4 ms·
If you want every book to have a rating, then the site needs to have a ton of users, and if there are a ton of users then most books will converge to 3.5-4.1 "m
by burkaman 3y ago
If you want every book to have a rating, then the site needs to have a ton of users, and if there are a ton of users then most books will converge to 3.5-4.1 "most people like it but some people don't", as you've observed.
Other than talking to people in real life, you can also look for curated lists. https://shepherd.com/ https://shepherd.com/ is a good site for this.
I think lists like these are better than numeric ratings and stack rankings, which don't really make sense for books and other art. The only useful ratings are "don't recommend", "recommend", and "essential, you have to read this".
- wpietri 3y agoYeah, in looking at ratings I think you have to keep in mind that people don't randomly select books. People pick things that they think they will like, and they are generally pretty good at it. This is especially true for authors of series. The great bulk of people reading volume 7 are going to have read books 1-6, so the rating will tell you almost nothing about the objective quality of the book, and a lot about how it comes across to people who liked the first 6 enough to get through them.