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When feedback is not a gift

123 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
I don't believe in rating systems, so I just give 5 stars to every book I finish. One time I made a very negative comment on Reddit about a fantasy book, and the author actually responded to me. When that happened I felt incredibly bad, because I didn't expect the author to actually read what I'd written. But that experience taught me that you can just reach out to people that make stuff you like. You can make people feel good about something that made you feel good, and it's entirely free. Since then I've reached out to various authors just to tell them I really enjoyed their books. One of the best things about reading indie authors and smaller creators in general is the ease with which you can communicate with them. I remember making a comment about a minor detail to an indie author about one of his series, and in the next book he actually incorporated my suggestion. I think once you reach a certain scale or popularity there has to be some kind of filter or process between a creator and their comments.
- shrx 3y ago
  > One time I made a very negative comment on Reddit about a fantasy book, and the author actually responded to me. When that happened I felt incredibly bad But why? Was your comment dishonest?
  - PaulRobinson 3y ago
    There’s a difference between being nice (“wow, how ace!”, when you hated it), being kind (“I think this would have worked better for me if…”), and being plain honest (“I hated it, what a crock…”) Many people forget that the other side of a review is human. Social media, trip advisor, amazon, blogs, and reddit are all channels in which people feel free to be honest, but then are surprised to discover the human who you criticised is popping up and responding with hurt. We all know being rude to a service worker to their face ks the sign of an absolute turd of a human being, but seem to think being “honest” in an indirect channel is just fine. Being kind (empathetic, sympathetic, constructive), is less toxic for both parties, retains authenticity (more valuable than “honesty”), and is therefore socially more acceptable in a situation where you remember the criticism is going to be taken on by the other party. It sounds like the person forgot - because it was Reddit - that human empathy towards a creator is a powerful thing, and that a lack of it is incredibly damaging, beyond what you would do if meeting the individual face to face. Being smart and “honest” (more often than not, actually just rude), are not the primary ways of keeping score when determining if somebody is being a good human. Look up Jeff Bezos’ thoughts on being clever vs being kind: he’s not wrong. It’s easy to forget when you think the person you’re being clever about will never read your words, but that’s actually just really, really dumb.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > and being plain honest (“I hated it, what a crock…”) I agree with what you wrote here and elsewhere about the kind/nice distinction, but I'm... not sure if the above is what "being honest" means. Or rather, I personally don't consider it being honest - saying "I hated it" is very vague and likely not what I actually felt, and "what a crock" would be me just doing knee-jerk next token prediction, so badly that even GPT-3.5 would do it better. "Being honest" with feedback is what I imagine to look more like "I didn't like the ${aspect of the work}, I feel it was too ${something} / not enough ${something else}". It's free of bullshit, so it's not "nice"; it's also not making a specific effort to be useful/actionable to the receiver, therefore it's not "kind". It's also not "hostile", as it bears no ill intent. It's just being precise and accurate in reporting how I actually felt about the work and why. Under this definition, I always strive to aim for "honest+kind" with any feedback I give. Of course, I still end up being "kind" or even just "nice" with some people - specifically those who tend to interpret any mention of a potential improvement as implying severe deficiency.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  I think it's a difficult balance to strike. On one side you usually don't want to hurt a fantasy novel author who put all their soul into their book and actually care about how it's received. On the other side some authors will have a very strong message to convey, and use their work as a platform to expose more people to their ideas, good or bad. Not engaging with the message and/or ignoring it when you see it as either damaging to the readers or an abuse of people's good faith would feel wrong to me. Not that readers have a duty to engage with a book, but if you were ready to pan a horrible propaganda piece on reddit but stopped because it could hurt the author's feelings, I'd have fully encouraged you into speaking your mind in reasonable terms.
  - dsign 3y ago
    Why, I just read a book[^1] whose author gave personhood to lifted animals, and made everybody vegetarian. She also made everybody monogamous...even the moose. IMO, she could have written a better story if she hadn't been afraid of over-critical readers that would think her work is propaganda advocating for XYZ. The moose didn't need to act like a politically correct western guy. But it's fun to comment on those details, politics and all; they don't subtract from the work. And yes, there are non-fiction books, like the Bible and "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws", but those can also be approached with a dose of lightheartedness. [^1] The Terraformers, By Annalee Newitz. Go, buy it, read it. It has real science in it, nothing else needs to be said.
- rvba 3y ago
  There are books that are just plain bad. Your 5 star reviews for bad books make people lose money and time.
  - TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
    I only finish reading good books.
  - astura 3y ago
    Presumably bad books just don't get finished (and thus not reviewed).
- PaulRobinson 3y ago
  You’re trying to be nice. Try being kind instead. You don’t have to give 5 star reviews to every book (being nice), but you could give it to the ones that deserve it and no ratings at all to the ones you didn’t like, or a 1-star with a constructive review (being kind).
  - jraph 3y ago
    As an ESL speaker. Is this distinction between nice and kind standard?
    - astura 3y ago
      No.
    - kjeetgill 3y ago
      I think it's one of those distinction people are trying to impose on the words rather than how they've always been used. I think there's a popular blog post that kicked it off.
      - PaulRobinson 3y ago
        Their etymology and original meanings are completely different. Their merging into synonyms is as daft to me as “literally” now meaning figuratively or metaphorically.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        The distinction between the two concepts is real. The word choice... I don't know. I haven't heard of the blog post. I'm ESL speaker, and yet when 'PaulRobinson made the distinction, I immediately knew what they're talking about, and I even though "nice" vs. "kind" is exactly the right word pair to use.
        glogla 3y ago
        It is funny because I feel the difference, yet can't really explain it easily because my native language has just one word for both concepts.
- toadi 3y ago
  I agree with you indie creators in general get more slack from me. But for example when I pay triple A prices for video games I'm quite critical :)
- ekianjo 3y ago
  > don't believe in rating systems, so I just give 5 stars to every book I finish. So you are sabotaging the system not just not believing in it
- cmiller1 3y ago
  Was it Sanderson?
- cutenewt 3y ago
  I saw a poll once re: 5-star rating systems: Roughly 50% tolerate or like them The other 50% completely hate them
  - ilyt 3y ago
    Rating system for stuff like books needs another dimension. One for how well book's topic or genre gelled with you as a viewer. Another for execution of the concept. Some books are well written but not for me. Some are interesting enough but flawed. One dimensional scale would land both squarely in the middle
Splizard 3y ago
I guess the 1-2 star feedback is pretty useful then, it gives a good indication of how good your marketing is (the conclusion here being that only people who like the product/project should be buying/ using it).
- gareve 3y ago
  True! Some books take a while to take off into the meaty part of the topic/story. Until you reach that point, you may be disappointed due to mismatched expectations. A good cover + summary + intro + PR can help to reduce it.
000ooo000 3y ago
I think a distinction between solicited and unsolicited feedback is valuable, too. We all just want to hear our own voices, don't we? Would softwaredoug really benefit from my feedback? Have I ever published a book? Do I have any experience in pedagogy? Do I have enough development experience to be worth listening to? Yet I don't have to disclose any of that to share my opinion, get a few upvotes, and possibly mislead someone into thinking there's any wisdom in my remarks. Maybe sometime after AI obliterates the already-bad signal to noise ratio of the internet, there'll be a market for real, learned people to sell their feedback. But this is kind of unsolicited feedback.. so probably worth ignoring :)
- asplake 3y ago
  The solicited case is also interesting. Who do I solicit feedback from, and if I were to imagine them giving a 1-5 rating, what rating would they give? Am I brave enough to seek out the 3’s? What’s the missing context that might turn a 2 into a 3, without wasting the time of the 4’s and 5’s?
mercurialsolo 3y ago
The recent talk by Andrej Karpathy at MS Build 2023 on the State of GPT alluded to how the editor or critic in us has a far easier cognitive expenditure than the creator in us. Feedback comes from the editor or the critic and unless the critic has been a creator should usually be taken with a fair dosage of salt. Rather than the rating per-se I think feedback without an explanation is more often than not an opinion. People who care about their feedback having an impact, often time think through on why they are giving this feedback, have thought through on their own expertise around the field and whether they bring a valuable perspective to the table on the subject.
brettcvz 3y ago
I understand the phrase “feedback is a gift” differently than the author: people are not obligated to give you feedback. If someone has taken the time to give you feedback, this is a generous act, regardless of whether you agree with the feedback or find it helpful.
- napo 3y ago
  I understand it that way too. For me it's about how you should react when you get a gift. If a relative offers you something that you don't like, you still appreciate the gesture. Feedback is a gift, but not all gifts are good ones.
- mysto 3y ago
  There’s another interesting dimension to it especially in the context of getting feedback from people you regularly interact in life. Regardless of whether the particular feedback was helpful appreciating it as a gift encourages the person to give feedback in the future. This ensures that you continue to get feedback from the person in the future some of which may be very valuable.
- Karellen 3y ago
  Not all feedback is generous. There is an industry of some people, rather than looking to provide feedback which accurately reflects the merits and flaws of a given work, who seem to deliberately hate-review everything to a) get clicks, and b) try to make themselves sound smarter than the people who create stuff. It doesn't really help anyone, and is almost entirely a selfish act.
- praash 3y ago
  Yes, plenty of (bad) feedback is given in good faith, but I think there's a line where generosity ends and "feedback" becomes a hurtful one-sided channel of emotional venting. It only serves one person, at best. Would you call it a gift if a visiting neighbour brought a smelly trash bag to your door while screaming at you for "looking like a dead squirrel"? They certainly took the time to carry that leaky bag, think of a sequence of helpful words to tell you, and even risk damaging their vocal cords! They certainly weren't obligated to do so, either. A slap in the face isn't necessarily "a generous act of ancient Egyptian medicinal practice to prevent disease". We don't have to accept all "gifts" as gifts, so we certainly don't have to call any hurtful garbage as "feedback" in the first place. We don't have obligation to take it as a generous act, either -- wouldn't this make us feel guilty about feeling hurt? I don't intend to be mean or snarky. Your comment made me think and come up with this sort of "insight".
leoedin 3y ago
The 5 star thing is true. I've had a few colleagues who (in a metaphorical sense) always give 5 stars. It's actually quite infuriating - everything is good, so nothing can be better. It's much better to have a frank and critical conversation about something, with the shared goal of improvement.
- np- 3y ago
  My view is that this is entirely predictable: Once you start tying feedback to compensation outcomes, then it’s only the truly privileged who can afford to give that frank and critical feedback. Everyone else goes into survival mode and figures out how to game the system, because the stakes are too high. Survival at any cost is baked into our DNA. It’s a bit dishonest, but also impossible to prove since feedback is completely subjective.
jxf 3y ago
Good post (and hi Doug!). Here's my feedback: it seems like you've taken the phrase "feedback is a gift" to mean "it's always helpful to get feedback", which I agree is problematic for the reasons you've outlined. However, I understand that phrase somewhat differently. Namely, that it means "others are not obligated to provide feedback, and if someone does provide thoughtful feedback, they have given you the gift of their time and energy irrespective of whether you agree with it or not".
- ElFitz 3y ago
  So feedback would be gifts in the same sense as a Christmas gift. Sometimes you get a GameBoy Color. Sometimes you get a terribly ugly hand-knitted sweater from your grandma. Sometimes you get a shitty prank from your crap uncle who think he’s being funny. Sometimes the homeless person you found online and welcomed for Christmas Eve turns paranoid, becomes convinced your family wants to poison him, and just leaves screaming. And sometimes you get a lesson from your other uncle, the self-absorbed one with insecurities, on how Christmas is a meaningless made-up consumerist commercial event meant to make people feel obligated to spend money under false pretences and you are a loser for falling for it and he’s thus not being a prick just to make himself feel smart, but actually helping you grow. Out of loving altruism. Well, guess what, dear uncle? Almost everything is made up anyway. Your fragile ego included. Personal aparté aside, yes, you could say that feedback, in that sense, is indeed a gift.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > Sometimes you get a GameBoy Color. Which, given we're almost quarter of the way through the 21st century, is a bit parachronistic. (Still, grandpa, I appreciate your effort; given that your understanding of technology ends at color CRT TVs and VCRs, a GameBoy Color is actually a surprisingly good pick. It may not be the Switch, but hey, it's still lots of fun!) > Sometimes you get a terribly ugly hand-knitted sweater from your grandma. Which is your favorite gift, because she made it to show her love for you, and it took her a third of a year to finish. Or it will be your favorite gift, after she passes away before next Christmas, and you realize this ugly sweater is what she spent some of her last bits of energy on. > Sometimes the homeless person you found online and welcomed for Christmas Eve turns paranoid, becomes convinced your family wants to poison him, and just leaves screaming. To which you react with a huge :eyeroll: and go back to finishing the dinner; some homeless have their demons, but at least this one got a chance to warm up, fill their belly, and enjoy some kindness - all of which means they'll still be around for Christmas Day, instead of being found dead in the morning, on a park bench, buried under 3cm of snow, killed by exposure after they stopped there to rest, just for a moment, on their way to whatever temporary shelter they were planning to sleep in that night. ---- I get your point. I want to balance it out a bit. Gifts, Christmas or otherwise, are often entirely different to what they may look like to an outside observer.
petabyte0 3y ago
The only difference between 1-2 star rating (using it as a metaphor) people and 3-4 rating people might just be a difference in opinion about how nice they should be or just how to normalize their score.
- softwaredoug 3y ago
  (Author here) Yes this is very true. The article is a bit of an oversimplification. There were 1-2 star people that we listened to, and 3-4 star people that shit on the book, and 5 star people with good constructive feedback.
Hermitian909 3y ago
I agree with the article in regards to book feedback, but don't know that it transfers well to work. At work we need to interact with people who don't care about us or get us and manage those relationships to achieve our goals. Getting 1-2 feedback from a coworker is thus is still a gift because it allows you verify whether you understand the relationships you have. If I get a 1-2 from someone I thought would give me a 3-5 that's valuable information that I didn't understand how they saw me. With the updated information I can more effectively navigate the relationship.
cornflake23 3y ago
Good read! I would also add that in my experience, too much feedback, is worse than no feedback. Here I define “too much” as when the data suggests nothing new/actionable or is so ambiguous so as to confuse. Feedback from those who really want to see you succeed is rare - even at 3-4 stars out of 5, but when you receive those gems, they can be life changing.
padolsey 3y ago
I wrote a book, and remember reading the first review. It was a one-star rating complaining that the book had been published late. I was in hospital at the time recovering from a brain injury. My brother had helped get the book over the finish line with last-minute edits while I lay a few feet away in pain. I don't really care for reviews. They reduce us to our produce. They ignore the very thing that materializes the creation: the human. I take things to heart. It's not because I am "non-growth oriented" or over-sensitive. It's because I'm human.
- NeoTar 3y ago
  This is a big problem with feedback systems. Sure - the fact that the book was published 'late' materially affected their enjoyment, but for ... maybe 99% of people reading the review in the future that's not useful feedback. e.g. If a book I want to read was published four years late in 1984 rather than 1980 - why would I care? Its so frustrating when one reads a review on Amazon or similar and the review is nothing to do with the product, but rather the circumstances - 'fast delivery', 'great seller', 'well packaged', etc. rather than reviewing the actual product. There is a part of me which feels we could do better by having a slightly longer feedback system - first question 'what would you like the review: the product, the delivery, the seller', and the second actually asking for the review, but I suspect this wouldn't actually help.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  I think an important insight about any sort of mass communication is that there isn't a reaction to what you put out there, but a spectrum of reactions. You tell the best joke in the world and out of 100 people, fifty will laugh, thirty will smile, fifteen will not get it at all, and five will be raging mad and posting on twitter about how you should be tried for crimes against humanity for some perceived insult. It's very easy to only focus on the last group.
  - stavros 3y ago
    This is an interesting viewpoint, and its corrolary is that the review says as much about your content as about the reviewer. Which means that you should take all reviews with a grain of salt, as they aren't entirely about you.
Kiro 3y ago
Not a book but from running something else that gets a lot of feedback I've come to realize that most of it is useless. It's either something really obvious or an unconsidered short-term solution that would make things worse in the long-term.
AHOHA 3y ago
I accept and listen to all feedbacks and from all people regardless, and it’s up to me to consider it or ignore it. Some people think just because they gave a feedback they expect you to apply it all or most of it, or they become hostile towards you directly or by other forms of passive aggressiveness, that’s not a feedback, that’s just a rehearsal for a personal attack.
- jascination 3y ago
  The parenting-adage version of this is "hear everything, do what you want"
freehorse 3y ago
It may not be a gift to you, but it can be a gift to other customers/users who can build more informed opinion on whether to buy your book (or any product) or not. 1-2 start and 3-4 start reviews capture different parts of the distribution of user experience, and they often capture different sides of some product.
- ilyt 3y ago
  This. Reviews are not for author, they are for other potential buyers.
Roark66 3y ago
Google and other content stores will promote content a lot more the more feedback it has. Good feedback is better, but bad feedback is better than none (assuming all your feedback isn bad). Feedback on play store etc *is* a gift. A gift of making your content more discoverable by others. Anyone that has ever written a book and is making it available through online platforms should know that so I have to consider the article as a bit of a click bait rather than genuine opinion of the author.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
I've found negative feedback is quite useful. Folks are generally not that interested in giving positive feedback. "It does what it says on the tin, not much else to say." However, they are often profuse in negative feedback. This can be extremely valuable. I mention that, here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-traveled-by/#feedback https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...
DaveFlater 3y ago
Feedback systems often fail to distinguish constructive critique from random opinion-having and assertions of personal taste. A kneejerk reaction based on nothing but gutfeel carries the same weight as a careful and well-informed evaluation. This is fine if the goal is popularity or profit—the votes or the dollars are the same. But it's not fine if the goal is a high-integrity product that delivers on a particular vision.
tikkun 3y ago
Yes. My version of this is that products should generally focus only on doubling down on their strengths, making the people who love them love them even more, with the exception being people who kinda or could love the product but don't - in those cases it's worth removing the negatives that get in the way of those people being able to love the product. So: * Positive feedback from people who love your product: use this, double down on what's great * Positive feedback from people who don't love your product: ignore this * Negative feedback from people who love your product: use this if it seems helpful, but it may not be critical, because it didn't prevent them from loving it * Negative feedback from people who almost love your product or kinda love your product, and who could really love it, but don't because of issues: use this feedback to sandpaper away the issues * Negative feedback from people who don't and will never love your product: ignore this
- ilyt 3y ago
  And how exactly get which kind of person it is from few words of review ?
bawolff 3y ago
Ignoring all the 1 star feedback sounds kind of dangerous. Yeah, often its crazy people or people who have severely misaligned expectations. But sometimes there are useful info among those who hate you. You just need to make sure you dont let it get to you when listening to them (which is quite hard actually)
- tyingq 3y ago
  If there's a way to make relative comparisons to competitors, that would seem wise. Everyone gets the 1-star rants, but you should probably know if you're getting more or less of them than everyone else.
password4321 3y ago
Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056299 600+ comments, 4 days ago
pschuegr 3y ago
IMO when receiving feedback it's important to understand the context of the person giving it. Some people, like those classified here as 1-2 star reviews, might just not understand what you're trying to do, or it just might not be to their taste. That feedback can be discarded after you parse it for anything that might be useful. Sometimes a negative review can be positive - I have a friend whose opinion I trust 100% on certain aspects, but we have diametrically opposing ideas about others. If he tells me he doesn't like certain things, I actually consider that a positive. As the author says, what you really want are people who are aligned with you in most dimensions, understand what you're trying to do, and can see how to make it better. Those people are worth their weight in gold. The important thing is to know what _you_ want to do well enough to know when feedback is going to help you get there, and when it's trying to get you to go somewhere else.

123 points by softwaredoug 3y ago

I don't believe in rating systems, so I just give 5 stars to every book I finish. One time I made a very negative comment on Reddit about a fantasy book, and the author actually responded to me. When that happened I felt incredibly bad, because I didn't expect the author to actually read what I'd written. But that experience taught me that you can just reach out to people that make stuff you like. You can make people feel good about something that made you feel good, and it's entirely free. Since then I've reached out to various authors just to tell them I really enjoyed their books. One of the best things about reading indie authors and smaller creators in general is the ease with which you can communicate with them. I remember making a comment about a minor detail to an indie author about one of his series, and in the next book he actually incorporated my suggestion. I think once you reach a certain scale or popularity there has to be some kind of filter or process between a creator and their comments.

shrx 3y ago
> One time I made a very negative comment on Reddit about a fantasy book, and the author actually responded to me. When that happened I felt incredibly bad But why? Was your comment dishonest?
- PaulRobinson 3y ago
  There’s a difference between being nice (“wow, how ace!”, when you hated it), being kind (“I think this would have worked better for me if…”), and being plain honest (“I hated it, what a crock…”) Many people forget that the other side of a review is human. Social media, trip advisor, amazon, blogs, and reddit are all channels in which people feel free to be honest, but then are surprised to discover the human who you criticised is popping up and responding with hurt. We all know being rude to a service worker to their face ks the sign of an absolute turd of a human being, but seem to think being “honest” in an indirect channel is just fine. Being kind (empathetic, sympathetic, constructive), is less toxic for both parties, retains authenticity (more valuable than “honesty”), and is therefore socially more acceptable in a situation where you remember the criticism is going to be taken on by the other party. It sounds like the person forgot - because it was Reddit - that human empathy towards a creator is a powerful thing, and that a lack of it is incredibly damaging, beyond what you would do if meeting the individual face to face. Being smart and “honest” (more often than not, actually just rude), are not the primary ways of keeping score when determining if somebody is being a good human. Look up Jeff Bezos’ thoughts on being clever vs being kind: he’s not wrong. It’s easy to forget when you think the person you’re being clever about will never read your words, but that’s actually just really, really dumb.
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    > and being plain honest (“I hated it, what a crock…”) I agree with what you wrote here and elsewhere about the kind/nice distinction, but I'm... not sure if the above is what "being honest" means. Or rather, I personally don't consider it being honest - saying "I hated it" is very vague and likely not what I actually felt, and "what a crock" would be me just doing knee-jerk next token prediction, so badly that even GPT-3.5 would do it better. "Being honest" with feedback is what I imagine to look more like "I didn't like the ${aspect of the work}, I feel it was too ${something} / not enough ${something else}". It's free of bullshit, so it's not "nice"; it's also not making a specific effort to be useful/actionable to the receiver, therefore it's not "kind". It's also not "hostile", as it bears no ill intent. It's just being precise and accurate in reporting how I actually felt about the work and why. Under this definition, I always strive to aim for "honest+kind" with any feedback I give. Of course, I still end up being "kind" or even just "nice" with some people - specifically those who tend to interpret any mention of a potential improvement as implying severe deficiency.
makeitdouble 3y ago
I think it's a difficult balance to strike. On one side you usually don't want to hurt a fantasy novel author who put all their soul into their book and actually care about how it's received. On the other side some authors will have a very strong message to convey, and use their work as a platform to expose more people to their ideas, good or bad. Not engaging with the message and/or ignoring it when you see it as either damaging to the readers or an abuse of people's good faith would feel wrong to me. Not that readers have a duty to engage with a book, but if you were ready to pan a horrible propaganda piece on reddit but stopped because it could hurt the author's feelings, I'd have fully encouraged you into speaking your mind in reasonable terms.
- dsign 3y ago
  Why, I just read a book[^1] whose author gave personhood to lifted animals, and made everybody vegetarian. She also made everybody monogamous...even the moose. IMO, she could have written a better story if she hadn't been afraid of over-critical readers that would think her work is propaganda advocating for XYZ. The moose didn't need to act like a politically correct western guy. But it's fun to comment on those details, politics and all; they don't subtract from the work. And yes, there are non-fiction books, like the Bible and "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws", but those can also be approached with a dose of lightheartedness. [^1] The Terraformers, By Annalee Newitz. Go, buy it, read it. It has real science in it, nothing else needs to be said.
rvba 3y ago
There are books that are just plain bad. Your 5 star reviews for bad books make people lose money and time.
- TheAceOfHearts 3y ago
  I only finish reading good books.
- astura 3y ago
  Presumably bad books just don't get finished (and thus not reviewed).
PaulRobinson 3y ago
You’re trying to be nice. Try being kind instead. You don’t have to give 5 star reviews to every book (being nice), but you could give it to the ones that deserve it and no ratings at all to the ones you didn’t like, or a 1-star with a constructive review (being kind).
- jraph 3y ago
  As an ESL speaker. Is this distinction between nice and kind standard?
  - astura 3y ago
    No.
  - kjeetgill 3y ago
    I think it's one of those distinction people are trying to impose on the words rather than how they've always been used. I think there's a popular blog post that kicked it off.
    - PaulRobinson 3y ago
      Their etymology and original meanings are completely different. Their merging into synonyms is as daft to me as “literally” now meaning figuratively or metaphorically.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      The distinction between the two concepts is real. The word choice... I don't know. I haven't heard of the blog post. I'm ESL speaker, and yet when 'PaulRobinson made the distinction, I immediately knew what they're talking about, and I even though "nice" vs. "kind" is exactly the right word pair to use.
      - glogla 3y ago
        It is funny because I feel the difference, yet can't really explain it easily because my native language has just one word for both concepts.
toadi 3y ago
I agree with you indie creators in general get more slack from me. But for example when I pay triple A prices for video games I'm quite critical :)
ekianjo 3y ago
> don't believe in rating systems, so I just give 5 stars to every book I finish. So you are sabotaging the system not just not believing in it
cmiller1 3y ago
Was it Sanderson?
cutenewt 3y ago
I saw a poll once re: 5-star rating systems: Roughly 50% tolerate or like them The other 50% completely hate them
- ilyt 3y ago
  Rating system for stuff like books needs another dimension. One for how well book's topic or genre gelled with you as a viewer. Another for execution of the concept. Some books are well written but not for me. Some are interesting enough but flawed. One dimensional scale would land both squarely in the middle

Splizard 3y ago

I guess the 1-2 star feedback is pretty useful then, it gives a good indication of how good your marketing is (the conclusion here being that only people who like the product/project should be buying/ using it).

gareve 3y ago
True! Some books take a while to take off into the meaty part of the topic/story. Until you reach that point, you may be disappointed due to mismatched expectations. A good cover + summary + intro + PR can help to reduce it.

000ooo000 3y ago

I think a distinction between solicited and unsolicited feedback is valuable, too. We all just want to hear our own voices, don't we? Would softwaredoug really benefit from my feedback? Have I ever published a book? Do I have any experience in pedagogy? Do I have enough development experience to be worth listening to? Yet I don't have to disclose any of that to share my opinion, get a few upvotes, and possibly mislead someone into thinking there's any wisdom in my remarks. Maybe sometime after AI obliterates the already-bad signal to noise ratio of the internet, there'll be a market for real, learned people to sell their feedback. But this is kind of unsolicited feedback.. so probably worth ignoring :)

asplake 3y ago
The solicited case is also interesting. Who do I solicit feedback from, and if I were to imagine them giving a 1-5 rating, what rating would they give? Am I brave enough to seek out the 3’s? What’s the missing context that might turn a 2 into a 3, without wasting the time of the 4’s and 5’s?

mercurialsolo 3y ago

The recent talk by Andrej Karpathy at MS Build 2023 on the State of GPT alluded to how the editor or critic in us has a far easier cognitive expenditure than the creator in us. Feedback comes from the editor or the critic and unless the critic has been a creator should usually be taken with a fair dosage of salt. Rather than the rating per-se I think feedback without an explanation is more often than not an opinion. People who care about their feedback having an impact, often time think through on why they are giving this feedback, have thought through on their own expertise around the field and whether they bring a valuable perspective to the table on the subject.

brettcvz 3y ago

I understand the phrase “feedback is a gift” differently than the author: people are not obligated to give you feedback. If someone has taken the time to give you feedback, this is a generous act, regardless of whether you agree with the feedback or find it helpful.

napo 3y ago
I understand it that way too. For me it's about how you should react when you get a gift. If a relative offers you something that you don't like, you still appreciate the gesture. Feedback is a gift, but not all gifts are good ones.
mysto 3y ago
There’s another interesting dimension to it especially in the context of getting feedback from people you regularly interact in life. Regardless of whether the particular feedback was helpful appreciating it as a gift encourages the person to give feedback in the future. This ensures that you continue to get feedback from the person in the future some of which may be very valuable.
Karellen 3y ago
Not all feedback is generous. There is an industry of some people, rather than looking to provide feedback which accurately reflects the merits and flaws of a given work, who seem to deliberately hate-review everything to a) get clicks, and b) try to make themselves sound smarter than the people who create stuff. It doesn't really help anyone, and is almost entirely a selfish act.
praash 3y ago
Yes, plenty of (bad) feedback is given in good faith, but I think there's a line where generosity ends and "feedback" becomes a hurtful one-sided channel of emotional venting. It only serves one person, at best. Would you call it a gift if a visiting neighbour brought a smelly trash bag to your door while screaming at you for "looking like a dead squirrel"? They certainly took the time to carry that leaky bag, think of a sequence of helpful words to tell you, and even risk damaging their vocal cords! They certainly weren't obligated to do so, either. A slap in the face isn't necessarily "a generous act of ancient Egyptian medicinal practice to prevent disease". We don't have to accept all "gifts" as gifts, so we certainly don't have to call any hurtful garbage as "feedback" in the first place. We don't have obligation to take it as a generous act, either -- wouldn't this make us feel guilty about feeling hurt? I don't intend to be mean or snarky. Your comment made me think and come up with this sort of "insight".

leoedin 3y ago

The 5 star thing is true. I've had a few colleagues who (in a metaphorical sense) always give 5 stars. It's actually quite infuriating - everything is good, so nothing can be better. It's much better to have a frank and critical conversation about something, with the shared goal of improvement.

np- 3y ago
My view is that this is entirely predictable: Once you start tying feedback to compensation outcomes, then it’s only the truly privileged who can afford to give that frank and critical feedback. Everyone else goes into survival mode and figures out how to game the system, because the stakes are too high. Survival at any cost is baked into our DNA. It’s a bit dishonest, but also impossible to prove since feedback is completely subjective.

jxf 3y ago

Good post (and hi Doug!). Here's my feedback: it seems like you've taken the phrase "feedback is a gift" to mean "it's always helpful to get feedback", which I agree is problematic for the reasons you've outlined. However, I understand that phrase somewhat differently. Namely, that it means "others are not obligated to provide feedback, and if someone does provide thoughtful feedback, they have given you the gift of their time and energy irrespective of whether you agree with it or not".

ElFitz 3y ago
So feedback would be gifts in the same sense as a Christmas gift. Sometimes you get a GameBoy Color. Sometimes you get a terribly ugly hand-knitted sweater from your grandma. Sometimes you get a shitty prank from your crap uncle who think he’s being funny. Sometimes the homeless person you found online and welcomed for Christmas Eve turns paranoid, becomes convinced your family wants to poison him, and just leaves screaming. And sometimes you get a lesson from your other uncle, the self-absorbed one with insecurities, on how Christmas is a meaningless made-up consumerist commercial event meant to make people feel obligated to spend money under false pretences and you are a loser for falling for it and he’s thus not being a prick just to make himself feel smart, but actually helping you grow. Out of loving altruism. Well, guess what, dear uncle? Almost everything is made up anyway. Your fragile ego included. Personal aparté aside, yes, you could say that feedback, in that sense, is indeed a gift.
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > Sometimes you get a GameBoy Color. Which, given we're almost quarter of the way through the 21st century, is a bit parachronistic. (Still, grandpa, I appreciate your effort; given that your understanding of technology ends at color CRT TVs and VCRs, a GameBoy Color is actually a surprisingly good pick. It may not be the Switch, but hey, it's still lots of fun!) > Sometimes you get a terribly ugly hand-knitted sweater from your grandma. Which is your favorite gift, because she made it to show her love for you, and it took her a third of a year to finish. Or it will be your favorite gift, after she passes away before next Christmas, and you realize this ugly sweater is what she spent some of her last bits of energy on. > Sometimes the homeless person you found online and welcomed for Christmas Eve turns paranoid, becomes convinced your family wants to poison him, and just leaves screaming. To which you react with a huge :eyeroll: and go back to finishing the dinner; some homeless have their demons, but at least this one got a chance to warm up, fill their belly, and enjoy some kindness - all of which means they'll still be around for Christmas Day, instead of being found dead in the morning, on a park bench, buried under 3cm of snow, killed by exposure after they stopped there to rest, just for a moment, on their way to whatever temporary shelter they were planning to sleep in that night. ---- I get your point. I want to balance it out a bit. Gifts, Christmas or otherwise, are often entirely different to what they may look like to an outside observer.

petabyte0 3y ago

The only difference between 1-2 star rating (using it as a metaphor) people and 3-4 rating people might just be a difference in opinion about how nice they should be or just how to normalize their score.

softwaredoug 3y ago
(Author here) Yes this is very true. The article is a bit of an oversimplification. There were 1-2 star people that we listened to, and 3-4 star people that shit on the book, and 5 star people with good constructive feedback.

Hermitian909 3y ago

I agree with the article in regards to book feedback, but don't know that it transfers well to work. At work we need to interact with people who don't care about us or get us and manage those relationships to achieve our goals. Getting 1-2 feedback from a coworker is thus is still a gift because it allows you verify whether you understand the relationships you have. If I get a 1-2 from someone I thought would give me a 3-5 that's valuable information that I didn't understand how they saw me. With the updated information I can more effectively navigate the relationship.

cornflake23 3y ago

Good read! I would also add that in my experience, too much feedback, is worse than no feedback. Here I define “too much” as when the data suggests nothing new/actionable or is so ambiguous so as to confuse. Feedback from those who really want to see you succeed is rare - even at 3-4 stars out of 5, but when you receive those gems, they can be life changing.

padolsey 3y ago

I wrote a book, and remember reading the first review. It was a one-star rating complaining that the book had been published late. I was in hospital at the time recovering from a brain injury. My brother had helped get the book over the finish line with last-minute edits while I lay a few feet away in pain. I don't really care for reviews. They reduce us to our produce. They ignore the very thing that materializes the creation: the human. I take things to heart. It's not because I am "non-growth oriented" or over-sensitive. It's because I'm human.

NeoTar 3y ago
This is a big problem with feedback systems. Sure - the fact that the book was published 'late' materially affected their enjoyment, but for ... maybe 99% of people reading the review in the future that's not useful feedback. e.g. If a book I want to read was published four years late in 1984 rather than 1980 - why would I care? Its so frustrating when one reads a review on Amazon or similar and the review is nothing to do with the product, but rather the circumstances - 'fast delivery', 'great seller', 'well packaged', etc. rather than reviewing the actual product. There is a part of me which feels we could do better by having a slightly longer feedback system - first question 'what would you like the review: the product, the delivery, the seller', and the second actually asking for the review, but I suspect this wouldn't actually help.
marginalia_nu 3y ago
I think an important insight about any sort of mass communication is that there isn't a reaction to what you put out there, but a spectrum of reactions. You tell the best joke in the world and out of 100 people, fifty will laugh, thirty will smile, fifteen will not get it at all, and five will be raging mad and posting on twitter about how you should be tried for crimes against humanity for some perceived insult. It's very easy to only focus on the last group.
- stavros 3y ago
  This is an interesting viewpoint, and its corrolary is that the review says as much about your content as about the reviewer. Which means that you should take all reviews with a grain of salt, as they aren't entirely about you.

Kiro 3y ago

Not a book but from running something else that gets a lot of feedback I've come to realize that most of it is useless. It's either something really obvious or an unconsidered short-term solution that would make things worse in the long-term.

AHOHA 3y ago

I accept and listen to all feedbacks and from all people regardless, and it’s up to me to consider it or ignore it. Some people think just because they gave a feedback they expect you to apply it all or most of it, or they become hostile towards you directly or by other forms of passive aggressiveness, that’s not a feedback, that’s just a rehearsal for a personal attack.

jascination 3y ago
The parenting-adage version of this is "hear everything, do what you want"

freehorse 3y ago

It may not be a gift to you, but it can be a gift to other customers/users who can build more informed opinion on whether to buy your book (or any product) or not. 1-2 start and 3-4 start reviews capture different parts of the distribution of user experience, and they often capture different sides of some product.

ilyt 3y ago
This. Reviews are not for author, they are for other potential buyers.

Roark66 3y ago

Google and other content stores will promote content a lot more the more feedback it has. Good feedback is better, but bad feedback is better than none (assuming all your feedback isn bad). Feedback on play store etc *is* a gift. A gift of making your content more discoverable by others. Anyone that has ever written a book and is making it available through online platforms should know that so I have to consider the article as a bit of a click bait rather than genuine opinion of the author.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

I've found negative feedback is quite useful. Folks are generally not that interested in giving positive feedback. "It does what it says on the tin, not much else to say." However, they are often profuse in negative feedback. This can be extremely valuable. I mention that, here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-traveled-by/#feedback https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/the-road-most-travel...

DaveFlater 3y ago

Feedback systems often fail to distinguish constructive critique from random opinion-having and assertions of personal taste. A kneejerk reaction based on nothing but gutfeel carries the same weight as a careful and well-informed evaluation. This is fine if the goal is popularity or profit—the votes or the dollars are the same. But it's not fine if the goal is a high-integrity product that delivers on a particular vision.

tikkun 3y ago

Yes. My version of this is that products should generally focus only on doubling down on their strengths, making the people who love them love them even more, with the exception being people who kinda or could love the product but don't - in those cases it's worth removing the negatives that get in the way of those people being able to love the product. So: * Positive feedback from people who love your product: use this, double down on what's great * Positive feedback from people who don't love your product: ignore this * Negative feedback from people who love your product: use this if it seems helpful, but it may not be critical, because it didn't prevent them from loving it * Negative feedback from people who almost love your product or kinda love your product, and who could really love it, but don't because of issues: use this feedback to sandpaper away the issues * Negative feedback from people who don't and will never love your product: ignore this

ilyt 3y ago
And how exactly get which kind of person it is from few words of review ?

bawolff 3y ago

Ignoring all the 1 star feedback sounds kind of dangerous. Yeah, often its crazy people or people who have severely misaligned expectations. But sometimes there are useful info among those who hate you. You just need to make sure you dont let it get to you when listening to them (which is quite hard actually)

tyingq 3y ago
If there's a way to make relative comparisons to competitors, that would seem wise. Everyone gets the 1-star rants, but you should probably know if you're getting more or less of them than everyone else.

password4321 3y ago

Ask HN: How do you not take criticism of your work personally? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36056299 600+ comments, 4 days ago

pschuegr 3y ago

IMO when receiving feedback it's important to understand the context of the person giving it. Some people, like those classified here as 1-2 star reviews, might just not understand what you're trying to do, or it just might not be to their taste. That feedback can be discarded after you parse it for anything that might be useful. Sometimes a negative review can be positive - I have a friend whose opinion I trust 100% on certain aspects, but we have diametrically opposing ideas about others. If he tells me he doesn't like certain things, I actually consider that a positive. As the author says, what you really want are people who are aligned with you in most dimensions, understand what you're trying to do, and can see how to make it better. Those people are worth their weight in gold. The important thing is to know what _you_ want to do well enough to know when feedback is going to help you get there, and when it's trying to get you to go somewhere else.