No ratings? Why not?

I think ratings (or reviews with scores) are an anti-feature. It's one thing to want to know at a glance if a restaurant is likely to give you food poisoning, but I think entertainment and art are a bit different. Being hard to read doesn't necessarily mean a story is bad. Wanting to tell stories about LGBTQ+ characters shouldn't open the door for people who haven't even read the story to review bomb it. A low rating becomes a tangible reward for bad actors. I've seen 1-star ratings for grammar that wasn't quite at a native speaker's level. I've seen countless brand new stories with a single 5-star rating—not suspicious at all. I've even seen, "This is the best thing I've ever read: 3 stars".

In short, I worry ratings are not very trustworthy, especially without a high volume to aggregate. Luar Cafe prioritizes readership first and foremost. The more people reading a story to completion, the better it's likely to be. Engagement in comments and likes is good too, but not quite as important. Mainly, I want to make sure it's clear to anyone considering posting an antagonistic comment that outside of briefly making someone's day worse, all they're really doing is boosting the story for free.