There will always be a selection bias with ratings, no matter what product you're looking at. For niche products, people will leave a positive review since they like it, and the people who don't like it will just avoid it.
It's a good practice to look at the amount of people who voted since it can reveal how biased the average rating truly is.
Also, since we are looking at ratings of the story here, there are quite a handful of people who rate the story during the early parts or even through the summary alone, and forget about their initial rating as the story develops in a good or bad direction.
So yea- it's really difficult to judge a story based on the rating alone; especially since this is a public sample pool, which isn't controlled at all, so it becomes quite unreliable.
What a sucky situation eh? XD goodluck avoiding spoilers...
I have noticed its usually the “bad” “red flag’ (hate the fandom labels sorry) mangas that have high ratings, and the low rating are in the comments. The moral police that have to point out everything “bad” to feel good about themselves. The people who don’t comment are the people who like it and give the high ratings, but are to scared or dont bother discussing with moral warriors, so their read, enjoy, and leave agin. But not before giving it the 5 stars it deserves.
When i say “red flag” manga, i mean the more grey area mangas, where you actually have to think, and try to understand where the caracter are comming from. Not that it escuses anything “bad” a person does, but you can understand why. But people dont like it when you cant put it in a box: green or red flag, no inbetween!
I typed fast and im not native englinsh speaker, dont care for spelling mistakes there is alot, hope it makes sence
And is the highest rating 5 stars? Whatever i just mean the highest rating
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And i dont look at comments, ratings or the synopsis before reading i judge the cover, or if i already love the mangaka. I have missed SO many masterpieces, because i looked at the comments. Sorry i know your question is about ratings, but if you judge from that, i just wanted to point out that i get it
Omg i have been answering the other person who has commented haha i just meant to answer the overall question from Cat
ratings barely matter here, that shouldn't be your basis for expectations. You should also consider that many readers here aren't very critical, just here for enjoyment. If I consider a work terrible, I don't even bother to rate it because that'll be added to my read list / I'll get notifications of it.
Why is it that so many trash or geniunely bad mangas/other have such high ratings?
I know people have their own preferences on what they consider a good or bad read but sometimes its just obvious that its bad.
And i dont mean that im the only one who finds it bad or unreadable Ive read so many comments and the entire comment section is talking about how bad it was so I know it wasn't just me but these mangas/hwa/hua always have sort of a high rating like 8 or above and I can see that there are people who rate or 2 star of below but almost always its like 60% of people have rated it 5 stars.
So by now I know to never trust the stupid ratings and always just read the comments which makes me sad because sometimes people just write spoilers without any warning but ig you just gotta act like you didn't see it.