I can honestly say that finding Royal Road was an absolute treasure. It helped me through a rough time in my life and still provides a fair amount of reading pleasure. So, I thought to myself: "Why not go and post some of the many stories running through my head so that I can contribute?"

So, I did.

Then I started noticing things.

Things like authors commenting every now and then about things they've noticed. Not awesome things, I might add.

Like how the rating system works. Like how review bombing will happen. Of how some so-called authors will review bomb other works similar to their own in an unhinged attempt to make their own works "look better" because of the rating system.

Now, a rating system is a good thing, most times. It'll help people find stories that're well-liked by the majority of people who've read it. That's great.

That said, there are also haters out there.

Haters that take advantage of the broken rating system on Royal Road. It allows people to leave a rating without leaving a review. It also fails to tag appropriate analytics for authors to determine why they got said rating. Something that would actually go a step to helping the author to possibly find and address why they got said rating.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

That said, and I've brought this up with the site, I feel that 1) leaving a rating without a review shouldn't be possible, as it leaves the door wide open for abuse. 2) ratings should be attached to a user in some way. Sure, it can be an anonymous tag associated with a user, like a random number or something to help with "privacy" and all that. Why? Because that would also help to keep down review bombing from single sources.

Sure, it's not a perfect solution, as any rigorous methods enacted would come with considerable blow-back from the netizen trolls who love to anonymously hate on people, or even those people who just love to review bomb.

Basically, it's getting to the point where I have very little confidence in the site any more. I am very seriously considering pulling my stories from RR and posting them elsewhere, or just having them exclussive to Patreon. We'll just have to see if the review bombing continues, as I don't need to see that kind of hate in my everyday life.

In all, ratings without reviews are just trash, in my professional opinion. It's nice to see good ones, shit to see shit ones. But overall, without anything to back up those ratings, they're just hot air. Especially the 1 and 2 star ratings from small-minded people.

And yes, I fully anticipate another round of review bombing from anyone who doesn't like this post.

Too bad.

The only thing that'll happen is that I'll encourage as many authors as I can to leave the site as well, reducing the content that can be hated-upon by haters.