Is it normal to lose rating when you get featured?

[ghelas]

Hi everyone! Very new to self-publishing comics online. Recently, I’ve published a comic on Webtoons, and within several weeks it was featured in Specials section on the app. I was very excited as my subscriptions shot up from around 30 to over 1k. My ratings quickly went up at first as well, hitting 9.5 after several days! However, as we got closer to 1k subscriptions, the comic seemed to receive many negative ratings in a very short span of time, getting knocked down to 8.7 over the last two days.

Is this a common thing to have happen? Am I doing something wrong? I know the pacing and lettering of these early issues is still a little on the rough side, but the amount of people who have abruptly rated low is a little discouraging.

The comic for anyone who’s willing to check it out and provide some feedback can be found here:

Fatal Core Chronicles

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help shed some light on this situation!

[a.g.meade]

@ghelas - I don't know about this kind of thing regularly happening, but it could be a matter of how many ratings you have in total. Alas, averages - a single bad score can leave a huge impact if you don't have a big pool to work from.

I've also heard something about people going around and deliberately downvoting comics on WT? But I don't know if that's true or not - perhaps someone else here on the forums can weigh in here.

[sarahmcsquish]

I've heard of people down voting featured comics. I don't understand why they do it, but you're not the first I've heard it happen to. I'm very sorry for that!

[migxmeg]

Looks like you don't have that many ratings yet, so a couple jerks giving you a bad score were probably the culprits. Your art looks awesome! Congrats on the feature!!

[ghelas]

The rating went down by small increments at least 5 separate times, and it took much longer than that for it to get from about 7 to 9.5. I don’t think it’s that the amount of ratings was very small... It feels more like a deliberate effort.

Sad to know that this has been happening to others as well.

[Tanako]

This is a never-ending battle. at this point, I don't even make webtoon a priority. I mean the rating is so inconstant and yes it is deliberate. I had the the same issue with my comic. now I'm 4k subs with a rating of 7.8 which use to be 9.5. I know people enjoy it but what I cant quite understand is why they intentionally rate it down. it's annoying.

[ItzaMeLuigi]

It's much easier to lower a high rating than maintain a high rating.

For example, if your comic is at a 9 after 20 ratings, a person giving you a 5 will drop you to an 8.8 - a full 0.2 decrease from a single vote which makes up less than 5% of your total vote. If they decide to give you a 1 instead, it'll drop even further to an 8.62.

On the other hand, 5 people giving your comic a 10 would only bring the rating up to a 9.2. In this scenario, a single bad rating (4.7% total votes) has twice as much "power" to affect you than 5 amazing ratings (25% total votes).

When your comic is exposed to more people, there's a higher chance for someone to rate it poorly either out of spite or because they just don't like it. Ratings typically do a good job at giving you a general idea of what people think of your comic, but only when you've built up enough votes for the rating itself to not be swayed so easily.

[DaphnePanda]

It's unfortunately pretty normal for featured comics to get downrated on Webtoons. A small part of the community is pretty toxic and downrate for no real reason. Try not to let it get to you

[Shadymeadows]

That is so awesome you got featured though! I feel like I have received negative ratings randomly from those who go around hating BL comics.

[myumyudapao]

It's pretty normal, It happens all the time,
when you got recommended in WT especially in Fresh section, (seems that your comic is recommended in fresh section since it's new)
There are people who downrate comic, for no reason,
, I've seen your comic, the quality is good, it's really nice , though short panel updates in WT seems to get rated lowly compare to longer panels,
unlike in tapas , tapas readers don't mind short updates.
-This is based on my experience, (this is actually my problem months ago, but got used to it)
There are also people who rate your comic seriously, though don't mind the rating that much,
Your comic is pretty new so it's normal, your rating will go up soon, since there are readers who will put the rating up once they see that your comic is underrated.
believe me! my new comic got rated 9.8 to 8.7 something after I got promoted on genres,. but it went up after few updates..
My advice is don't mind the rating , rating system is basically nothing in WT algorithm, it doesn't generally affect your ranking,
so don't worry about it, !

[honeyandcreambutter]

Oh yes, absolutely!

My comic has been featured three times since it came out a few months ago (Fresh Picks, Today's Hot Series and Rising Stars on separate occasions) and I've learnt from the first time it was featured that the rating abuse is absolutely horrid on Webtoons I'm lucky enough to have my readers and friends pull it up for me but, wow the tug of war was stressful.

It's pretty balanced out now and lucky enough, Webtoons decided to get rid of the double decimal ratings on the app and instead, round it off to the nearest first decimal (i.e. 9.46 --> 9.5)

I guess you can see it as a trade off. In exchange for the steep increase of subs, you'll need to deal with rating bombs for a while :') honestly, they should get rid of the whole rating system on Webtoons and just rely on views and number of likes (like Tapas or Wattpad).

[Eiranyx]

Well I can agree with you there. There are really people down voting on BL comics on webtoons just because they hate it lol, believe it or not, someone down voted on my comic just after I released a teaser chapter --- take note that it was just something like a short sneak peak/ prologue no actual plot yet and then that person assumed the story flow and commented his/her assumptions telling something along the line of: "Ah yes, this is is just another one of those master x slave BL" on the first day I posted my teaser chapter.
But luckily for me, he/she was basically ignored and manage to climb back up again. just gonna ignore and make that person face-slap himself/herself whoever that person is with the actual plot~.

[KoreanTacos]

You said you were featured, so you're going to get a more diverse amount of readers with different opinions seeing your comic than a small circle.

[darthmongoose]

This scenario is exactly why I'm glad Tapas doesn't have a rating system.

[ble]

Well, I never got featured, but if something explodes in popularity, in any medium, not just webtoon, is bound to gather more views and critics.

[MeltingCORE]

I think your comic looks just fine! Like Kaz said, unfortunately when you begin to gain lots of traction there will always be a few naysayers. Please don't let it get you down.

[Shadymeadows]

Yes thank you! It is hard to come up after a few bad ratings. I wish they would just get rid of their rating system. I'm still stuck at an unfortunate 7.43 since I've had 2 bad ratings and just a handful of good ones. I spend dozens of hours on each of my posts and it can be really disheartening.

[Rosso]

i left you a max star rating just to see if it makes any big difference, and it totally did.
What it means is that despite getting featured and the huge jump in subs (congrats btw!)
not many actually left you a rating.

It's like when you first start, and the first person gives you a 0, that will absolutely tank your rating to 0 as well, cuz nobody else is rating.

So what I'm saying is... don't feel discouraged!
I schemed through your work and the art is really good. The ratings will keep fluctuating until enough people rated your comic to give a more clear rating. And even then, it won't matter at all : P

Remember that the platform has a huge majority of young readers who for whatever reason, really enjoy rating down anything that's not their fav comic, just because lol.

Don't let it get to you. And keep it up (also leaving my top rating cuz again, your art is super nice : D)

[KillianRain]

We've been in the Fresh Picks this week on Webtoons and our score dropped suddenly there.

As mentioned before, since we haven't many ratings, it was easier to drop by some random people that came by.
I've noticed this on the other webcomics that went on Fresh Picks alongside us, and it seems they're struggling with it as well.

It is sad to know that many can rate you 10 there, but one person can simply rate 1 and drop your score for a great amount.
Still, I'm sure if you're consistent with your stuff you'll get back up in no time. I've searched other topics around and I came to know that even Featured comics had bad ratings in their start.

My advice - as I already told it myself a thousand times - just ignore it.
If you have a great work, you'll continue to grow despite the toxicity there.
Keep doing your stuff. Slap those toxic people in the face by being superior and carry on with the amazing work.

[ghelas]

Thank you so much! That’s great advice. Hopefully in a year or so, there are enough readers to even things out a bit more.