New to Authonomy

I stumbled on Authonomy, a website created by HarperCollins to presumably promote unpublished novels. I am wary about posting any of my work online, but I was curious about the level of talent on such a site. So I signed up and began reading.

The premise of the site is that fellow members read your work, comment, and if they like your work, they put it on their bookshelf. All posted work is ranked according to how many people put it on their bookshelves. The top five works every month are then edited by HC editors.

I decided to start with the top five-ranked books for this month. I will not publicly disparage anyone's writing - writing is a process, and we all work very hard at it and I greatly respect that - BUT...

I read the first three chapters of three of the top five books.

NONE were well-edited. Basic proofreading was not carefully done. I had to force myself to pay attention to the stories.

ALL of the writing was clumsy.

NONE of the stories drew me in. A couple had a decent premise, but I had to force myself to finish three chapters. I did not want to finish them based on what I was reading.

There are something like 5000+ works posted on this site. Were these top five honestly the best? I also read through at least 20 comments posted for each book. Only one or two of the 20 offered real critique - the rest were ego stroking, I gather so that the writer would go back and place the commenter's work on his bookshelf in return.

What am I missing? What is the point?

Others have commented in blogs or on the Authonomy forum that very few posted works have been published by HC or been found by other agents/publishers. No wonder. The cream is not rising to the top (supposing there is any cream there to begin with).

I'm going to stick it out with Authonomy a bit longer, see if I can find any hidden gems. But I won't be posting my own work any time soon. If I did, it would only be to get some decent feedback. But it didn't appear that honest feedback is to be found there.

I could be wrong. I'll continue to read posted works on Authonomy for the next month. I'm hoping that will give me enough time to eat my words.