Standing up for the 3 star rating

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 claugroi wrote:

How nice of you to try and teach me grammar. I really appreciate that, but, as a language teacher who teaches that virtually every month, I feel I have to disagree with you. I'm assuming your wrong understanding of my comment is due to your partial analysis. The whole period was "The AVERAGE or MEDIOCRE rating would be 2.5 because our maximum is 5. And then we come to that old problem of ProgArchives, which is not to have a .5 rating option. If we had the half stars, I think people wouldn't confuse 2.5 and 3 anymore by assuming a 3-star rating indicates a more or less album. I really think the broken ratings would make our site fairer". Had you considered the rest of the period, in which I talk about the broken rating issue, you probably wouldn't have said that my "would be" is not a conditional. Actually, all you needed to do was to think that we simply don't have a 2.5 rating, so how could I say anything about it in the Past or Present tense ??? If I talk about something which does not exist now, I obviously refer to a possibility that it might in the future, and the conditional is the exact verb tense we use for that (specifically, the Future Conditional). I said the average WOULD BE 2.5 because it obviously isn't (now, in the present) and our maximum IS 5 because it actually IS (it won't be, is IS already). Therefore, when I say "the average or mediocre rating WOULD BE 2.5", I am drawing a future conclusion based on a present fact, which is "our maximum (rating) is 5", just like if I had said "the world would be better because our will to change it is huge" (of course I would need an appropriate context to insert that sentence without making it seem odd).
We don't necessariy have to employ a conditional conjunction in a sentence to make "would" a conditional verb. If other words in the sentence or in the whole period express a conditional idea, then the "would" automatically turns into a conditional verb. The use of "would" in the past is very different, such as in "when I was young, I would wake up early every morning to go to school".
You may have meant it in the way you described but that is not what you wrote.
The word is Paragraph not Period. Periods in grammar mark the end of a complete sentence.
"The AVERAGE or MEDIOCRE rating would be 2.5 because our maximum is 5. " ends with a period so it is a complete sentence. It stands alone.
You followed this with another complete sentence that introduced a new clause:
"And then we come to that old problem of ProgArchives, which is not to have a .5 rating option."
Since this new sentence starts with a conjunction (this isn't the huge grammar error that some teachers claim, sometimes starting a sentence with a conjunction is perfectly acceptable) it conjoins to the previous whole sentence, not the previous dependent clause. Punctuation before the conjunction "and" changes the logic of the linking. The logic of these two sentences is thus:
(A because B) and (C)
ie. two separate statements linked by "and"
It is not as you suggest:
(A) because (B and C)
ie one statement linked by two dependent clauses.
You may have meant that, but it is not what you wrote, but if that is what you later meant then that's fine. "Would be" is only conditional in English when used with "if". Without the conjunction to introduce a conditional clause "would be" is frequently used instead of "is". Also here "would be" is not a future conditional but present tense because the dependent clause is in the present tense, for example:
"Your real name would be Claudio because your screen name is claugroi." 
The conjoined independent statement is also present tense.
"And your location is Brazil, which is in South America." 

 claugroi wrote:

Yes, that's right, I originally commited a mistake (as you can probably tell, mathematics is not my area). Funny enough, my original statement that 2.5 would be the average still stands. Just like I said, if we had a .5 rating system, then the 2.75 (2¾) would probably go to 2.5, not 3.
Rounding and ½-steps have still nothing to do with it. 
Simply stating that the average would be 2.5 does not imply that you are referring to a ½-step rating system just as stating that Close To The Edge has an average of 4.65 does not imply we have a 0.05-step rating system. 

 claugroi wrote:

 As someone has already asked ...
Take a look at the poll "progarchives 10 point rating system?" (in which, by the way, the overwhelming majority expresses the wish for a change in the rating system by adding the .5 option). A user commented "Is a 1.5 star album really a cut about a 1 star album? Just sayin'... (...) What I meant was, whether 1 or 1.5, you are trying to quantify abysmal. So I don't see much difference between the two. It would be a crappy album either way, and a .5 star doesn't change the equation much". The same answer I gave him I'm gonna give you now:

"I understand what you're saying, but I think a better example would be a 4.5 album. Would you rate it 4 ou 5 ? Either way would be unfair, don't you think ? If one thinks the album deserves 4.5, then one should be allowed to rate it that way, not be obliged to choose between a better rating or a worse one.
I personally think the .5 ratings would be more useful from 2.5 above. From 2.5 below, it wouldn't really make much difference, but could still come in handy sometimes."
He agreed with me in a later comment.
I presume you typed all that out to demonstrate to me that you understood what I wrote.

As you said: "I personally think the .5 ratings would be more useful from 2.5 above. From 2.5 below, it wouldn't really make much difference, but could still come in handy sometimes."
What you want is a non-linear system, what you are proposing is a linear system. As I said, I don't have an opinion on ½-step ratings, I'm just making observations on what people are saying.

 claugroi wrote:

I agree that music is art, not mathematics or a sport. However, if you and I didn't care about ratings, we simply wouldn't be (look, a Future Conditional !) here in PA. In fact, we wouldn't even be having this very conversation, which is in a thread about rating. 
Almost... "wouldn't be" in this instance is a present conditional because the clause "if we didn't care about ratings" is in the present tense and "we wouldn't be here in PA" is also present tense. 

Edited by Dean - April 13 2014 at 04:05