Heuristic

It varies on my interest in the content of the manga, but, usually, yeah, 8 or less is usually where I set my mark of wondering.

If the summary seems good, I read no matter the the score (and, yeah, sometimes is as bad as the others said). For me, if it's lower than seven I get a little suspicious.
But, please, do your list, seems a very interesting list to see! And please tell us here when you so I can see it!ヾ(❀╹◡╹)ﾉ~

I don't read anything below 7.5 rating because according to me if the rating is that low then there must be a reason, right?

I don't care about the rating much as long as it's not a 6.5 or lower.. because the people of this site have a strong preference to yaoi, you see.

I've come across so many great manga but the ratings were shit lol. Was it because of the art? haha


But then again my tastes are kinda fucked so--

I personally never look at the rating before reading a manga. And weirdly, I always rate those which are worth 5stars but never rate those which are worth less. Like, it's my way of respecting thé author, I don't know, I just can't do it.
But what I hate is when mangas are low rated while there's only 1chapter out. WTF ? Like some people are here just to give low rates to mangas.

I’ve never rated nor do I look at ratings. Everyons’s tastes are different, so there’s no point.

I get the sense that is probably where most folks are at, but it's good to hear confirmation! Thanks. ^.^

You are much braver than I am - I honestly hesitate if it's lower than 8.5. It's silly, I know, since a lot of my favorites hover in the low-8 range and I am probably missing tons of good stuff by being so cautious.

Lower than 7 is pretty grim, and generally if it is that low I will only check it out if I know the author and understand that they are criminally underrated (Esuto Emu and Nishida Higashi are my prime examples).

I will happily share the list when it comes together here! Although fair warning, it'll be a BL list. Hope that's of interest to you. :)

This is true, but those reasons don't necessarily reflect the merits of the manga, at least for me. For example, a lot of folks on this site (at least in the BL corner) dislike characters who sleep with people who are not their end-game partner (even prior to the couple making things official), art that isn't current or is less refined, narrative ambiguity, or stories featuring older characters (or characters that don't conform to what they are used to generally).

To me at least, in and of themselves none of these features affect whether or not a manga is good - I generally try to look mostly at pacing, structure, character, and story when I rate a manga. So it's often difficult to tell whether a low rating means the manga is actually poorly written and a waste of my time or if it is a little off the beaten track and so failed to please everyone.

Of course there are loads of manga that get poor ratings just because they are genuinely crap. Which is why I want to make a list. But I think 80-90% of the time, you're completely right to avoid things that have a lower than 7.5 rating.

I am with you! Honestly art is nice, but I find that a lot of the times I will click on a story that a 9+ rating with beautiful art but a completely banal or downright awful story. Of course manga is a visual medium, so art is a vital part of a manga, but I think sometimes folks conflate below industry standard art with a bad manga. Art can carry a story if the writer has a good feeling for visual storytelling, and bad art can ruin a manga where more richer visuals are called for (especially historical or fantasy stories) - the criteria for good or bad art depends on the framing.

Sorry that is a little far afield from your comment. I just like thinking about this kind of stuff. :p And yeah I hear you on strong preferences. So often I'll dip into the comments and realize that I am not quite looking for the same thing as other readers. I doubt your tastes are fucked up in any case. ^.^ Thanks for the response!

That is such a good way to go about it and I appreciate only giving five stars - that's really sweet.

I tend to rely on ratings in the absence of other information (like recommendations from folks whose taste I trust or authors I like) since there is such an abundance of manga to read I would never be able to sort through them otherwise. It's not ideal, of course.

Completely understandable!

They are useful to me when I find other users who share my particular taste or when I am sorting through manga without anything else to go by. Granted getting a bad rating is in no way necessarily an indication that a manga is bad, but I have found that often with really low rated manga there is some serious structural story problem (poorly realized characters, badly constructed plot, &c.). Not always, of course, which is why I wanted to make the list. :)

Again, not sure if BL is your thing, but I've started the list:
http://www.mangago.me/home/mangalist/423278/

I will be adding to it as time goes on, since it takes me awhile to re-read the manga and write why I think it's not as well-liked as I think it should be. In short: more to come. :)

I completely agree, although I admit that I do use ratings sometimes to determine whether or not a manga is worth my time in the absence of any other determining factors (there is just so much manga out there). And that is the point of making the list: for those who do (rightly or wrongly) use ratings to sort through manga, it's a guide for those who are interested in checking out works that are actually well-structured and well-written (but have some unpopular element that has nothing to do with their actual quality).

But yeah, I totally hear you concerning ratings. I was tempted to make a list of manga I think were *overrated*, but that just seemed mean and not as useful. It's not even just trolls: there are a few things that, regardless of quality, inflate a manga's rating (a more contemporary art style, being set in a high school, being a full color webtoon, &c.).

I really like your idea for the list, but why limit it to scores above a certain point? Personally, I don't pay much attention to the ratings, as I know that they don't always seem right to me. As you and others have already mentioned, (although I didn't read every reply), people often rate in a certain way, for all kinds of wrong reasons. I've read some imho good or even great manga, that had crap ratings because, (I assume), they had open endings/they were a little harder to understand/they were realistic and therefore less fluffy and maybe the main couple grew apart or something, (as happens irl!), etc. It irks me, so yes please do make that list! However, given that, as we agree, those ratings are not necessarily accurate, why trust the lowest ratings? Shouldn't the same hold true, even for the very low ratings? I mean, I don't actually know what percentage of readers 'misrates' objectively good manga, nor by how much, but to illustrate my point, if we say, for instance, that 1/3 of all of its readers rate a certain manga 1 or 2 stars, for questionable reasons, then for another 1/3 of readers we put 2.5 stars, (they found it just average, or maybe they didn't rate it at all), and if the last third rate it 4 or 5 stars, that still only averages out to (1.5 + 2.5 + 4.5) ÷ 3 = 2.83 stars = a rating of only 5.67, which is nowhere near the cut-off point of 8.0 that I saw at least one person here answer. (Btw, I'm not questioning anyone's right to rate however they choose, nor their right to read based on whichever ratings they choose.) Anyhow, that's just my 2 cents. Sorry it turned into a wall of text!!

Since I read a good chunk of mangas with 8 star rating, I consider them okay category. I avoid mangas below 8 stars unless something about the manga interests me to pick it up. So I would say any rating lower than 8 is a low rating.

I see you found the list that I made after asking this question. :) I went with 8.0 and below, as you are probably aware, although the ratings for some of the manga have increased in the interim since I added them to the list. I suppose I should probably remove them once their ratings change, but I can't bring myself to do that.

I find that Mangago ratings tend to favor rather safe and genre-typical fare - which is fine, but makes it difficult to discern when something is just objectively bad and when it's underrated because it has something that just puts most people off. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to answer the question. I hope you can find something you like in my underrated list.