A general survey about P.A. and RYM

...all that aside and ...

I only skimmed the article, but it appears to be a well reasoned analysis, touching on important features that can fairly assess the value of a site.   I didn't see anything at first that I really disagreed with.  I definitely empathized with the constructive criticism that PA can be a bit confusing to the first time visitor - because I remember how long it took me to "get" this site.  Its design is not optimal and finding stuff can be difficult.  I'm no web designer so I don't know how I would improve it, but as a user I can relate.  Because of this, I've always tried to give newbies the benefit of the doubt when they post things in the wrong forum or post questionable reviews (for example, when I first started writing reviews, I didn't know that anyone would actually read it unless they were specifically searching for reviews by that artist... I didn't know about the "front page").

PA does have all its bases covered: detailed writeups of policies, guidelines, genre definitions, etc, and all the links work and so on... but it's not the most user-friendly site I've come across, and it does take a while to learn the ropes.  Not sure how RYM sizes up in this regard because I don't use that site.


Edited by HolyMoly - January 30 2015 at 08:28

Dean wrote: ....During my time as an Admin I was as much concerned by the over-reaction to it as I was by the deliberate manipulation itself....

Dean wrote: Music is not confined by arbitrary lines on a map.

I never knew there was a map.

Dean wrote: earlyprog wrote: Why this instead of the more informative post you subsequently deleted? It is relevant for many reasons, least of all is the pedestrian speed in which things happen around here. 2008 is like yesterday in PA years, and frankly, aside from a minor change in the collaborator weighting nothing much else has changed in rating and reviewing system, or the manner in which fan-bias manipulation occurs, or the look and feel of the site in general since 2008.

earlyprog wrote: Dean wrote: It is relevant for many reasons, least of all is the pedestrian speed in which things happen around here. 2008 is like yesterday in PA years, and frankly, aside from a minor change in the collaborator weighting nothing much else has changed in rating and reviewing system, or the manner in which fan-bias manipulation occurs, or the look and feel of the site in general since 2008.  A minor change im the weighting factors of various reviewer groups can have a profound effect on the overall album ranking. Over the years I have seen sudden, abrupt changes in top 100 which can only be attributed to changes in the weights. I assume and accept that the PA team have favorable weightings in the ranking process after all this is one way to thank them for their efforts. Fans and haters are found in tail regions of an album's rating distribution and can be (are?) weighted disfavorably. The rating and reviewing system of PA is not transparent on this, at least not to me, but then I haven't searched this site in an attempt to find the weighting factors. Edit: one can argue that fan boys and haters cancel out in the statistics but often the former tend to be a larger group than the latter. In a more recent case, dare I say Corvus Stone II,  the ranking appeared to be suspiciously high in the beginning (in my view*) but then, as always, levelled out, as the collaborators' reviews started to clock in. Here there's always the risk that the 'higher weighted reviewers' abuse their weighting to rate an album a few notches lower (or higher) in order to 'restore order' in their (PA) universe. *Perhaps I just didn't 'get' the music, but repeated listening convinced me that this emperor in fact did not wear ny clothes (someone just had to say so before it was realised by all).

***** 38% ###################################### **** 17% ################# *** 20% #################### ** 18% ################## * 6% ######

Edited by Dean - January 31 2015 at 09:38

SteveG wrote: ^I think the problem with this ratio, Dean, is that there is a fine line between an album being "good but not essential." I cannot come up with a more suitable wording for this 3 star rating. Perhaps someone else can.

Dean wrote: In a biased system the median will not be the mean value, which is why the QWR (Query Weighted Rating) uses a value for the site-average that is higher than "3". Simply put, a 3-star album is a less than average album.

Angelo wrote: Dean wrote: In a biased system the median will not be the mean value, which is why the QWR (Query Weighted Rating) uses a value for the site-average that is higher than "3". Simply put, a 3-star album is a less than average album. Hmmmm... so the mathematical definition is completely different from what people see based on the names of the stars. I've read the phrase 'a 3-star album is not a bad album' a couple of times this week, which is not what you say here. Glad you're on the math of this, Dean, I'd go crazy straight away.