Reviews reporting thread

Guldbamsen wrote: Just goes to show that some people are different than others.  Damn!! Clear the front-page immediately!!!

Well written but you Are right!

AtomicCrimsonRush wrote: Todd wrote: Perhaps only albums with a certain number of reviews (maybe even Reviewer/Collab reviews to avoid that kind of spam) should be considered for that list. I don't know if that's possible, but it seems like that would help this sort of thing. I agree but how do you police every case? This one is obvious of course but there must be others. Its annoying cos the same guy might try it again and wreck our system

number of reviews wont stop this, he might as well 1* rate great stuff.

I'm for killing ratings only.

Guldbamsen wrote: Negoba wrote: I'm for killing ratings only.   And reviews must be 100 words or more to count. I'm with you Jay, but then again we'd be killing a lot of the enjoyment for people who don't speak English. There are many who use PA like a recommendation-vehicle if you will, where ratings convey preference even more so than count as part of the big "tournament". In the end I believe we would be loosing a lot of folks due to this, just because we want to weed out the odd idiot.

Instead of killing ratings-only -- which I have found useful for people by don't enjoy writing, or don't find the time to write reviews -- why not either not have ratings-only factor into the ranking algorithm, or, and this would be simple, not give them any weight at all so that they don't affect the average album rating at all.

I know that when i have rated, I haven't done it to affect change on the average rating, instead it has been a means to list many albums that I care about and if people check my profile, then that can teel them a lot about what sort of music I like, and I do the same with others (especially when someone is looking for recommendations to give me a better idea of what they like).  Not everybody care about PA reviews who rates,, and not everybody who rates or reviews, I'm sure, really cares about ranking.


Edited by Logan - April 18 2012 at 13:40

lazland wrote: Logan wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Negoba wrote: I'm for killing ratings only.   And reviews must be 100 words or more to count. I'm with you Jay, but then again we'd be killing a lot of the enjoyment for people who don't speak English. There are many who use PA like a recommendation-vehicle if you will, where ratings convey preference even more so than count as part of the big "tournament". In the end I believe we would be loosing a lot of folks due to this, just because we want to weed out the odd idiot. Instead of killing ratings-only -- which I have found useful for people by don't enjoy writing, or don't find the time to write reviews -- why not either not have ratings-only factor into the ranking algorithm, or, and this would be simple, not give them any weight at all so that they don't affect the average album rating at all. That would be rather pointless? If people like to look at the overall rating of an album before choosing whether to buy, wouldn't taking out ratings only skew the result as well?

It would skew the result more towards ratings with reviews -- considering the way things are weighted already, it already is skewed towards ones with reviews.  I think it's better than doing away with ratings-only.

EDIT: I'm not sure if I get your point, actually. I'm not saying that we should do áway with ratings, just suggesting that I think it would be better not to have "ratings-only" factor into the ranking or average rating than get rid of ratings-only.  If you understood me, I don't understand why you're saying it's pointless.


Edited by Logan - April 18 2012 at 13:49

I think you're onto something Greg, and it wouldn't eliminate the fun for the peeps who only speak Swahili.

I like Greg's idea too. The ratings-only could be used as input for the site software to give me recommendations and various sorts of notifications, like on other websites.

Also, other languages are not allowed, so I'll deal with that Spanish review a bit later, thanks for reporting.


Edited by harmonium.ro - April 18 2012 at 17:09

lazland wrote: Logan wrote: lazland wrote: Logan wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Negoba wrote: I'm for killing ratings only.   And reviews must be 100 words or more to count. I'm with you Jay, but then again we'd be killing a lot of the enjoyment for people who don't speak English. There are many who use PA like a recommendation-vehicle if you will, where ratings convey preference even more so than count as part of the big "tournament". In the end I believe we would be loosing a lot of folks due to this, just because we want to weed out the odd idiot. Instead of killing ratings-only -- which I have found useful for people by don't enjoy writing, or don't find the time to write reviews -- why not either not have ratings-only factor into the ranking algorithm, or, and this would be simple, not give them any weight at all so that they don't affect the average album rating at all. That would be rather pointless? If people like to look at the overall rating of an album before choosing whether to buy, wouldn't taking out ratings only skew the result as well? It would skew the result more towards ratings with reviews -- considering the way things are weighted already, it already is skewed towards ones with reviews.  I think it's better than doing away with ratings-only. EDIT: I'm not sure if I get your point, actually. I'm not saying that we should do áway with ratings, just suggesting that I think it would be better not to have "ratings-only" factor into the ranking or average rating than get rid of ratings-only.  If you understood me, I don't understand why you're saying it's pointless. Yes I did understand you Greg. The point I was making was that people do look at the overall rating of an album they are considering buying (I don't, but people do, as we know from feedback on the forum), and there are alumni of the site who don't often review, but add ratings - Snow Dog comes to mind, and I regard his rating opinion as being as good, if not better, than many reviews I see on the site. I think you either get rid of ratings only, or hope M@X can come up with a solution to the ridiculous manipulations we are seeing. The point I am making is I cannot see the point of someone rating an album if it is not going to count towards an overall "score". Having said all that, I am not really bothered either way, and will be more than happy to go along with the majority opinion on the issue.

I'm heading off shortly, so i can't make this as thoughtful or thorough a post as I would like.  As is common with me, I might edit in more thoughts when I can instead of double-posting.

I see.  Sorry for not getting your point, I thought I may have been rather ambiguous in my initial post. 

Indeed, there are many who look at overall rating, and I know about the alumni who prefer to rate.  I've rated more myself than review (though mostly I did ratings over a short period when trying out the quick rating feature and have done little of that since).  I've said elsewhere that I have really valued certain raters who usually, or do, only rate albums with {edit, I meant to say without} reviews.  It's not about the rating opinion being good in an objective manner, so much as it is that it coincides with one's individual tastes.  In terms of if this sis something I might consider getting, I would value a rating by someone who I know has similar tastes to me much more than a rating with review by someone who I know has dissimilar tastes.  Most who are new here won't be familiar enough with the individuals tastes to make that value judgement, but I quickly found ratings by people that seemed to be in-line with my tastes which led me to look at their profiles and look into other music they valued (and rather avoid albums they rated lowly).  I discovered quite a bit that way at one time.  Average ratings I found were not so useful commonly as my tastes are a little unusual commonly.

If you have found that Snow Dog has similar tastes to yours, so his ratings are of value to you, then it can be advantageous to check his profile to see his ratings as a means to discover music.

For me, rating is about sharing my tastes, and perhaps someone who has similar tastes might find the list useful, or I like to think, though I don't ever remember anyone commenting on my ratings, seeing that I've given an album a good rating, that person knowing something about me might want to check it out.

Unless it's an obscurity here or a new add, little rated basically, the weight of a single rating by someone will not have much affect on the ranking or average rating.  It does when a user creates lots of accounts to rate, of course, which is the problem.  And even if one could delete all ratings from one account in bulk, more accounts can crop up from the same person, which creates much more work.  I expect that abusers care more about ranking than most raters do.  Additionally, if people care about ranking and average rating, and can write in English fairly well, they may be more likely to take the time to write a review (could be lots of abuse there, of course, since some might abuse copy and paste to put in reviews -- which has happened before, but could get worse, but many might remain oblivious to quite how the ratings work and not be bothered with the extra "work" to cause trouble).

I'm sure there'd be members who would still like to list what they like and don't like in ratings even if it doesn't affect ranking or average rating.  At the least have it not affect ranking in the category lists.  I would also expect that most others 9especially those who have rated a fair amount), like me, would rather my idea than doing away with ratings-only (I can't prove it).  How would we do it anyway if we were to stop ratings-only?  Disallow it from now on, or delete them all.  The second choice seems unfair to many of those who have rated many albums, and may use it to help list what they have known, and may review in the future.  It would be best to save those lists for such people. I'm sure there'd be a lot more complaints than if  we just decided not to have the ratings factor into the ranking and/or average rating value. If we do away the ability to rate-only in the future while maintaining the older ones, well I don't think that's advantageous to the users either.

I just don't see how the potential benefits to the community/ users would outweigh doing away with all those ratings-only compared to my idea.

Incidentally, I rather wish that albums with few ratings could still have ratings-only that does factor into listing an average rating.

Well, I wrote that very hurriedly despite the length, and there must be numerous mistakes and points I missed expressing.

EDITED: just got back, and corrected a couple of typos near the beginning, and changed one word to the opposite.  Too tired to read through all of my post. 


Edited by Logan - April 19 2012 at 15:33

^^ Thanks Greg. Rushed? No, as thoughtful a post as ever, to my mind.