I see the following danger and may not be the first that does so.
Well, the problem is the following. To be concrete: I read 魔女の多急便 about 1.5 years ago (with 5.5 look-ups per page) and then thought its rating of 26 is OK. BTW: At that time it was identical to the rating of 時をかける少女, which now plunged down to 23.
Now I finished 思い出のマーニー(上) and think it is far easier (just 3.6 look-ups per page) than 魔女の多急便. But is that book objectively far easier? Would I have thought the same 1.5 years ago, probably not. Back then I might have thought they have almost similar difficulty, and the reduction of look-ups is just due to me having got better at reading.
I tend to simply not grade against things I read a long time ago. There is an option where you can decide a book should no longer be used for gradings, and whenever I come across something old in my gradings, I ban it. I think the grading generally gives priority to recent reads, so the fewer books you have read in a certain level span the more likely it is to make you grade against older stuff.
But also, if I feel a book is a similar struggle to a book I read 6 months ago, I grade the newer book as more difficult than the earlier one, since I am sure to have improved since than.
It seems that ratings, on average, will settle on an appropriate level. Other people will encounter the same book at a different point in their reading journey than you and will grade it differently than you. So while the same book seems far easier to you over time, and your concern is that your previous grading was very high, someone else will grade it very low, and it’ll all average out.
(Brandon talked about showing the average grading versus time at some point in the future, so it’ll be interesting to see that.)
I’d say that grading will always be subjective (not objective), because
it’s all relative to personal experience.
(Btw, kudos for coming up with an objective measure of difficulty – look-ups per page – but not everyone uses objective measures for grading.)
For what it’s worth, I decided to take a quick look at this.
Uniquely graded, non-temporary book rating changes:
Over past 6 months:
1712 books
+0.01 avg level change
Over past 12 months:
1110 books
-0.04 avg level change
Over past 18 months:
644 books
-0.05 avg level change
So it is slightly going in that direction, but not really meaningfully. It’s hard to tell as the library is still growing so rapidly, so the random fluctuations of initial book levels after their temporary grading must have a significant effect.
Like @Biblio said, there are ways to mitigate that issue if it becomes significant, but many people already self mitigate (skipping comparisons is easy!). We actually don’t prompt you for most recent books first, just closest by level… but yeah if you block your old books you won’t be prompted by them.
Not terribly concerned about it, but something to definitely keep in mind!
Yeah, it’s really hard to know which way it goes. More experienced users do the vast majority of gradings by volume, but not necessarily on the super lower level books. I would say though that lvl 26 & above… things that might appeal to you strictly on interest… will probably get a majority of people reading that book as a simple pleasure read, rather than a hard book.
But, yes, I think generally it will all level out!
11 Likes
As an Amazon Associate, Natively earns from qualifying purchases through any Amazon links on the site.
