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Ruminations on Grading

First things first, I have a review in today’s Manga Minis, for DMP one-shot, Hey Sensei? which is definitely my favorite of their BL offerings I’ve read so far.

Now it’s time to get around to my final topic from the poll! Originally in my head, this was called “The Futility of Grading,” but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a silly thing that was to say. It’s not that grading is futile, just that it is tricky and subjective. I might not like being asked to assign a grade to something, but as others have pointed out, it does provide a shorthand for letting the reader know if you liked something or not. Or does it? Heh.

This thread over at Soliloquy in Blue made me finally aware of something I had sort of suspected for a while, which is that my perception of what a grade means is quite different from a lot of other people’s. It all comes down to the “C” and I think it probably has to do with a number of factors. Because of the fact that these are academic grades, I tend to still think of them just as I did when I was in school and to me, a C, which is supposed to be “average” was basically the same as a failing grade. I never once felt okay about getting a C. “C” was, in my young mind, a terrible fate to be avoided at all costs, and I took that to heart. Honestly, even “B” felt pretty crappy, but “C” was just unthinkable. Is this ridiculous? Probably. And probably it says more about me and my schooling than anything else (and none of it good). Thing is, my feelings about those grades are still there, so when I’m assigning a grade to a book, giving it a C feels pretty much like a death knell, and I’m unlikely to assign that grade to anything I liked even a little.

Case in point: A while back, when I reviewed Heaven’s Will, graded as a B- by me at Manga Recon (the one venue where I am required to assign a grade), another reviewer came around and mentioned that she would have given it a C+. I could see her point. The book is a great big mess, and I said so in my review. But I never could have given it a C, because despite all that, I’d actually really liked it. I could see its flaws and they were honestly glaring, but it had something special about it that really caught me and got me excited about the mangaka and her future work, even if she’d lost her way a bit while writing this story. I couldn’t possibly imagine giving it a C. Sure, I’ve given out Cs to books that I’ve found something good to say about, but I try to find something at least marginally positive to mention about almost everything I read and there’s a big difference between, “This story’s a mess, but the art was fantastic and the characters were really compelling even if their paths were woefully incomplete,” and “Well, this manga pretty much blew, but at least nobody got raped.” Neither of these are actual quotes from my reviews, but lord knows they could have been and it makes my point, right?

So where am I trying to go with this? Hard to say. I don’t know that I can retrain my own mind to feel okay about giving a C to something I genuinely enjoyed, even though I think that puts me at least slightly out of sync with the other reviewers at Manga Recon. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to try to adjust their own grading scale either. That said, how much meaning can the grades have to readers as a whole? I’m not sure. The extremes seem pretty clear, at least. I can’t imagine being confused about someone’s feelings about a manga they graded as an A or an F. But everything in the middle seems a little muddy and I think in order to understand what those grades mean in any one review, the reader must be familiar with the reviewer’s style and grading history. Maybe this is just fine and that’s what we all do anyway, but it is thoughts like this that keep me from attempting to assign grades to manga I review in my own blog.

Again, I’m not sure what I’m trying to get at with this discussion, but I guess what I’m interested in is how other people feel about grading. If you read reviews, do you appreciate reviewers who use a rating system of some kind? Do you think it gives you a better picture of how the reviewer actually felt about the book? If you’re a reviewer, do you use a grading system and if so, why or why not? As a reader, I’m torn. I admit I appreciate Michelle’s grading, but I also feel like I have a better idea of what her grades really mean based on my knowledge of her as a person and a reviewer. So. Thoughts? I’m hoping hearing thoughts from all of you will help me to better understand and articulate my own. :)

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  1. Because of the fact that these are academic grades, I tend to still think of them just as I did when I was in school and to me, a C, which is supposed to be “average” was basically the same as a failing grade. I never once felt okay about getting a C.

    That’s really interesting! The letter grades do make a big difference. I happily give pretty-much-okay books a three-star rating on Goodreads, but I would never give those books a C….

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  2. I was thinking about Goodreads, too. If I like a book at all, I’ll give it 3 stars, but a C would sound much worse. I think the thing about letter grades is this (or even stars, for that matter.) If you read a particular reviewer often, you learn that person’s curve and point of view. Then you make your own decision. I can remember often choosing movies that a particular reviewer hated, because I knew that I usually totally disagreed with that reviewer. I think if each person reviewing can stay true – most of the time anyway – to her/his own system, the reader can make choices from that.

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  3. What you’re talking about is grade inflation. If a C is as you describe it, then I bet you rarely or never use a D, so instead of five options, you’ve effectively restricted it to 4.

    I was told very early on, back in 1992 when I started reviewing, not to use ratings because they were unnecessarily reductive. I’ve stuck to that ever since (except for a brief period at the Savage Critics). I’d rather use the flexibility of words, because they’re much more reader-friendly. For instance, I might want to give a manga a C because it’s all competition, no romance, but a reader looking for just those qualities might give it an A for the same reason.

    I’ve read too many reviews where I got to the end and thought “A B+? After all the criticisms they made?” or the alternative “A C? What didn’t they like about it?”

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    • It’s interesting, because it doesn’t feel like grade inflation to me, though I’m sure you’re right. I suppose I think of “average” as a bad thing. It’s true I rarely use a D… usually I can think of so many ways a manga could be *worse* it doesn’t seem warranted. Heh. Though in any case, I prefer not to give grades at all. I only do it at Manga Recon because it is required. I’d rather people be able to make their own judgments based on my review, which is obviously going to be more nuanced than a grade could ever be.

      Oh, and saying “nuanced” just reminded me… I do tend to put a lot of stress on plusses and minuses when I’m reviewing with a grade in an effort to convey my real feelings about something.

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  4. I don’t mind giving grades on reviews and I don’t have the same qualms about a C or D as you, Melinda. I agree, I hated getting C’s in school, but a C was passing and so I dealt with the disappointment and tried harder.

    I think this is a difference in our ages. When I was growing up in the 70’s and 80’s grade inflation wasn’t the problem it is today. Getting a C was never a mark of shame in the schools I attended. A D was the grade that got you in trouble with teachers and parents. God help the student who got an F, but F’s were given out as appropriate.

    I also think that being a teaching assistance for 2 years helped me understand grades better too. I assisted a religious studies professor as part of my seminary requirements. I would grade the weekly writing assignments. So I came to see a C as good, the paper just didn’t have anything outstanding about it. A B came to be very good, solid with moments of real insight. An A was overall excellent. A D meant there was some serious deficiency in the paper. I only gave F’s for people who didn’t turn in papers. The problem was students who weren’t used to harsh grading and tried to argue for a better grade. I simply told what they needed to do to write a better paper.

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    • I feel like we’ve already talked most of this out on Twitter, but I do think I skew my own perspective based on having been a bit of an overachiever. I think a rating system that didn’t carry the baggage of school grades would probably be easier for me to handle in a non-emotional manner.

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      • Twitter, that website that I’m really unsure about? The one I have some many reservations about. That, Twitter? ;-)

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  5. I thought a little bit about something similar when I was trying to rate my Netflix movies. They say in their system 3 stars means “I liked it.”, 4 stars means you really liked it, 5 means you loved it. But honestly? If I see a random movie rated three stars, I will assume it is crap and not worth watching. (And on the rare occasion when I was really bored and watched it anyway, I realized I was right—it was crap and not worth my time.)

    I like the rating system I saw at Overstock.com, where they let you pick # of stars on 4 different parameters. Then I could glance at it and know whether the reviewer cared about the same things I did. If she rated some things low that weren’t important aspects to me, but the aspects I cared about were rated high, then I could know make a better decision customized for me. :)

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    • (And on the rare occasion when I was really bored and watched it anyway, I realized I was right–it was crap and not worth my time.)

      My feelings exactly. :D

      I like the system you describe that rates different aspects of the work.

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  6. This makes me think of a recent discussion in the film community. I was delighted to learn about the Little Man system, which you can read about in this Ebert blog post (Ebert’s journal, as I am sure I have mentioned before, is ACE.) It also discusses the problem of the middle position.

    When I reviewed film, I did a version of the dollar rating. That is, should you pay full price? Matinee? Rent it? Is it so terrible you shouldn’t even watch it if it’s on TV and you have insomnia? But in the end, really, what matters to me is consistency & developing a relationship with the reviewer. Like, I know that I don’t agree with everything Jeff Wells has to say, but I also know that any film that he goes over the top advocating is definitely a film worth watching.

    Also, as Ebert says in the end, “have you considered actually *reading* the review?”

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    • Oh thank you for the link to the Ebert post! “I like movies too much.” I could relate to that so much, though with manga of course. I go into a volume rooting for it to succeed, because I just really love manga.

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  7. In the light of newly discovered information. Let’s strick the second paragraph from my above post and say. Maybe the difference was in the school systems we attended. ;-)

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  8. I don’t use a grading system for my reviews, though I have considered it because I do often find them helpful when reading others’. That said though, when I asked my readers what they thought and got a general consensus of ‘they’re fine the way they are’, it was a relief.

    For one, though I know the A-F grading system, I’ve never used it myself. I was never graded with that system growing up or asked to grade something like that, so I don’t feel I have a concrete ‘feel’ of what each letter means to me. What would make me teeter from a B to a B-?

    I’ve considered using the simpler star system, like rating something 2 out of 5 stars, but then I inevitably run into the conflict of not being able to choose a single star. If asked to use a star system, I’d be the first person asking if I could give half-stars or 2/3 a star.

    So I suppose I’m just fickle or unable to set solid boundaries for my own opinions (I’d flipflop so much on ratings), but giving a book one-set grade is so hard I find because an entire book’s parts often fail to match up to what I’d eventually have to summarize them in as a whole. An awesome story would win it an A but unsightly artwork would win it a C-. Rating it a B feels unworthy when the story blew me away and I loved reading it, but a B also feels too high when it hurt my eyes to even look at it (harsh but it’s happened xD ).

    As a reader of reviews, I find it’s nice to know what kind of review you’re going to be reading before you start. An A indicates the review will obviously be mostly positive while an F makes clear the opposite. Admittedly sometimes I’m in a mood where I don’t want to read a certain kind of review and I’ll save them for later, or other times I find reviews all the more captivating to read when I look forward to seeing how the reviewer justifies and explains their reasoning for a rating I either do or don’t agree with. Ratings are just a really nice, concise overview of the entire review and it’s convenient to have.

    That said though, I agree with you completely about rating systems being more effective if you know the reviewer and they’re own idea of a grade’s ‘worth’. Even over at Manga Recon, I look at each grade a little differently once I’ve read who reviewed it.

    And all that said and done (I need to learn to be less wordy!), if I was to implent a rating system on Kuriousity, I’d likely have a 3-option system, ‘thumbs-up’ ‘thumbs-down’ or what I’m calling ‘meh’. For me what I really thought about a book can be summed up by the way I feel the moment I’ve finished reading it. That’s the tone I try to follow when I then later write the review. Not that it’s good to have boring reviews for boring books, but I guess I just write on a very emotional level xP

    All in all, I suppose I say a reviewer should do whatever feels comfortable to them (if they have that flexibility). If you finish a book and firmly feel a B+ in your heart, then slap a B+ on there. If not, then write out your thoughts and let it grade itself :)

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    • So I suppose I’m just fickle or unable to set solid boundaries for my own opinions (I’d flipflop so much on ratings), but giving a book one-set grade is so hard I find because an entire book’s parts often fail to match up to what I’d eventually have to summarize them in as a whole. An awesome story would win it an A but unsightly artwork would win it a C-. Rating it a B feels unworthy when the story blew me away and I loved reading it, but a B also feels too high when it hurt my eyes to even look at it (harsh but it’s happened xD ).

      Haha, that just really rang true to me. Yes!

      Even over at Manga Recon, I look at each grade a little differently once I’ve read who reviewed it.

      I do too, actually.

      I can’t imagine ever implementing a rating system here, though I get the feeling people really like them. The closest I’ve come is putting certain titles over in the “recommended” box for a while after they’ve been reviewed. Heh.

      I guess I just write on a very emotional level

      Oh, and so do I. I think that may actually be a huge factor. I become very emotionally engaged by something when I read it, so my review is coming from a very passionate place that it is hard to boil down to something like a grade.

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  9. Unless I’m really interested in a book or find a particular reviewer interesting, I don’t read a review unless it has some sort of rating system, or unless I know the style of the reviewer and can guess where they’re going to put a summary of their overall feelings on the book. I’m not exactly proud of it as I think it’s true it can be detrimental to sum up the worth of something by a single grade, but… I spend too much time reading about manga every morning as it is ^_^; I need a quick glace at how they felt about the book before I decide to spend my time reading the review or not. I mostly only want to read about why I should read a manga I haven’t yet, not why I shouldn’t read a manga I wasn’t thinking about reading anyway, so I only read highly rated things.

    And I’m in kind of the same boat with how school has screwed up the way I look at letter grades. An A was acceptable, a B extremely dissatisfying, a C unthinkably bad. But while that’s a little extreme, to me that doesn’t necessarily not work with the intended A = very above average, B = somewhat above average, C = average scale, as I’m a proponent of Sturgeon’s Law that 90% of everything is crap, and if 90% of everything is crap and something is average, well, yeah, it’s probably crap. …Though I admit the law is rather pithy, and “crap” is a bit harsher than I feel exactly (maybe something more like ‘kind of unoriginal and stupid though can probably still be liked by those who are particularly soft for this sort of thing’).

    I’ve rated and reviewed some manga on my online book cataloging site, though those are on a 5 star scale. When I do it I say to myself, ‘2.5 stars is average. How much higher/lower is this than that?’ If that fails me I click the handy little button that lets me organize my books by how I rated them and see if the book feels more comparable to the ones in the 2 category or the 3 or whatever (*pets her LibraryThing* <3). Which I think is fair, but then a lot of things end up with 2.5 or round abouts, and while I still do it it does make me wince because I know that looks low to other people. I don’t feel so bad about that as I might, or about rating things a bit higher for the random personal enjoyment despite flaws factor, though. Cause I figure if someone was actually on my LibraryThing reading my reviews, they’re there because they *like* my personal biases or rating style and are reading me just for that.

    In your position (as someone who’s reviews are posted on manga review sites and along side other manga reviewers and where people might wander in and read your review with no clue about your tastes and style) I can see how that can be more uncomfortable. In that position…I do wonder if I would inflate my grades, because as I do them they would give the wrong impression. But…but it would irritate me a lot, heheheh ^_^; And as a reader of reviews, I wish people wouldn’t do that, though I’m sure there’s no changing it now as I get the feeling just too many do.

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    • I like the librarything system, too. That’s when I started using half points. I previously had been only rating fanfic I reviewed (1-5, no half points) and my book and manga reviews didn’t get a rating. But then I started putting everything on librarything and rating it there, so I started using those ratings when posting book and manga reviews to my journal as well (I also post to facebook and their system uses the same 5 stars with half points as librarything).

      That said, I rarely rate stuff less than a three, because I seem to be pretty good at picking out stuff that will appeal to me. I don’t hesitate to give lower ratings when I feel they’re deserved, though. (I recently gave my first half star on librarything for a book that was really horrible.)

      I always write an actual review, too, so that I can explain why I rated it as I did. After all, the reason I rated it down might be exactly why someone else will love it, or they might be able to ignore the element(s) I didn’t like (after all, a lot of people aren’t deterred by bad writing, whereas that really keeps me from enjoying a story).

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      • That said, I rarely rate stuff less than a three, because I seem to be pretty good at picking out stuff that will appeal to me.

        That, I think, would be a problem if I started grading here in my blog. Sure, I get some review copies for this place, but I also just review things I buy on my own, and those are almost *always* going to be things I like. If I’m spending my money, it’s because I’m pretty sure of that before the fact. I think if I started grading here, there would be too many high grades because of that.

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    • I need a quick glace at how they felt about the book before I decide to spend my time reading the review or not.

      That’s a really good point — having that grade available does help me choose which reviews to read and it probably also colors how I read them. (If a reviewer has totally panned something, well, at least they felt strongly about it! And if it’s a reviewer who’s looking for things other than what I like, that could actually be a good sign; or, if we’re similar, they could tip me off to a small thing that doesn’t bother most reviewers but that I’ll appreciate knowing up front to see if it’ll bother me.)

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    • I think probably I end up liking more manga than you do (just based on your 90% is crap statement), but I actually think I agree with you in a lot of ways. I think the reason “C” seems like a really crappy grade is that things that are no better than average are sort of crappy. I just think I probably consider more things above average than you do. :)

      (maybe something more like ‘kind of unoriginal and stupid though can probably still be liked by those who are particularly soft for this sort of thing’)

      Hee- I loved that. :D

      So I’m assuming you probably don’t read my reviews since I don’t grade them here in my blog (which is fine—this isn’t a guilt trip). I wonder how many readers I lose because of that. Though I don’t know that I could bear to change it, I do wonder.

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      • Hehe, yeah, the 90% is crap is what the..uh..designated law says, but I do think that number is a bit high. I almost suspect even the guy who made it up could have even thought so. It’s just “80-85…maybe 70, if you’re feeling optimistic, % of everything is crap” isn’t any more catchy than the aforementioned “crap” replacement phrase. Maybe they probably thought the point hit harder when the statement was more extreme.

        I actually do read your reviews a lot of the time cause I’ve gotten the impression a lot of the things that make you like a manga are the same things that tend to make me like a manga. Though I think you’re right you end up liking more than me. I guess I tend to find the same things about them impressive/appealing, but just not *as* impressive/appealing? (I wish so hard I could like things more easily….I get jealous of those who do, hehehe.) And like it seems other people have mentioned with themselves, most things I read I tend to find average or above, just cause I tend to pick up things that looked above average from the reviews. (Though BL/romance stuff is tough since what most of the reviewers of it are looking for is not what *I’m* looking for. Plus a lot of the BL I’ve read I just borrowed from a friend without looking at reviews. Thus, my 2 star and below manga consist pretty much entirely of BL ^_^;)

        On a random note, some time recently I was glancing over my ratings and noticed I’d given something like 3 stars to MBQ, which made me smile because that manga REALLY irritated me, hehehe. But it probably was above average, I guess I just resisted the urge to grade it down just because it hit some pet peeves. But then I’m semi-shamelessly grading things up cause I randomly found them enjoyable despite lots of flaws all the time, so it looks like I lean toward higher scores as well. ^^ (Speaking of OEL, have you tried Off*Beat yet? I think you might like itttt~ …I know it’s on hiatus, b-but it’s still worth it! /A Shameless Pimp For This Manga since 2006 <3)

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        • I do really *like* to like things, it’s true. :D Jacicita linked up above to a post from Roger Ebert where he mentioned that he just *loves* movies. When I go into a volume of manga, I’m rooting for it to succeed because I just really want to like it, so I think that definitely has an effect on my perspective when I’m reviewing. I definitely have your same difficulties with BL/romance stuff, in terms of what I’m really looking for. I can be easily charmed by romance, but I have to really care about the characters for that to happen, and so many writers just don’t do the work to make that happen.

          I think none of us can really be *objective* in our reviewing, and I don’t even think we should try that hard for it. I think point of view and personal likes/dislikes are part of what makes reviews (especially from multiple sources) valuable. Sure, I try to point out something positive (if it’s there) in something I don’t like and vice versa. But I think it’s okay for our grades and/or reviews to reflect our personal tastes.

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          • Erica Friedman has a great post on why there is no such thing as an objective review. http://okazu.blogspot.com/2009/01/objectivity-in-reviews-not.html

            I wholeheartly agree with her and when I posted my reflections of my first year reviewing said that my reviews are a reflection of my reading experience of the book. I can’t pretend to be some generic person when I read and review. Who I am, what I’ve experienced, what I believe, etc. are all going to be reflected in my reveiw.

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  10. I…have nothing to add other than what I wrote in the original thread. ^^ But reading everyone else’s thoughts has been interesting.

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