They are helpful at times, but some comments are the exact same and ratings don't really matter to me. 😐

Comments, varies on the user, and ratings, somehow, I usually ignore the 10 and 1 votes and check the ratio of the ones in between.

This week's favorites:

• Golden Kamui

ççççççç[Ô.Ô] tsutopodus© will eat your manga and steal your cats!

Not usuallly helpful, to honest. I agree with those people who have said that the only people who rate series are ones who feel strongly about them. If it's a series that I read a bit of but it didn't catch my interest, I wouldn't bother rating it, but since I try a lot of stuff, that's a lot of low ratings that I'm not giving out. And knowing that a lot of people have tried a series but chose not to continue with it says something to a potential reader about how boring it probably is. I know that we have "unfinished lists," but the only time I bother to take the trouble of putting something on my unfinished list is if it was a series I was reading for a while but then got totally sick of (again with the strong feelings being necessary to rate a series). Otherwise, I'll just delete it from my lists altogether, or may never have put it on any of my lists in the first place.

And there are just as many problems with people who do rate a series/write comments as with those who don't. In a popular series, for example, so many people review it that thoughtful comments generally get lost in between all the gushing. (It's nice how on Amazon, they highlight the "most useful" positive and negative reviews. It not only highlights good reviews, it also forces users to look at both sides instead of ignoring reviews they may not agree with.)

What also sucks is for series that tend to drawn in the less mature fans, people will automatically select "NO" on "did you find the comment useful" for the negative reviews, even if the reviewer had something useful to say, just because they think the comment is "too mean" or disagree with it, which buries the review when you choose to order the comments by usefulness.

But an even bigger problem, I think, is that there's no real established rating guidelines. People hand out 10s like candy and nail other series with 1s just to bring the overly-inflated ratings down. (Naruto is a prime example of this mentality at work.) I mean, teachers have grading rubrics that they are supposed to use in order to grade their students fairly, couldn't MU have something like this as well? As it is now, all there is is a nmber scale that people click on according to their own whims and that gets you the numerical rating of the series. Someone should create a standardized rating scale and place a link to it in the sidebar for easy reference. (Something along the lines of 10 = Perfection in art, characters, and plot, nothing could possibly be changed without ruining the manga. 5 = Average plot, art, and characters. Not necessarily a bad series, but nothing particularly noteworthy either. Etc.) Of course not everyone would read this, but at least some attempt at a standard could be established to help make the numerical ratings make more sense and to give people guidelines on how they should be rating stuff--what their opinions on a series really translate to numerically. (Ideally, the first 10 times, say, that someone submits a rating they would have to do so by clicking through the scoring rubric. After that, then the standard numerical scale would appear on the manga info page.)

yeah, i use them both regularly, pretty much anytime i decide on a manga i either read the comments or check the rating, if not both

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Hell no, they're never helpful! >:-(

Almost every manga I see on this site has an average rating of 7 or 8. ESPECIALLY the bad ones. The only way for people to see if a manga is good or not is to go read it themselves before looking at the comments.

Quote from brid

And there are just as many problems with people who do rate a series/write comments as with those who don't. In a popular series, for example, so many people review it that thoughtful comments generally get lost in between all the gushing. (It's nice how on Amazon, they highlight the "most useful" positive and negative reviews. It not only highlights good reviews, it also forces users to look at both sides instead of ignoring reviews they may not agree with.)

Yes! Someone understands how the comment system works on here!

Quote from Klapzi

The cool part is that I never get tired of being deceived

Quote from tactics

Just because someone's head was chopped off doesn't mean they're dead. That's just silly.

[img]http://oi44.tinypic.com/vzy2qv.jpg[/img]

Someone else's comments are a little helpful in encouraging me to try a manga out. If there are many negative comments, I still might give it a chance as long as it includes my favorite genre.

On purpose without a purpose
[img]http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m1/maestro82/aura_jpg.jpg[/img]

Polite bump.

Ratings don't matter to me at all. But reviews could have an influence in my choice, especially well thought out ones. I tend to recognize people too with similar taste, so I usually hold a lot of value in their opinion.

source: animenewsnetwork

Join SRoMU Scanlations or visit #SRoMU at IRCHighWay.

Meh, somewhat.

I hardly ever look at ratings. Sometimes I'll read a couple of reviews, looking for the ones with decent grammer and no text language. Can't stand text language on the computer.

In the end though, if I was interested from the start, i'll always give it a go and make up my own decision, despite what others say about it.