In the Review Board, I see people rating stories 4.5, 3.5, etc. and then saying that they are rounding it down to the smaller whole number. Why?

I'm fairly certain that they know how rounding works, so I won't bother explaining. Can someone tell me why they do this? It doesn't make any sense. Why not just tell everyone what you're actually rating it?

 

The rating system DLP uses for stories is stars, which you can see while browsing threads in the library, WbA, etc. You can only give whole numbers of stars. So they round to whatever they feel is an appropriate rating.

For most stories, that's down.

 

If you rate something 4.5, that's indicative of it not being deserving of a five. Rather than giving it a perfect score, you round down to more accurately represent your opinion. If you rate something 3.5, you are saying that it wasn't terrible but doesn't deserve to be in the library. If you round up, you are risking including it in the library despite not believing it should be. Those are the two most common .5 ratings, and the most likely reasons for rounding down as opposed to up.

I am very harsh when it comes to ratings, and so things that I rate as 5 stars are deserving of such. A 4.5 is not equivalent to a 5, otherwise I'd have rated it as a 5. Since DLP only allows whole number ratings on the part of the reviewer, that necessitates rounding down for me.

 

It's just another reminder to actually read the reviews written, and treat the star ratings as just an interesting secondary piece of data. An arbitrary score of 4.5, for me, means that I liked it a lot, but it wasn't incredible, and the star vote system here doesn't allow anything but integer votes. And what demarcates between incredible and good, or shit tier and mediocre? The written review.

 

I dunno about everyone else but my interpretation of the rules thread was that decimal numbers should be rounded down. Specifically:

So I figured that was how we were meant to do it.

 

I think of the 5 starts in terms of terrible:1, bad:2, ok:3, good:4, great:5. Usually, I find that that if a story is under 3, the decimals don't matter. Sometimes, it turns out that stories are not what I'd call good, but they are better than just ok. I usually round them down to 3, but stating the rating as 3.5 is my way of saying that it was better than just ok, but not good enough to be called good. I give a fic a 4.5 when I think it's a great fic overall, but had something that peeved me enough not to call it great.

The point is that decimals are the reviewer's way of conveying a little more than what is allowed by the 5 stars and doesn't usually depend on rules of decimal rounding.

Ultimately, like Sesc said, we all make a choice on whether to round it up or down, and that is the actual rating.

 

I generally round up anything that would be a 3.5 or above because that's what the forum does. If something averages a 3.65, it is going to show 4 stars.

I also try to avoid rating things that I know going into it I'm probably not going to like because I don't want my personal preferences to hurt the rating of what is a otherwise a well written story.

 

Here's my rating system, not that I've employed it in a while:

3: Almost Recommended
4: Library
5: C2

Any .5s I've ever given mean that in my view it's at the top end of the category and with a little refinement, could push beyond.

 

I've never rated anything a 5, in my mind 5/5 is perfect and I've never read a story that I would consider as such.

 

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of there being a five, if nothing can attain it?

 

Yeah, and what about those fics that are much better than 4? While nothing is perfect, don't they deserve to be differentiated from the 4s.

 

I suppose to some, but it's just how I see it. It also helps keep it in perspective of just how close to or far from perfection the story is. I've also never rated a story 0/5.

 

If I end up with a decimal, it's not arbitrary. I'll give a 1-5 for grammar, one for storytelling, one for the overall feel of the work, and maybe one more, depending on the day. Then it's a simple method of adding and dividing.

That seldom comes up to whole number. So then I round up or down depending how I rated the feel of the overall work, because in the end, the sum should be greater than the parts.

 

I prefer a 1-10 scale, for reasons CheddarTrek highlighted.

It's more nuanced, and realistically I'm not going to be reading stories less than a 3/5 (6/10) - and of the stories that I do read, I will then in turn want to classify them as average/good/very good/excellent/orgasmic - thus a 10 scale seems to me preferable.