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I'm honestly not sure what the original intentions were for the rating system. And I don't even want to mess with the calculations...much. What I find confusing now is the counting and the re-publishing. I have a story that has been re-published. Here is the data from that story:

Publication Date: January, 2017.
Player Rating Stats:
"#180 overall, #23 for 2015"
based on 190 ratings since 01/29/2017
played 885 times (finished 44)

When you view the ratings, you see exactly 300 ratings.

Now I'm aware that a re-publish is supposed to reset ratings (there is some discussion around whether it really does, but whatever). But when viewing this information, it is just confusing. As a new reader, this looks weird. How can the story be #23 for 2015 if it was published in 2017? And what is that #23 ranking based on? Is it based on the ranking received only in 2015? Only before the 2017 re-publish date? And the 190 ratings, but clicking through to see 300 is very confusing.

I don't know what this solution will do to individual ratings, and it might cause some other weird problems and loopholes, but what I would propose is a complete wipeout when a story is removed and republished. When the story is unpublished for any reason, I'd suggest everything is removed: all ratings, all comments, etc. Then, when re-published, it is as if it was never published before (even showing up on the new list).

Yes, this could result in some weird spamming, extra point spamming, etc., but I think it would simply be more clear when looking at the points and such.

This is a known thing, it's because JJJ updated the ratings and rankings and never got around to ironing out the display weirdness. It's probably not a difficult fix once he has time.

I'm absolutely against any suggestion that involves wiping reviews. I'd rather see ratings themselves done away with completely before it came to that.

Even aside from the efforts of reviewers you're talking about anyone being able to obliterate with a button press, ratings and reviews are tied in enough with points and commendations that that becomes abusable and unbalancing in more ways than one.

And ideally we want authors who have flaws pointed out in their work to take the time to correct or improve it. (Never mind that they're mostly too lazy to do it...) Taking five minutes to fix some typos shouldn't be a huge stressful decision that ultimately results in wiping hours of your readers' efforts and just hoping they'll get over it and be willing to take the time to review again, knowing they're at the same risk.

Certainly I recognize there are disadvantages to this, but I think overall it would be more effective. Let's say I write a crap story and you then point out all the crap in a detailed, complete review that is excellent and is featured. Then I take the story down, fix all the things you mention, and write a good story. Currently, when I republish, your scathing review is still there, featured at the top of the list. Sure, you can write another review, but that old one just stay there, not accurately reflecting a review of the story as currently written.

At the same time, I could see this relating to the suggestion about unpublishing and making minor changes without removing all reviews and comments... but I'm not sure how to implement that.

In your stated situation, I'd just add a paragraph of two to your storygame's description with an "Edit" in front of it. There'd be something like, "Thank you, Mizal, as well for your informative review. I fixed the problems you mentioned." ( <- I did that thing on my first storygame.)

That rarely happens honestly. Bad stories can't be magically made good with fixes. And anyone writing a good story will always use good grammar. Not worth the cost imo.

I think admins can "reset" the original publishing dates since I'm fairly certain Alex did that with Eternal the first time I took it down and republished it later with an addition.

When you're messing around with the admin functions of a story, along with the title, category, etc. a publishing date is listed and underneath a warning that, it says "do not set before xx/xx/xx" along with the exact time. That I assume was the original publishing date.

So for Eternal it says do not set before 9/28/2011 4:41:57 PM, though the current published date listed is 12/31/2013 3:46:45 AM.

EDIT: I see the story you're talking about is The Quick Dating Game. We could reset it if you want.

@EndMaster Thanks for the offer, I was looking more as an overall effort, as that's not the only one of my stories that fits in that block. At one time I took down 3 of my stories to update them, a couple for minor points and to add things like "Contest Winner," and so when I look at my stories, there are three all published on the same date. Now I can't even remember what year I published them -- and without the 100+ ratings, it doesn't even tell me what place they are in for the year, so I really can't remember. No big deal, just trying to find a way for things to make sense.

I am seriously against removing comments when unpublishing the storygame. Even though the comments might not reflect the current state of the game, it is pretty rare for stories to drastically improve upon their original state. Something like that can be easily dealt on a case to case basis. My own story (Tower 2) has a featured comment that reviews the original buggy state of the game even when the game has had various improvement since then, but I wouldn't even have bothered with improving if that meant losing all those comments. Comments (even the one liners) are the most precious thing an author gets with creating a story.

Negative made a post I agree with?

...damn I really should stop putting off that doctor appointment, things must be more serious than I though.

We could add a 'For a previous version' line alongside old comments. (But honestly who the hell reads a story based on the comments lol)