Writing.Com Rating Stars Are Useless

I think, deep down, we all know it. We look away, we whistle, we change the subject, but the knowledge is still there.

I liked the rating stars just as much as the next person when I first arrived at this site. It was just such a pleasant, fuzzy feeling, seeing those brilliant purple stars lined up next to my titles. They're eye-catching; they're a visual thrill. But that was the newbie in me talking. Over three years have passed since then, and now that my main concern is improving the quality of my writing, I only feel that the rating stars are completely pointless.

Poll after article after poll after article have agreed: what we writers want, what we crave, what we cannot live without, are reviews. Ratings alone, whether star-filled or not, leave us only with questions: Why do you say this? How did I please or displease you? What can I do to improve? But no one’s there to answer; they’ve selected an option from the pull-down menu and then fled off into the night. With rating stars alone, we have little chance of progressing as writers.

Obviously, we already know all this. Over the past year, it seems that Writing.com has been doing everything it can to get people to review each other: gift points for reviewing someone new; the option to automatically reward someone for sending a 250-count-plus review; the section on 'Reviewing' right up there next to the sections on 'Reading' and 'Writing', for crying out loud. Where, do you ask, is the section on 'Rating'? Why isn't that plastered to the top of our windows at all times? Except, that's just the thing--nobody is asking that. Because nobody, so long as they have a review, gives a flying fruitcake about their ratings.

If anybody does care about how many stars they get, does it usually have anything to do with their interest in improving their work? How can it, when they're so uninformative? No, instead, they use their stars to attract people to their writing. 'Look at me! Twenty people have rated me an average of five stars! Read meeee!' No one's saying that this method doesn't work. But is it the only way to get a reader's attention? Of course not. And can it backfire? You betcha. Every time you see those stars (and how can you miss them, being where they are?), a preconception of the quality of what you are about to read has infiltrated your brain. You feel an obligation—even if it’s only an inkling of one--to at least attempt to fall in line. If you think a story rated five stars deserves only three tops, do you not hesitate before rating? Do you not say to yourself, I'm probably not qualified to rate this? I know some people say that nooo, of course this is not true, and maybe a few of you honestly have managed to block out all outside interferences on your viewpoint. However, I have my doubts about the masses, and as a result, you can never be sure if what you’re getting are the true opinions of your readers.

Then you come to the fact that all numerical-based rating systems have the significant flaw of being highly individualized. A four to one person may mean something entirely different to another person. We can't create a universal agreement on what any single star rating means--not even a one or a five. We can try all we want, but it's not going to happen. So, not only do we have to look at a rating and ask, “Why do they feel this way?”, but we have to also ask whether they even really feel how we think they do.

When I put it all together, I can only conclude that the rating stars help nobody—not the readers, not the writers, nobody. And so I ask, as I was bound to--why are they here? Why not do away with them? Why not let reviewing be the only option in expressing your views on an item? Don’t let readers drop off their stars with a vague murmur and leave the writers trying to divine their meaning. We have the freedom to decide whether we want people to rate our items or not, but if we say no, then the review box automatically disappears with it! Remove the stars completely and give us the option to accept reviews or not. Don’t tell us how many people have rated an item, tell us how many people have reviewed it. We give readers the option to publicly display their reviews; why not give writers this same option? If they want them displayed, this can help attract readers to an item the same way high ratings do. If they don't want their reviews displayed, they can be more confident in the fact that a readers' opinions have not had any outside influence.

In order to become better writers, we must be able to communicate with each other. Rating stars simply don’t get the job done. Removing them won’t hurt anyone; all it can do is help.

We all know it. Now let’s do something about it.