Sharon's Journal/Blog

Ratings and Reviews

I was going through all my reviews and noticed that I gave 5 stars to a lot of items, even though they may have had a punctuation error or grammatical error. I remember reading a note from WDC about reviewing that said we shouldn't give 5 stars so easily. I have also received responses to some of my reviews which stated that the writer doesn't want a star rating for their work, only a review, because the stars don't really mean anything.

I read a lot of stories and poems that have a couple errors that I feel don't detract from the good work they produce. If I enjoy someone's not-so-perfect poem or story, I will give them 5 stars because it's the substance of the writing that I want to review, not the minor errors. I will point out the errors just in case they want to correct them, but I don't lower their rating. If I find a story or poem that I can't get into, either because it's full of blatant errors, isn't spaced properly for easy reading, or just doesn't make sense to me, I just go on to the next item to review.

Do you have any thoughts on this?