[Andorion]

I was browsing through Goodreads today, when I noticed that the book rating on a couple of book that I have read, and know to be pretty good, were given rather low ratings. This prompted me to do a more detailed check. I don't think the Good reads rating system is very reliable at all. To demonstrate, I am giving below a comparative study of the Goodreads ating for the 10 books of MBotF and the first 10 books of Terry Goodkinds Sword of Truth series (Don't bite my head of please, there's a point to this)

The Ratings are out of 5. I am not giving the names of the books. only the serial numbers.

Malazan Sword of Truth

1. 3.62 1. 4.11
2. 4.24 2. 4.09
3. 4.35 3. 3.97
4. 4.29 4. 4.00
5. 4.31 5. 3.85
6. 4.39 6. 4.11
7. 4.32 7. 3.65
8. 4.31 8. 3.8
9. 4.32 9. 3.95
10. 4.4 10. 3.99

Now as you can see while the MBotF books rate deservingly high (except GotM which is ridiculously low) the Sword of truth books dont do too badly at all. In fact going by Goodreads the first book is better than GotM, and a couple of books come rather close. Now most of us get book recommendations, reviews from here, but thousands of people also use Goodreads. This rating system can be quite misleading. So, thoughts?

[Mentalist]

 Andorion, on 13 November 2014 - 04:10 AM, said:

I was browsing through Goodreads today, when I noticed that the book rating on a couple of book that I have read, and know to be pretty good, were given rather low ratings. This prompted me to do a more detailed check. I don't think the Good reads rating system is very reliable at all. To demonstrate, I am giving below a comparative study of the Goodreads ating for the 10 books of MBotF and the first 10 books of Terry Goodkinds Sword of Truth series (Don't bite my head of please, there's a point to this)

The Ratings are out of 5. I am not giving the names of the books. only the serial numbers.

Malazan Sword of Truth

1. 3.62 1. 4.11
2. 4.24 2. 4.09
3. 4.35 3. 3.97
4. 4.29 4. 4.00
5. 4.31 5. 3.85
6. 4.39 6. 4.11
7. 4.32 7. 3.65
8. 4.31 8. 3.8
9. 4.32 9. 3.95
10. 4.4 10. 3.99

Now as you can see while the MBotF books rate deservingly high (except GotM which is ridiculously low) the Sword of truth books dont do too badly at all. In fact going by Goodreads the first book is better than GotM, and a couple of books come rather close. Now most of us get book recommendations, reviews from here, but thousands of people also use Goodreads. This rating system can be quite misleading. So, thoughts?

It's a user-review system, that's used for SFF-lit--both mainstream bestselling trash like Badkind and more niche stuff like Malaz. Naturally, it'll mostly be reviewd by those who like the books.

From what I understand, WFR is the best of the SoT books because it's not quite insane and explores a few original ideas w/o going all preachy. So it makes sense it'd get a higer rating as most read book.
At the same time, GotM is a love it or hate it book, that's most different from mainstream fantasy--it is, in fact, a type of a test for the kind of inquisitive, put-it-together-yourself readers, who go on to become Malaz fanatics. But due to this love it or hate it thing (and also the fact that as a piece of literature and a debut work, it's not quite up to the same stndard as the rest), it makes sense for GotM to be rated low. though I don't see how DhG got such a low score.

I'd say it's more likely to be accurate with a higher sample size (so, if there's a lot of ratings, higher likelyhood of it being objective), but really, you should read the reviews, since all those ratings are pretty subjective.

[Nicodimas]

I just use it as a guide on which book i want to read next.

Ratings and books in general... are extremely subjective and I would argue mood based. I have stop Series re-reads to go a different direction if im not feeling it.

[worry]

It is what it is, an average of people's opinions. Not necessarily the same people, and certainly not the same amount of people (eg SoT book one has 100,000 more ratings than GotM). And people do tend to read the books they suspect they'll like in the first place, so most ratings skew positive (though written reviews will be more mixed, since a bad reaction might motivate writing as much as a good one).

All that said, Goodreads seems to have positivity as a mission statement. It goes out of its way to eschew flaming, you can only Like a review (rather than like 10 out of 15 people found this review helpful). And 2 stars is "It's ok" rather than a negative, so really 2 stars is average or "blah" and 1 star is the only truly bad rating possible.

[Salt-Man Z]

Another factor you see going on is...uh, I forget the term for it, but generally each book in a series is often rated higher than the preceding book. Why? Because readers who make it farther into the series are generally those who like the books enough to keep going. Those who would give later books lower ratings never do so because they drop out before getting to that point. So GotM (as previously mentioned) is pretty love-it-or-hate-it, and those who hated it more than likely didn't read DG, so DG's average rating goes up. People who didn't think DG was good enough to continue with the series didn't move on to MoI, so MoI's average rating goes up. The only odd blip in the MBotF ratings is the slight uptick for TBH. (The drop from MoI to HoC makes sense, given MoI's reputation as the high point of the series.)

SoT is interesting because the first 5 books seem to follow a downward trend. Then it spikes up again for book 6, only to drop back down and then continue climbing through the end of the series.

[Salt-Man Z]

Anyway, GR's ratings are about as reliable as any other book site. Like worry said, most people read books that they'll likely already enjoy, so a higher popularity generally leads to a higher rating. For crying out loud, the average GR rating for Twilight is 3.56 (with 2.6 million ratings!) In other words, just behind GotM.

[worry]

Book 6 is the one where the chicken has sex with all the babes and dispatches Karlak Marxanon with the Axe of Liberty.

[Andorion]

 Salt-Man Z, on 13 November 2014 - 05:06 AM, said:

Anyway, GR's ratings are about as reliable as any other book site. Like worry said, most people read books that they'll likely already enjoy, so a higher popularity generally leads to a higher rating. For crying out loud, the average GR rating for Twilight is 3.56 (with 2.6 million ratings!) In other words, just behind GotM.

Twilight has a 3.56 rating??? Bloody hell.

I was thinking from my own position, because, many times, especially before I got involved in Malazan Empire, I would use Goodreads or Amazon booklists to decide what to read next. Having selected a particular book, I would often find it has 100+ reviews which I didn't have the time to read. So the rating often determined whether i should look for a particular book or not. Now the problem with this is that, say, if I am a more or less uninformed reader trying to get into epic fantasy, I see SoT rated 4+, and I buy say the first three books because they are being sold cheap at a sale. Then I end up with shit. (This almost happened to me, but I was lucky enough to read Goodkinds first book from a library, so I learnt my lesson without spending any money)

[Gorefest]

Or you might end up liking them. The whole point of user ratings are that they are an average of lots of user tastes. So if you have an 'average' taste, you should be fine. However, the truth is that nobody has an 'average' taste and as such these ratings will never be accurate across the board. If you want reliable ratings for your specific situation, you are probably far better off identifying a few reviewers (from online blogs, magazines, etc) that seem to share your taste, and use their recommendations.

[D'iversify]

 Andorion, on 13 November 2014 - 06:57 AM, said:

[I would use Goodreads or Amazon booklists

Amazon is often awful for first impressions because they're a lot of one-star reviews out there for 'I ordered this book and it didn't arrive', or, in the case of academic books particularly, 'this book is just like the previous edition but they cut the 20 page supplement at the end'.

[acesn8s]

For my personal tastes, the reviews on GRs are slightly inflated.

Here's another comparison, Jordan's Wheel of Time series:

1 4.15
2 4.17
3 4.20
4 4.18
5 4.08
6 4.05
7 3.94
8 3.86
9 3.86
10 3.79
11 4.08
12 4.30
13 4.40
14 4.48

Now, as we all know, Crossroads is a pretty bad book. I was surprised to see it ranking 3.79.

[Imperial Historian]

I've not found any aggregate review booksites which feel remotely accurate, that's why I rely on personal recommendations from this forum for what to read, a bad rating of less than 3.5 usually means a book can be safely ignored though.

[Andorion]

 acesn8s, on 13 November 2014 - 12:55 PM, said:

For my personal tastes, the reviews on GRs are slightly inflated.

Here's another comparison, Jordan's Wheel of Time series:

1 4.15
2 4.17
3 4.20
4 4.18
5 4.08
6 4.05
7 3.94
8 3.86
9 3.86
10 3.79
11 4.08
12 4.30
13 4.40
14 4.48

Now, as we all know, Crossroads is a pretty bad book. I was surprised to see it ranking 3.79.

Deducting .3-.4 from each would be a lot closer to the truth.

[Andorion]

 Imperial Historian, on 13 November 2014 - 01:02 PM, said:

I've not found any aggregate review booksites which feel remotely accurate, that's why I rely on personal recommendations from this forum for what to read, a bad rating of less than 3.5 usually means a book can be safely ignored though.

This site is practically the only place I go to for reviews and recos now. Even your 3.5 rule isnt safe. Just think that GotM escapes your limit by only .1

[Salt-Man Z]

Yep, I pretty much just get my recs from here, too. I will put in a plug for LibraryThing, whose userbase is far less lowest-common-denominator than GR's, but is also far, far smaller. But if you load in a large library of books (which costs $, but which I found to be worth it) you can get some very good recommendations from its algorithms.

[acesn8s]

I think a lot of people on GRs are little too free with the 1 and 5 star ratings. For me, anything I'll reread multiple times gets a 5 star. Reread once gets 4 star. Liked but wouldn't reread, 3 stars.

[Salt-Man Z]

 acesn8s, on 13 November 2014 - 05:53 PM, said:

I think a lot of people on GRs are little too free with the 1 and 5 star ratings.

Shoot, I just got into a fight with a dude on the Malazan Empire FB page whose argument was "I've read almost everybody, and ICE isn't as bad as people portray him" so I checked out his GR profile and like 99% of his ratings were 5-stars.

[Nicodimas]

 Imperial Historian, on 13 November 2014 - 01:02 PM, said:

I've not found any aggregate review booksites which feel remotely accurate, that's why I rely on personal recommendations from this forum for what to read, a bad rating of less than 3.5 usually means a book can be safely ignored though.

I use a 4.0+ Rule and generally just decide if it's what I want to spend my time on. This year has been all about re-reads!!

Do you really want to spend your time on book others thought that low..

[Salt-Man Z]

 Nicodimas, on 13 November 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

Do you really want to spend your time on book others thought that low..

Depends; if the twihards hate it, maybe it deserves a look...

[Puck]

 Salt-Man Z, on 13 November 2014 - 09:07 PM, said:

 Nicodimas, on 13 November 2014 - 08:54 PM, said:

Do you really want to spend your time on book others thought that low..

Depends; if the twihards hate it, maybe it deserves a look...

^
This.

If I do bother to look beyond this forum for recommendations, I prefer to look at a couple of reviews (both with good and bad ratings) and see if what they say appeals to me. Some of the stuff I've read and enjoyed this year was barely chewing at the 3.5 mark on Goodreads, but the things some of the reviewers seemed to dislike about it made me want to check the books out, and lo and behold, these were exactly the things I actually liked.

Say, as someone who's interested in non-heteronormative/non-cis characters I was overjoyed to find the - according to some reviews - 'gratuitous and unnatural sexuality' in Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder Trilogy, but the trilogy averanges at about 3.7 on Goodreads, even though if one would look past one's heteronormative view one would find that none of the things in there have been invented by Bear, nor are lesbians and transgendered people 'unnatural', and I can think of a bunch of books with more explicit sex scenes in one single volume than one in a whole trilogy.. *sigh* Gregory Maguire's Wicked and Son of a Witch (of the Wicked Years series) were both immensely enjoyable for me, but a lot of people seem to have read it because they liked the broadway show based on Wicked and gave it a bad rating because they found it to be too different from the show.

So yeah, people base the ratings they give on the weirdest things, and not neccessarily on the work's merits/flaws as a story. I'm not a fan of the rating system, and while I don't read all the reviews, a handful tends to give me an idea of whether I want to read something or not. What the ratings ARE good for is fast identification of positive and negative opinions so I can read both and build a hopefully educated opinion

This post has been edited by Puck: 13 November 2014 - 10:13 PM