SFBRP Listeners discussion
Goodreads rating scale
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I agree. I had trouble with the Goodreads rating system at first too, but now I'm on board. While 1 rating for dislike seemed at first to be too few, the more I think about it, I'm sure if I actually rate something with 2 stars (It was OK) I'm not very likely to recommend it to anyone. And only then with reservations. Also, I was in the habit of giving 5 stars to nearly everything I really liked, but now I give it a second thought if a book really is truly Amazing, i.e. in the upper echelon of what will (still) be considered classics in 20 years to come. As for how some books have a higher than 5 star rating, I haven't a clue!
I had the same issue at first, but I have become more used to it. I also find myself very rarely giving 5 stars, which helped the scale make more sense to me.I use 1 star for books that I really didn't like of course. 2 stars if it was ok or average (This usually being for a book I can understand someone liking, but it just wasn't a good book for me). 3 stars to me means I really liked it, but I would still think before recommending it to someone unless I knew it was their sort of thing. 4 stars of course means I really really liked it, and I would recommend it to almost anyone. 5 stars is reserved for those books that I loved and would read again without hesitation.
How a book can get more than 5 stars I haven't a clue... Perhaps Goodreads is having some site scripting issues?
I have adopted the star system of:1 - gave up or completely did not like
2 - boring, struggle to enjoy
3 - average. Not to say it was not good, but it does not stand out
4 - Enjoyed very much
5 - Something new/powerful, will always remember it
Getting into decimal places is confusing and 10 scale is too broad. Reducing the range (to an extent) does make you think more about the rating you are giving.
I'm pretty new to Goodreads and I found it pretty odd at first. Looking back over my ratings I'd say they are all skewed too high so I've slowly been normalizing them back down. I've taken to following the textual descriptions provided.
Is it polite to resurrect a dinosaur as my first post?What the heck, here goes…
I find the Goodreads system a refreshing change from top-skewed system like ebay or Amazon that consider anything less than top scores as 'not good enough'. On Goodreads I feel I can give any rating from 1 to 5 without trashing an authors work, a one just means it wasn't for me.
(edited typos)
I don't review a lot of stuff on Amazon but it seems to me that Goodreads is more focused on the content of books where as Amazon's rating are for anything Amazon sells. If I'm looking for a toaster I want a four- or five-star toaster because anything else might fall apart or burn my toast. Rating the content of books is a lot more subjective and needs a subtler scale, so yeah, applying a toaster rating scale to books is probably going to lead to a lot of "inflated" ratings.The other reason I think Goodreads has to have more choices at the high end is that, if most reviewers like most of us are reading for pleasure we're just going to give up on bad books or books that don't appeal to us. I need a wider range of ratings to categorize the books I actually finish. Just scanning my Read books, most of my completed books are 3, 4 or 5 and a lot are unrated.
When I first got online in the '90s, there was this guy on Usenet who would get mad at reviewers for using three stars as a good rating. He argued that scoring 60% on a test is equivalent to a D- or F.I don't totally agree. I think three stars should be the equivalent of a C, which is better than failure but still not something to be satisfied with.
My problem with star ratings is too many people seem to make five stars the default and only knock points off if there's something they don't like. But if you assume that three stars is average, you should start there and only give extra points if the author works for it.
I tend to agree with Amy, however I would phrase it differently :) We need more dimensions to rate on. E.g. how much did I like it, handicraft/editing, story/plot, ... I guess one could (and it probably has already been done) spend GBytes discussing the dimensions of rating, and how to define some (objective?) measure. And then there are things that are simply subjective (like How much did I like the book?)And even if we could agree on a set of properties, who'd really bother to carefully rate all of them?
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Responding to Tommy, I guess that's what I read reviews and listen to Luke for. :-) I'm looking for a quick impression with star ratings. I don't think I could process multiple star ratings. Plus, how many books, even great books, do you know that get all the parts right?The Audible review system only makes sense in that I think you can separate out the audio performance from the book. It could be helpful to know that the book is good but the narration is bad and vice versa.
In reply to the posts about why there are four good ratings to the one bad rating, surely the fact that you have decided to read a book is a rating in itself? I tend to enjoy most of what i have decided to read and most of the none star and one star books have already been weeded out!
For me three stars is average, a pretty good book. Four stars are for a few best books in a year. Five stars are for a few best books in a decade.
I used to read a few two star reviews to decide if a book was worth reading. Now I go more on the Goodratings firefox plugin which recalculates the Goodreads ratings. I find that it makes sorting out the good books from the popular books easier and is less likely to contain unwanted spoilers.
Star ratings are pointless, anyway:5: good book, would recommand
4: good book with some prolems, would not recommand to everybody
3: Major problems, just for people who are into that kind of stuff
2: mostly bullshit with some bright moments, would not recommand
1: bullshit.
This discussion is really interesting - and revealing! Some of us provided their personal ranking systems according to which the rank the books for themselves, and what system do they used when they rate a book here? the same or that suggested by Goodreads? And what does this tell us about the usefulness of the ratings if everyone uses a different one?Which brings me back to Amy :) where she's again right, that's one of the reasons why we listen to Luke and the such, we know how their tastes map to ours - and leaving aside that sometimes it's pure fun to listen to - I most often can tell whether a books is for me or not after he finished... Presumably the amount of information that is crammed into a podcast plays a role too.
The Goodreads star ratings takes some getting used to. If properly used, the results seem harsh compared to the Amazon rating. The latter looks similar, but Amazon counts only 4- and 5-star reviews as favorable, 1 to 3 star reviews are considered critical. (E.g. check the field "The most helpful critical review".)
The Goodreads scale has four levels of approval, and only one for dislike. So when I recently finished Banks's "Player of Games", I came to the conclusion that "it was ok", hence two stars - and that felt somehow wrong.
So far, so inconsequential. The main problem is that I don't know what to make of other people's star ratings when I want to use them as guides.
How do you decide on your ratings? Do you go by the verbal description Goodreads indicates for each level ("It was amazing", "I really liked it" etc.), or do you go by gut feeling/school grade equivalent/amazon?
And by the way, how is it possible that some books have an average star rating above five? Have a look at "Stories of Your Life and Others" in Ted Chiang's book listings: 5.19. (If you click on the title itself though, it will show a clean 5.00 score.)