Indeed, I think it’s useful to have context for why people don’t rate/review things, such as @Biblio’s stance on rating memoirs, which is totally understandable. I also didn’t realise some people find it really difficult or burdensome to rate/review, or see it as “work”. My eyes have been opened!
The primary reason I suggested Prompt user to rate/review and grade after marking item as finished was because for people who do rate/review/grade their items, it’s not as straightforward as it could be, as you have to do several different steps on different pages. Having everything in one place would make it more convenient, and I think this would naturally lead to more people using these features.
No one suggested pop-ups or anything intrusive, just that certain processes be made more user-friendly, which wouldn’t impact people who don’t want to rate/review/grade, so I’m not sure where these fears stem from.
What is considered intrusive differs from user to user, there are more intrusive patterns than just pop-ups. An important thing for developing a good user experience, in my opinion, is to consider potential pitfalls when working on a new pattern. Which is why I challenged the core assumption that nudging people towards creating content (in the form of ratings, reviews, …) is always positive. I think that’s some valid input to share and not in contrast with your feature request.
I tend to rate everything I read, I think there are one or two things I did not because I was really ambivalent about them. I have so far mainly used the site for Japanese, but I’m also picking up German books again and there I especially want to rate/review/grade, because there aren’t that many users as for the Japanese side of things.
I also try and grade everything, but sometimes I am a bit unsure about those and worry about messing up the system.
This highlights an important distinction, I think; there’s “how good the book actually is”, and there’s also “how good the book is as a material for language study”. If we had a yes/no recommendation system (in addition to 5 stars?), maybe the angle should be “Would you recommend this for someone studying X language?”
That’s a good point specifically since there are some aspects that can make a book worse as a reading experience, while being very beneficial for learners. For example a lot of repetition, simple prose or a limited vocabulary. Meanwhile detailed descriptions, poetic prose or complex plot have a great impact on the difficulty. However simpler doesn’t always mean easier since a lack of description can make the book harder if a reader misses a vital information because it was conveyed in one word instead of spread over several sentences.
I rate everything based on non-learning criteria, like I would on any other website. Everyone learns in different ways and via different learning path, so I find it hard to judge what is or is not good for language study. For example, I followed the WaniKani learning path, so kanji has rarely been a big issue for me and I almost never consider it when grading books. But for others, lack of furigana would make for terrible learning material.
It’s almost like the question isn’t “would you recommend this for someone studying X language”, and more like “would you recommend this for someone studying X language who has ABC baseline of knowledge”, which isn’t something that can be done in a yes/no format.
I rate most of the books I read, unless I simply forget to after marking it as finished. When I give a rating though, it’s for myself to look back on later after time has passed to see what I thought of the book. Sometimes I’m surprised by the rating I gave a book at the time!
I personally have never decided to read a book or not based on the star rating on natively. Everyone has a different criteria for giving ratings and their own personal taste, so it isn’t the greatest metric for me for finding a new rec. Although, it can be helpful if I find someone with similar taste to me who gave a 5 star rating to a book I haven’t heard of - then I am interested.
As for reviews, I write them occasionally when I have something to say about a book or want to boost the visibility of one that no one else has read since I enjoyed it, and think others would too. However, I tend to want to sit down and process my thoughts about the book and then properly write and edit the review, which all takes time. Since this is just a hobby for me, I unfortunately only end up writing reviews when I have a lot of extra bandwidth in my life. I am also less likely to take the time to review a book if it already has other reviews. Instead, I will come on the forums here and write an informal version of my thoughts and recommend books that way instead.
It can’t really be done with a 5 star rating system either, which is why the whole “Language Learning Rating” thing has always felt a bit silly to me. It’s nice that the split exists for e.g. graded readers which have language learning features that you can rate, but every native book that isn’t riddled with mistakes is good for learning something. Even my lowest rated books would be 5 stars for language learning purposes in my opinion.
Mmm, I don’t fill in the language learning rating. I do mention aspects of the book that I think might be relevant for learners in my reviews (lots of obscure vocab, author likes weird kanji choices, etc) if they seem particularly prominent.
I absolutely agree. I mean, it’s a book. What does a book that is bad for language learning look like? Am I supposed to rate it high if it’s easy to start off with?
Right, nearly every book is good for someone. If an author uses less common kanji forms is that bad for learning? For early learners, yes. For advanced learners, not necessarily.
I do agree with you all that ratings are a bit confusing. The impetus for why they are there in the first place was trying to resolve this sort of conundrum.. but it’s still confusing
I try to document my impression and thoughts on the content in the reviews. I don’t usually review until I finish it or know that I will finish it. If I might quit then I don’t review usually.
Sometimes the content feels like it is not for me but for someone else: like I am surprised to learn that the target audience is young girls or pervs, for example. Then I might just let it go. If I review those then I might destroy it in the review, but it will be a mis-matched content to audience so perhaps an inappropriate review. I wish that every piece of content labelled the target audience (age, sex) because I usually have no idea going into it. Not sure if it’s just Japanese content but many times I feel like I was tricked into starting it with the cover and description for what turns out to be a lame drama between 2 characters.
This would be impossible with a lot of books. I recommend using the tag system to get an idea of content, but a good many books actually appeal to a variety of people!
Regarding “Language Learning Rating”, there are definitely some cases where it’s useful. In particular, I use it when there is a significant amount of a non target language in a movie. As bestashttps://learnnatively.com/movie/3a85f1b84f/ comes to mind as it flipped between gallego, french and spanish constantly. Nearly silent films or those with very little dialogue like Carmen | L30?? get low “language learning rating” from me as well.
Tres tristes tigres | L30?? is an example of a classic spanish language novel with purposefully terrible spelling and grammar. A low “language learning rating” here was used to warn people of this.
These are also examples of when I write reviews, to warn people of problems like these. A spanish movie that has significant amount of basque or finnish is going to be impossible even if the spanish is easy. And probably not worth the time. A note, quick or otherwise, in a review gives a heads up.
