Of Human Criteria and Automatic Metrics: A Benchmark of the Evaluation of Story Generation
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Abstract (arXiv)
Research on Automatic Story Generation (ASG) relies heavily on human and automatic evaluation. However, there is no consensus on which human evaluation criteria to use, and no analysis of how well automatic criteria correlate with them. In this paper, we propose to re-evaluate ASG evaluation. We introduce a set of 6 orthogonal and comprehensive human criteria, carefully motivated by the social sciences literature. We also present HANNA, an annotated dataset of 1,056 stories produced by 10 different ASG systems. HANNA allows us to quantitatively evaluate the correlations of 72 automatic metrics with human criteria. Our analysis highlights the weaknesses of current metrics for ASG and allows us to formulate practical recommendations for ASG evaluation.
Key facts. Cited by 75 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 60 of its 132 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 24 Aug 2022.
Builds on
60 of 132 references.
References · 60
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50 most cited of 60 All 60 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 3; 2023: 14; 2024: 14; 2025: 19; 2026: 25.
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