Same here. Ratings for all volumes of a series, since it can fluctuate quite a bit for me.
I go based on big vibes for that case. I’ve had 3.5s where I felt my overall impression was on the positive side of a 3.5, and cases where it was a solid 3.5 but just wouldn’t deserve a 4. Very scientific.
I will never recommend a two star book, but a book that is 4-5 stars for me might nonetheless not be a book for everyone, e.g. 死役所 is a solid 4.5 book for me that I will definitely not recommend to everyone.
OMG for real? Kanji wordplay ftw 
Well the series has interesting characters that work in that office, in the front シ村, the “man in black“ you see on almost every cover.
I am not even sure that he was human before working there. He seems to be the (last) boss of that office, though he mostly acts just as kind of a receptionist.
I like the way he makes people do what he seems to want them to do, often by not telling them the consequences of their decisions. In the first story, you might think he is kind of an asshole not telling all, but I assume he wanted the two people - the person that was bullied and the bullying one - to meet, which also makes me think he has kind of a supernatural intuition of what is about to happen.
I don’t mean that I go around recommending all my 4star books to everyone out of context, just that I feel happy recommending or bringing them up (perhaps with a note about any things I think might be problems for other people) if somebody asks for suggestions for books on X or Y topic or genre or whatever; whereas I probably wouldn’t bother to mention a 3star book in the first place.
I rate everything but I’ve been conflicted before. There are mangas I only read because they were popular starters. They weren’t my cup of tea, but I can’t say they were bad. I rated them anyway since there were enough ratings for mine to be negligible.
I try to grade everything at least a few times. Comparing the difficulty of something I read as an absolute beginner to anything now is hard though. Reading a Lv 19 manga a year ago and reading a Lv 24 now are the same experience.
I also grade exclusively on the first volume. Then I leave a review if the second one is easier or harder.
I always rate and grade right away! It’s part of the fun/accomplishment for me, and I feel like those are two of the main functions of the site (level-appropriateness, and content discovery).
I try to always write reviews, but sometimes fail if I binge read something while I’m offline, or just don’t want to stop. Seeing something with a rating but no review doesn’t really tell me anything useful about it, and I’m so much more likely to start (or know to avoid) something, if there’s even a simple review.
It’s surprising to see so many people say they only rate the first volume of the series. I find it really helpful when there’s ratings for later on, since some series start out weak & get better - and some series start out great, and then nosedive, or have a few cursed volumes. If there’s no ratings later on, I worry the series stopped being interesting or something (otoh, then I can be the person to rate it)
Same. One thing I find interesting is that my impression of a series sometimes changes a few months later, usually for the worse 
I’ve probably gotten more critical lately, and I’d probly bump various things down, if I ever reread them.
I’ve been struggling a lot with this lately… on one hand, there’s some things I can evaluate better. Otoh things that might be very relevant at lower levels have become 普通… I feel like my perception of difficulty is all over the place sometimes, and it’s like “do I even know how to grade anymore?” … Also realizing that I increasingly have to exclude stuff I read a year or two ago. I skip a lot more now than I used to (even recent reads)
My other issue with grading is that it can’t tell you why something is easy/hard
It really depends on why it’s in-between, and I’ll usually note in a review that I struggled. I guess some of it comes down to “how much/little do I want to encourage someone else to read/watch this?” or what the specific reason I’m torn is. Maybe I’m just being too intense/emotional, so I round up. Maybe I’m overly elated, but I can recognize that it has some notable flaws that if I’m thinking critically, I’ll rate it a little lower.
I don’t write reviews often since I usually can’t formulate well what I liked about a book. So I’ve tended to just write very short reviews, mostly for books I felt strongly about and some 4-koma series that would never get reviews if it wasn’t for me. (On that note, I wonder if I counted up all “finished” statuses for Kirara 4-koma manga on all of Natively if I’d have a majority of them. 
)
Yeah, there’s often that “I just finished a book” high that makes people inflate their opinion of the book, or really any media for that matter.
That’s how you know you’re getting better with the language.
“Why does this mean such and such?”
“I don’t know, it just does”
Yeah, I have trouble with that sometimes… in which case, I just write a sentence or two. Other times, I could write a whole damn essay … Ultimately, I just want there to be something for the next user who comes across it
That seems very likely
True, but maybe sometimes it’s the other way around… memory isn’t the most reliable thing. Or I later came across things about the book that I hadn’t really thought about before
I meant more that people find different things easy/hard. And series all have really different challenges. Ex: 堀さんと宮村くん | L26 (100% in god-awful handwriting), 暁のヨナ | L28 (historical fantasy vocab, handwriting, grammar), 雨夜の月 | L23 (disability vocab), NEW GAME! | L25 (office, game design/dev, and occasional fantasy vocab), and ツバサ | L25 (abstract quasi-philosophical topics, fantasy vocab, convoluted plot that is intentionally obfuscated), and ぼっち・ざ・ろっく! | L30 (incredibly specific jokes & references, pop culture knowledge).
I actually find 堀さん and ツバサ hardest of all of those… but someone with a different skill set/reading history might be totally different.
Now that’s the sign that you’re getting better 
Interesting to see how everyone else does it. I think others basically said it for me— some things are just harder to grade (for me, it’s manhwa and audiobooks) and sometimes too much time has passed. I always do a few gradings for each book so it feels like it’s in the right general area level wise. I also rate everything so I can go back and reflect on my reads (so it’s just for me lol). It’s nice when books have ratings but I honestly don’t base my next reads off of that so others ratings/lack of ratings don’t bother me.
I try to review a lot these days since there’s really not a lot of Korean reviews imo. At least for what I’m reading haha. Sometimes I try to let a book settle before writing one and then too much time passes tho lol. I may go back and write a couple short reviews though since I now can feel how sad it is when people have read a book but there’s so reviews 
I try to grade everything if I can. I am not sure if I could grade stopped (half-finished) books, especially if I stopped very early. I am not sure if my grading for audiobook-only books would be reliable, but I would still try.
I starred pretty much every book. Often, first volumes have different star-ratings from latter volumes.
But there are always some randomness involved. Inconsistency on memory of the book, and fast self read vs slow read along with a book club. There are several books I want to rate 3.5, but I may have rated 4 in the past, while rather 3 recently. Also no established criteria.
Grading, I generally don’t worry much about Kanji or Furigana, but rather vocabularies, grammar, slur, dialects, and paragraph length / text density. People have different backgrounds, and different strengths and weaknesses…
That’s usually because I binge series and then I don’t exactly remember anymore what happened in which volume…
What does binge mean for you? When I binge a series (which is rare), I’m still reading at most around one volume per day, and sometimes still only one every 2-3 days. But even if I finished 5 volumes in a day I would still mark each volume as completed and rate them on Natively as soon as I finished them.
what are you all doing about dictionaries? We’re meant to rate after finishing, but you don’t really finish a dictionary (although some people have done that with the grammar dictionary). Just curious.
I recently added my monolingual dictionary because it felt like something other people might enjoy. I don’t really care about “tracking it” per se
There was (is?) a book club on WaniKani for the Dictionary of Japanese Grammar, at least for the Basic and Intermediate volumes. So I guess those people really finished the dictionary
Ahhh, that makes sense. In that case, I’d give them the same rating, unless there was something I remember having really strong feelings about, then is probably try to flip back and figure out where it was
I’ve been having trouble with magazines lately tho. When I get caught up to the latest Yurihime edition, I’ll start writing small notes for each chapter in there. My rating will probably remain 4 stars (I love the magazine, but there’s some stuff in there that’s just why??!!?!?!), but I’ll be able to write proper reviews then.
Rate after you’ve used it enough to have a significant impression. I’d also leave a detailed review with whatever seemed relevant (word inclusion, thoroughness, utility, and accuracy of definitions, formatting and organization, other features, etc). You can rate, while still leaving it Owned afaik.
Any chance you could link the dictionary you got? I just got one as well, but haven’t added it yet, bc I have to hunt down the specific edition on Amazon
You could also set the dictionary to Finished and just set the finish date as 2000, or some other obvious number that you could glance at and know it’s not a real finish date for yourself. That way you could get it out of Owned/Reading.
I don’t add “books” that are educational in nature. So no textbooks and no dictionaries. So I guess I avoid this question by just sidestepping it.
Seeing as I have some pre-2000 finish dates for manga I feel personally attacked by this
Ack 1900? Is that an option?
