT forced in any way ro re-rate anything..I don't see why. Half stars just add information to people interested in having more information.

And no-one is forced to rate in half stars either.
If someone doesn't like half stars then they need not rate in half stars. They can continue to use the five stars. So having half stars would keep both personality types happy.

Ditto!

I'm in love with all this creativity... 99,9% of the "write-in" options on the poll are hugely useless and only serve the purpose of adding "major confusion", lool.

Terri wrote: "And no-one is forced to rate in half stars either.
If someone doesn't like half stars then they need not rate in half stars. They can continue to use the five stars. So having half stars would keep..."

Amen to that :)

Yes I'd love to have half-stars

I like the idea of having a "couldn't finish" option, which would replace the star rating for that book.

Maggie wrote: "I like the idea of having a "couldn't finish" option, which would replace the star rating for that book."
That's true ;)

Aleviuss wrote: "YES!! And they should have a 10 star ratings instead of only 5!!!"

oh my gosh yes.

Well, why don't they do it?

idk

I'm curious what's the difference between these options:
1. Yes! Some books fall in between whole stars and it's sloppy to have to round
2. Yes, I favor that. More differentiation is needed
3. Yes
4. Yes, I don't think it'd be a difficult thing to do.
5. Yes absolutely
6. Yes
7. Yes, without a doubt!!!
8. yes
9. Half stars would be great!

OR BETWEEN THESE:
1. No
2. No, it's misleading. If you want to tell precisely your opinion and your rating you can do that in the review
3. No, I certainly don't think that you should, Goodreads.
4. No, I'm not bothered by it; I don't see them as relevant.

AND THE BIGGEST ENIGMA, BETWEEN THESE TWO:
1. I think that it is better if we are able to put very exact ratings (example: 3.5 stars or 4.3) to give every book exactly what it deserves.
2. I think it's better if we are able to put very exact ratings ( example: 3.5 stars or 4.4) to give every book exactly what it deserves

This is ridiculous!

Milan/zzz wrote: "I'm curious what's the difference between these options:
1. Yes! Some books fall in between whole stars and it's sloppy to have to round
2. Yes, I favor that. More differentiation is needed
3. Yes
..."

True!

I think it would be nice to have 2 ratings for children's picture books. Sometimes the text is great but the illustrations aren't, and vice versa.

Oh my god yes. Yes, yes, yes. There have been SO many times when I really don't know if it deserves five stars and feel like it would be 4.5 stars but I have to put it in 4 stars because of the no half stars.

I'm sure A LOT of people feel the same way I do. I don't like the idea of 10 stars, it's too messy.

It's hard enough to rate the way it is now. If I will have to start thinking about half and full stars my mind will blow away.

I would love half stars! I know some people won't like it, but you can still rate a book and not use the half stars if not necessary. However, I think having them are necessary because some books may not be a complete whole number. In some of my reviews I find myself writing halves. So this would be great!

Half stars would be fine, but definitely not a 10-star scale! I don't reckon having to reshelve a bunch of books would be fun for anyone.

Ink wrote: "Half stars would be fine, but definitely not a 10-star scale! I don't reckon having to reshelve a bunch of books would be fun for anyone."

Definitely! xD

I don't mind the 5 stars but I think it would be cool if you had the option of rating different aspects of a book such as the writing style, plot, characters, etc.

Anything that contributes to more accuracy in rating is great with me.

Goodreads has a problem in that the vast majority of books fall between 3.5 and 5, largely, I am guessing, because people do not finish books they do not like, and people do not start books that they will not like.

This makes 4s and 5s the most common rating, so it would be nice if we could have 3.5 and 4.5, since people would be more likely to use those ratings for "above average but not great" and "extremely good book, but not one of my favorites" respectively. As it is, Horrible, Below Average, Average, Above Average, and Great are just not enough variety to accurately convey how good or bad a book is.

I don't think that this is absolutely necessary since you could mention your real star rating in a review, but I voted 'yes' because it would be more accurate of a rating. I wouldn't mind seeing a half-star system.

Yes, agreed. Half stars are essential.

I've been wanting half stars ever since I started my account here. It would also be great to give a book 0 stars. I've only been tempted to do it once, and it sucked having to give a book one star that I felt it didn't deserve.

Yes, it would give us a more accurate rating. Some books are good but, need a half star because of some grammatical errors. Or, it took forever and patience to get to the good. I could go on, i would appreciate half stars.

I've only ever wanted to use a half star rating (in between) like twice. It's not a big deal for me. I think it complicates things to be so picky. I mean, might as well just do a 1-10 rating. It only equates to another star in the long run. I like the simplicity of just having five stars. In the tough moments, it makes me be more intentional about my rating.

The problem with starting a new rating system would be, what would you do with all those reviews you had until now? Would you review them again? BUT I do agree that a 10 star rating would be better suited to rate instead of 5. There are times I think a book it's a 5 but not my favourite. If you had a 10 star rating you would put that others 5 at 9.

The only question is; how would we click on it?

I would prefer changing the rating scale to be 10/10 instead of 5/5

I think it would be neat if it let you choose which system of rating one preferred. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in-between or half stars etc.

I understand that often someone can be undecided between two votes, but I don't think that half star is the solution. But it's always subjective. I would be curious to examine a different system.

Thank you for including me in the poll!

Personally I use whole stars, but I can understand that people want to use half stars. No one's hurt with implementing half stars on here, since the people that use half stars can use it and the ones that do not just stick to whole stars. There's definitely some reads that are very much in between for me (between 3 and 4 stars mostly), so who knows I'll use it as well eventually.

Half stars would be good, it would give more rating nuance. I'd also appreciate the possibility to give zero stars (right now the lowest rating score is one), because I have read a few books, that were so terrible it physically hurt to read them and one star was a way too good score for such an atrocity

omg, please! I always sit here for 20 minutes debating whether I go up or down w my rating.

Absolutely. So many of my reviews would be different if I could half-star them. Since rating books is one of the primary functions of this site, you'd think they'd tried to be as flexible as possible about the star system.

For SURE. Thank goodness I'm not the only one wondering about this. Since Goodreads is already so mature and consider fine details, I don't understand why they have such a blocky rating system.

I'm so late but half stars pleaseee!! I say this bc 5 stars is my favourite of all time and there simply can't be that many - so if I really enjoy something but slightly less then my top 5-10 fav books then it has to be a 4 (when it should be a 4.5) and the books that I loved but not as much as the 4 stars have to be 3 (when they should be a 4) and so on for 2, so I'm basically rating everything down! Half stars would be awesome as books are so complex, so the rigid system of having 5 categories doesn't do them justice!

Yes! I really hope they do this some day because i like to rate thungs out of 10 and adding half stars would make things easier

...great idea of course but I don't think they have the savoir faire to do it. it's a veritable stone agey glitchopolys what goodreads is...if there was a better website to do with books I am sure many thousands would have migrated. my 22 cents. ;

my huge pet peeve is that they force one to 'follow' some other users while you just want to be friends. generally, i don't follow anyone nor do I care to be 'followed. like that ole ditty I guess lol

Yes, but only because it annoys me when people say they gave a book a half star. It doesn't exist, just pick one!

By implementing half-stars, you’re basically endorsing a 10-star rating system (which I prefer anyway), but it just seems pointless as most people seem to prefer a 5-star system to a 10-star system. But with half-stars it just becomes semantics anyway.

we also need 0 stars 😂 many books do not deserve even 1 star

Jo wrote: "I would really appreciate the option to rate a book with zero stars. Sometimes I pick up unbelievable bad written books that giving them one star just hurts -- but I want to rate every book I read...."

THIS👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

On one hand yes, because I can never make up my mind between 3 and 4! But on the other hand...,for me, Some books are 2.7's or 4.2's, it would get real messy real fast.

Nimrod wrote: "It should have been implemented long ago....."
Exactly

PLEASE PLEASE implement half stars! How do we get Goodreads on board?

Y'all do know story graph has half stars and u can also give a book 0 stars too which is cool!!

Goodreads haven't updated in a very long time so it wont ever happen...

No. A 10-star scale would give us differentiating shades of grey. People who use half and lower decimals look indecisive. As if they can't decide on a star from the existing scale that most closely matches their opinion.

People who do not use stars or write reviews give me the sense that they contribute nothing. If they don't record their preferences and comparisons including for themselves, why log them on a website?

Not only should there be half stars (or a 10 star system) but there should be a translate button on comments (like Instagram) so that we can read reviews written in other languages. My two pet peeves with Goodreads