While I'm sure this debate has been had, I'd like to know about current thoughts about quality. Honestly speaking, I don't believe a single book on this site deserves higher than a 4, purely from a plot perspective. Long novels that are more than 2000 pages are difficult to write in a cohesive manner in which the author does not come up with a large ass pull for the sake of the plot. Of course there are exceptions, but a 5 represents the pinnacle of what a book can be. A three is an average book. Earning a one in a book should be an accomplishment for how terrible it is. I looked at the lord of the rings, the gunslinger, and the dark elf trilogy. Then I tried to find a novel on this site that is written just as well as one of those three. I have hopes for the grandmaster strategist, but I'm not betting on it. If every book is a five or a one, why doesn't nu just have a thumbs up vs thumbs down like YouTube?
Here is a link for the dark tower 1. Disregard the movie as it is missing almost all of the characters let alone most of the worlds. http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy Fo..._Stephen_-_Dark_Tower_01_-_The_Gunslinger.pdf
cuz it only bring more ridiculous thing~ heck I forget see how many 1 star just cuz it ntr 1 star for new title thumb up and down? meh~ despite rating and review is biased heck much better than thumb up and down~ I mean I can look at scale from 1~5 but just 2?
It always falls under how much they liked the novel. I can put a 5star rating in a novel that i find amusing and it maybe trash to you. Also western novels are often rated by those so called critics or by how many a books are sold. Its different here in asia than western countries.
I think Ze Tian Ji is really good. I've never reviewed or rated any novel but if I was gna consider one for a rating of 5 I might choose that. Though not sure bout the ending~
Different taste different evaluation. Even some of our reader might find American celebrated fictions as a meh......
Sorry but I disagree, even the late Roger Ebert gave Titanic a horrible review and said it was going to flop As a renowned critic he was taken seriously, he had to recant his words. Enjoyment is more important than one sided biased opinions
I agree with you in the sense that ratings on NU don't use the entire scale and aren't very reflective of the quality of the work in question. However, I don't think that you're reading what the ratings represent: they're not an objective measure of how good a work is; they're a measure of popularity and are mostly dependent on how many people will give a work a "5". I also don't think that there's any realistic way of making them more universally useful. It's a truism of every public rating system out there. I don't read Stephen King, but Tolkien and Salvatore aren't even good writers. I can easily think of a ton of Chinese writers on NU who are better. You've also got to bear in mind that these are fan translations, and they're not going to be necessarily reflective of the quality of the original works. I do admit that I'm still having a hard time finding good prose from Japanese web novels.
I wouldn't say that no single book deserves higher than a 4, that would be nonsense. There are plenty of masterpieces in their own sense. Even from plot perspective. That said, you have to realize that NU in general is made up of fans of asian type literature. So the ones reading it are those who prefer those kinds of things which influences their ratings. Because tastes and bias play a large role. Personally in my opinion I see books like Lord Of the Rings as average at best and Harry Potter below average. But that is my personal tastes and does not reflect the overall demographics. See demographics is key. When you have multiple demographics, you can put together a score that better reflects general adoption. The NU community demographic is limited to fans of these kind of things which influences the score. Other issues is the rating system in itself. Many things I and others would rate say 4.5 stars but since we can only chose 4 or 5 stars they end up getting a 5 star review. Not much can be done. There are also a lot of people who rate based on mood, translations, tags, score balancing and etc.
With a lower barrier of entry it's understandable that most Japanese web novels are average. Most of the Chinese web novels translated are VIP which is equivalent to light novels
Reviews are subjective. Quality itself is subjective to an extent. They can also be relative. I personally don't even compare webnovels to 'actual' novels when it comes to quality.. usually. Most reviewers, from what I've seen, create theirs before finishing the wn. They catch up to current translations or get to a certain point and put together a review. Often not all that exact, just telling how they feel. That's probably when you get those 5s or 1s especially.
Nah, in his case it is also a matter of taste. As he put it, he considers anything with long sentences high quality and things with short sentences as low quality. Which ironically is opposite in the english language as proper english writing should be concise and to the point.
If you think LoTR is a masterpiece in the first place, you sound very far from having your way around literature. At least pick up Les Misérables or The war and the Peace.
Haha I purposefully ignored the other part lol. I think it is subjective. I learnt about stories like Awakening in college which was written by a lady hundreds of years ago and critically panned. After her death it became a masterpiece. I don't take critics seriously
I've never been able to enjoy any of those award winning books as much as I have these webnovels. There are of course exceptions on both sides. There are english books that I love and webnovels that I hate, but when it comes down to it... things like how well it's written or how good the plot is doesn't actually affect my rating of it too much. I look mostly at how likeable the characters are, and if I'm willing to read about their adventures. Perhaps it's the faster pacing that attracts me to webnovels? I don't really know.
Nah, it's more that Chinese web novels are mainstream whereas Japanese web novels are pretty much only otaku. There are a ton of good Japanese writers who would never touch the format whereas the opposite is not true. I haven't given up on Japanese web novels yet though, and I'd love to see something good.
NU rater are having an upvote downvote system in their minds because theyre childish and cant stand a novel actual rating to be more or less than what they want it to be and either vote 1 or 5 . Cant blame em, since most of em are kids anyway... I dont trust the reviews here that much. Most people here have an idealistic character tamplate on their minds and when any of the character differ even a bit from it, they will get an automatic 1 rate and a bash review.