Average rating by people like me | Requests/Ideas

If there was a kind of “average rating by people like me” filter / field, that would be SO incredibly helpful.

In the absence of this, the signals I have historically used to figure out how to weight the average weighting (in Goodreads):

if 90% of the reviews are by men I am skeptical
if 90% of the reviews are by women I am skeptical
if there is a huge split between positive and negative, I check to see how intelligent the comments are. Articulate, thoughtful, effusive POSITIVE reviews paired with inarticulate / short “I didn’t get it” negative reviews is a strong POSITIVE signal for me. And the inverse is a strong negative

Comments

jaina8851

Feb 22, 2022

This is only sort of related, but I also find the ratings on here to be skewed by the fact that you can't rate DNFs. I understand that there are valid reasons to disallow that, and there are many circumstances where I DNF something and wouldn't leave a rating at all (most common being "this book just wasn't for me so I don't feel like spending the time finishing it"). But there are other times where a book is truly awful, and I wish my opinion of it (and others who DNF for the same reason) got factored in.

I know the rationale here on TSG is basically "someone else's 3⭐ could be your next 5⭐" but I too look at reviews a lot when picking books and a feature like the one you're describing here would be so helpful!!