Yeah, we discussed this earlier, leading to the same nuances as the suggestion you post later instead of the Goodreads one.
Sounds good!
Aw, that’s a shame. Because the current system is the one stressful for me. “Hmmm, this is better than my usual 3, but not quite a 4. Which one should I choose?” I imagine this will only get worse the more books I rate.
And, is it less common? For example, IMDB and all the anime rating sites I know either have 10 pt rating or 5 pt with half-stars. Goodreads doesn’t, but has 3 “positive” ratings instead of just 2. Personally, I agree that 10 pt rating systems are more stressful, but 5 pt with halfs feels like the perfect compromise, because you can still use it like a 5 star system, adding a bit more nuance if you feel like neither a nor b quite fits.
On top of that, it’s very easy to understand for people who are already using to 5 star rating systems, as they are already used to half-stars when looking at the average ratings. It would fit perfectly into the current system.
For me it’s harder to rate something out of 5 than out of 10, but I guess giving a favourite would help reduce the stress on what I rate 5 starts, while I really loved it I woudn’t call it a favourite.
BTW if anyone hasn’t seen the manual favourite topics, it’s over here:
I use a 20 point scale on AniList (1-10 with half points).
That said, I wouldn’t want a 10 point scale here. 5 with half star options (as you mentioned) would be fine since I’d just give full stars 99% of the time (I think there’s only one book so far that I would have given a half star to). Also, to give a counter example, Amazon uses a full star 5 point scale, which I think works fine.
There are a handful of anime I gave 10/10 on AniList that are not in my favorites list, and I’ve added several that I gave 9/10 or 9.5/10 to my favorites list. I can’t really explain why since it’s not like I’m even trying to rate objectively, but to me giving the highest possible score doesn’t imply favorite and favorite doesn’t imply that it gets the highest possible score.
Yeah, I have a few like that as well… Flying Witch wasn’t really a favorite for me, but I still rated it 9/10 because it was super cute and well-written and I’d happily recommend it to anyone (bonus: it’s great listening practice for rural accents).
Late to the party, but I’m I’m the Goodreads ranking camp here. Only having two levels of liking isn’t enough imo, and having two levels of dislike is overkill if there are only 5 ratings. (It is incredibly rare that I actually manage to read anything I dislike since I avoid things I know I will, let alone have enough of them I need to distinguish)
I’ve been grading all of mine so far according to 3=like, 2=okay. Since that’s how I’ve done my 5 star ratings elsewhere
I find it kind of intimidating to rate books I’ve read in Japanese.
I don’t want to risk giving a book a bad rating as a fault of my comprehension, or my slow pace of reading made the book seem to drag, or I intentionally chose a book not because it was something I wanted to read but because it seemed level appropriate.
I think that might be the case for a lot of people using Natively.
We’re not necessarily reading books because we enjoy reading, but rather using books as a learning tool.
That makes it difficult to rate enjoyment when while reading it was never really a consideration in the first place.
Looking back I rarely ever enjoyed my time reading through Harry Potter in Japanese, it wasn’t miserable or anything, it was just study in the form of a story.
If I had to base my rating on my enjoyment I’d give it a 1 or a 2, but I don’t think that’s a fair rating considering how I consumed the book.
It’d be like giving a textbook a poor rating because you read it as if it were a novel.
And that goes for pretty much everything I’ve read in Japanese up until recently when I started reading 本好きの下克上, that was the first time that I found myself reading for pleasure.
Ratings are a nice feature to have but I think one has to take the userbase into account.
Not everyone on Natively is reading for pleasure and that’s going to reflect in the ratings.
If possible I think it’d be nice if along side the Natively’s userbase ratings there could be the Amazon/GoodReads ratings.
Gotta say it never occurred to me that some people weren’t enjoying their reading material. To me part of the reason for getting into reading was to do something fun with the language finally. I have totally forced myself through stories I hated for the learning gains (Dear Friends | L25 I’m looking at you) but it was still a case of I knew why I hated the book, and it was plot and characters, not language, problems.
To me this kind of means users should be able to leave reviews without star ratings, because the star ratings (overall, rather than the learning one) don’t really apply to them.
Also I also read HP as my first book and I enjoyed it
Just in case you (and others) are not aware, you can split your rating into “language learning” and “enjoyment”. You need to go to the page of the book and then click on “write a review”, so it’s slightly less convenient, though.
(You do not need to actually write a review, you can leave the rest blank; you do need to press save, though)
