And the home thread for この美術部には問題がある！ ・ This Art Club has a Problem! 
is up too 
13 Likes
Thanks guys for the productive discussion around the topic of difficulty scores.
The consensus around this topic seems to be that Natively scores aren’t perfect, but better than the poll based system and that the biggest problem is the case when the book is not on Natively or when the book has not gotten enough votes to get a good representative rating.
When it comes to using the current difficulty rating system as a back-up solution, I’m honestly not in favor. I have not been a fan of the poll-system for a while because I think it might do more harm than good. We tell everyone to not put too much weight on that score, but it will influence decisions and often times the score feels like nothing more than a wild guess.
My preferred soltuion would be one of the following:
- Don’t allow books that don’t have a none ?? rating on Natively. This is obviously very radical and would come at the cost of some variety.
- Leave the difficulty rating empty
I would love to hear your guys’ thoughts. Once the dust settles I will most likely hold a poll on this topic.
13 Likes
That seemed to be a point everyone agreed on!
The above two comments got quite a few likes, and according to the subsequent discussion, I interpreted that as support for a third option, in the case of no natively score, use an internal poll which is based on natively levels, NOT subjective difficulty. It probably wouldn’t happen often…
I’m guessing from your message you’re not in favor of any internal rating, but for the odd book or manga with no natively rating, I would personally value the rough vote of more experienced readers on the likely natively rating range.
10 Likes
I’m really glad that this discussion is going on - thanks to @Shadowlauch for starting it, and everybody who is participating! I’m glad that it seems like the old rating system is going away. I think it was probably wildly inaccurate, not least because inexperienced and very experienced readers both used the same subjective scale, and I’ve always ignored it in favor of the Natively rating since I knew of its existence.
My prefered solution:
- When there’s a Natively rating, use it as is, even if it has ??.
- When there’s no Natively entry, request the book (before or after nominating it here) and use the ?? rating once it is added to the Natively database. It won’t take long.
- If many people think the ?? for a specific book is completely off, or someone needs help supplying an initial guess for the Natively book addition request, I guess we could do a poll on which Natively rating we think might be accurate. I don’t think that will happen often.
I think both of those unreasonably disincentivize new or so far less popular books, and would do more harm than good.
18 Likes
This was talked about somewhat, but the initial natively rating is a fixed value
I wonder how that misunderstanding came to be - or maybe I’m the one misunderstanding something?
Here’s the request form:
You can request an even more specific number via the Notes input field.
1 Like
Last two times I requested books, that was mostly ignored.
The 8 times I did, it wasn’t. Sounds like you might want to complain to Brandon? (Also, what’s “mostly”?)
Mostly is the “I don’t want to be wrong, so I insert that, but it was very much just ignored” word in the sentence.
Sorry to hear that. Brandon complaint time, then. If it ever happens to you again, e.g. by just answering the mail. Having it ignored pretty much defeats the purpose of the form, and having it initially at a fixed value would just create chaos.
(I think the pre-seeded movies were all/mostly added at a fixed value, but there was a point there - never seen it anywhere else.)
1 Like
Ignored in which direction? Higher than you selected? Lower? (Just curious, if you recall.)
I’ve had times where I selected a number, but it was considered possibly too low, so it was set to a more middle-ground number. (Then it went lower as ratings came in. Maybe not as low as I initially selected.)
I mentioned that it had a default value of 24 for all manga when not specified in that dropdown list. But to be fair, many people probably request a book before they’ve read it, and therefore any selection would largely be a guess anyway.
2 Likes
Defo higher than I selected, though I can’t remember what I submitted the guess as. TBH, both were originally light novels, and the levels of those light novels was quite a bit higher, so maybe that played a role? Anyways, not a huge deal
2 Likes
So was it the grading when requesting that was ignored? I have a feeling it might be fixed by grading after the book is posted. Like always marking the books owned/wishlist and then marking them as complete afterwards and then grading
1 Like
Hi all - this conversation popped up on my radar and I figure I’ll chime in to clear up a few misconceptions around temporary grades.
So this is correct. We do have a variety of ‘default’ values for the initial rating depending on book type - manga = 24, children’s book = 22, basically everything else = 30.
A few more points:
- The vast majority of items do not have a user estimated rating and receive this default rating
- I generally do not like to allow initial ratings <20 and >35, as these ratings can become generally prohibitive and exceptional. It’s much better to have gradings start from a ‘normal’ place and then be pushed to extremes via grading.
- The initial rating is immediately discarded once any grades come in
In general, I would mostly disregard these temporary ratings. Even if they are educated guesses from the user who submitted them, if they had finished the book then they will have graded it and it would have become un-temporary. So really, these temporary ratings only have very limited value, probably less than people taking a glance at the first few pages.
I hope no one who has submitted estimates feels discouraged by that! They are appreciated, but as you’d expect, in the context of the grading system they are much lower in value.
There has been quite a bit of confusion around these gradings, which probably indicates I need to do a better job displaying them… or perhaps ditching them entirely for a simple ‘??’. Anyway, I hope that helps.
Apologies on that! I usually try to explain in a quick note if I adjust the estimated difficulty rating. We’ve been having a lot of requests though, so I guess I missed that here 
21 Likes
Absolutely no hard feelings, I assumed you had good reasons for it
6 Likes
I set up a poll to vote on the schedule of Kiyo, so please vote until next Sunday!
10 Likes
Ah, I was wondering whether it would be good to summon you! I guess one only needs to mention Natively… 
I think it’s perfectly fine that they are pretty much immediately discarded once actual grading happens, but they do have value for me: They mark the rough difficulty in my wishlist until I get around to reading them, and they give me a rough estimate when I see them pop up in the search. I really hope they stay for those reasons.
In general, even if they only mark the general area based on an educated guess, they are much better than nothing for me.
(That is, if a user estimated it. I don’t see the point of default ratings and I think those should absolutely only be ??.)
4 Likes
A reminder for all those joining us at our next book club: Week 1 of Kiyo in Kyoto is starting tomorrow. You can join us here:
Can one of the regulars update the first post in this thread / title? Thanks!
12 Likes
Thanks for the reminder. The thread is updated and thank you @anon99047008 for updating the title!
10 Likes