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Guldbamsen View Drop Down
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Keishiro took care of this
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I saw this WTF! http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=53479&listreviews=rate&showall=true#reviews

I see that someone has signed up downed a huge number of albums (I'm used to having that done to us) but this time, 3 albums that I am on were given 5s. This is another idiot up to no good. Nobody I know would do that. i hope it can be fixed.
Damn those people!
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what the hell is going on here :)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=53526
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I wish it would stop.
No idea how to stop it! Sickening really and childish but it happens every day it seems.
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And once again I will propose that access to extreme ratings be regulated and rationed. 

No 1- or 5-star ratings should be accepted from new members (which would help weed out those who sign up under a bunch of different names and stir the pot). 

Applicable to all members: 1- and 5-star ratings to be automatically up- and downgraded to 2- and 4-stars respectively, if not supported by a meaningful review. 

Introduce a reasonable quota for extreme ratings, for each reviewer: 10% max should be enough. 


Edited by Argonaught - October 20 2014 at 22:54
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Originally posted by antonyus antonyus wrote:

what the hell is going on here :)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=53526


Ratings are swiped now and I've sent him a mail.
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Originally posted by Argonaught Argonaught wrote:

And once again I will propose that access to extreme ratings be regulated and rationed. 

No 1- or 5-star ratings should be accepted from new members (which would help weed out those who sign up under a bunch of different names and stir the pot). 

Applicable to all members: 1- and 5-star ratings to be automatically up- and downgraded to 2- and 4-stars respectively, if not supported by a meaningful review. 

Introduce a reasonable quota for extreme ratings, for each reviewer: 10% max should be enough. 

So, basically, 1 and 5 would become 2 and 4; not a real solution.
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Originally posted by Second Life Syndrome Second Life Syndrome wrote:

Originally posted by Argonaught Argonaught wrote:

And once again I will propose that access to extreme ratings be regulated and rationed. 

No 1- or 5-star ratings should be accepted from new members (which would help weed out those who sign up under a bunch of different names and stir the pot). 

Applicable to all members: 1- and 5-star ratings to be automatically up- and downgraded to 2- and 4-stars respectively, if not supported by a meaningful review. 

Introduce a reasonable quota for extreme ratings, for each reviewer: 10% max should be enough. 

So, basically, 1 and 5 would become 2 and 4; not a real solution.

So we can allow only 3's.  Sounds good to me.
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Originally posted by Second Life Syndrome Second Life Syndrome wrote:

So, basically, 1 and 5 would become 2 and 4; not a real solution.

In real life, there is no real solution to anything. People make improvements by finding partial/compromise solutions and working on bettering them. Would preventing 50% of frivolous and malignant ratings by ad hoc "reviewers" be a step in the right direction? What would you propose? 

A lot of would-be 1- and 5-star reviewers may feel uncomfortable about having to justify their extreme ratings by writing a review; for one reason, the rating would no longer be anonymous. If the justification is clearly phony or OTT exaggerated, the reviewer's reputation would be put at risk. 

As for leaving 2- instead of 1-star, well, that wouldn't be nearly as gratifying. If you hate someone so much that you want to punch him, but instead all you can do is tapping him with a rolled-up monthly electricity bill, you may feel rather disappointed Disapprove 


Edited by Argonaught - October 21 2014 at 19:49
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There is only one way to stop ratings abuse and that is to scrap ratings completely.
What?
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Why not the RYM system?
Your ratings don't count till your account is 'somehow' proven not to be a troll, rating manipulater or belonging to a mentally 3year old.

I admit there's a grey zone as to which criteria they apply to establish that but I expect just like here mods apply common sense rules to make such decisions.
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Originally posted by Argonaught Argonaught wrote:

A lot of would-be 1- and 5-star reviewers may feel uncomfortable about having to justify their extreme ratings by writing a review; for one reason, the rating would no longer be anonymous. If the justification is clearly phony or OTT exaggerated, the reviewer's reputation would be put at risk. 

I'm kind of agreeing on this one. I gave a review of Gandalf's Fists new album and a 5 star rating before the album was out and have no issue with justifying why. Having listened to previous songs, new album samples and listening to full songs (new/old albums) on youtube, my review and rating is based purely on what "I" think about the album. I have listened to a few bands of late with mixed feelings and if I did a review then it's an honest review with no bells or whistles added.

If somebody gives a review that is in my mind a lesser review, then that's up to them with no issues from me. So long as it's an honest review and rating based on what that person feels I see no problem. Obviously if it was all claims of "The best album in the world, all other bands are nothing compared to this band" then yes I would be raising an eyebrow and asking questions.

That's just me though, you ladies and gents have been listening to prog music a lot longer than me and I respect your thoughts on this.

Cheers
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Originally posted by Gotrek1966 Gotrek1966 wrote:

Originally posted by Argonaught Argonaught wrote:

A lot of would-be 1- and 5-star reviewers may feel uncomfortable about having to justify their extreme ratings by writing a review; for one reason, the rating would no longer be anonymous. If the justification is clearly phony or OTT exaggerated, the reviewer's reputation would be put at risk. 

I'm kind of agreeing on this one. I gave a review of Gandalf's Fists new album and a 5 star rating before the album was out and have no issue with justifying why. Having listened to previous songs, new album samples and listening to full songs (new/old albums) on youtube, my review and rating is based purely on what "I" think about the album. I have listened to a few bands of late with mixed feelings and if I did a review then it's an honest review with no bells or whistles added.

If somebody gives a review that is in my mind a lesser review, then that's up to them with no issues from me. So long as it's an honest review and rating based on what that person feels I see no problem. Obviously if it was all claims of "The best album in the world, all other bands are nothing compared to this band" then yes I would be raising an eyebrow and asking questions.

That's just me though, you ladies and gents have been listening to prog music a lot longer than me and I respect your thoughts on this.

Cheers
Gotrek
This is appalling and inexcusable. You cannot review an album you have never heard. That is a preposterous idea and your review must be deleted immediately.
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Originally posted by Bonnek Bonnek wrote:



Why not the RYM system?
Your ratings don't count till your account is 'somehow' proven not to be a troll, rating manipulater or belonging to a mentally 3year old.

I admit there's a grey zone as to which criteria they apply to establish that but I expect just like here mods apply common sense rules to make such decisions.


I agree Karl.

The 'somehow' isn't that difficult but would be prone to the occasional mistake and the dedicated rating-abusers would soon find ways of fooling the system. Of course the harder we make it for people to abuse the rating system the harder it is to detect them. The problem with rating-abuse counter measures is they encourage manipulators to abuse more, for example the review-weighting encourages manipulators to create multiple bogus accounts and to submit plagiarised reviews. To be effective the system needs to be foolproof and that is an unattainable goal. However, I don't believe it needs to be effective, it just needs to be visible.

The problem of rating-abuse is not that it distorts the average rating for an album, and thus affects it position in the yearly Top-100 chart but that reflects badly on the image of the PA as a credible album-rating site. Any 'somehow' system that visibly addresses the perception of ratings-abuse would not affect the dedicated rating-manipulators but it would improve the perception of "fairness" as seen by the other members, including the artists themselves. 

We cannot stop rating manipulation, we have made it ineffective now we need to make it so it is perceived to be ineffective.

We already use most of the counter-measures that RYM (and IMDB) use to combat rating abuse, the only one we really lack is the part of the algorithm that ignores the ratings from 'unapproved' members. At present we deal with this after-the-event and that's a really poor way of doing it.

We can only detect a trollish manipulator after they have rated albums and since their ratings count towards the album average and chart position this abuse is perceived to be very visible. There is an algorithm in the Admin page that identifies possible ratings manipulators but this is crude and requires a human to further investigate each account in the list individually and that is time consuming. It could be (and should be) refined and even automated of course but only M@X can do that, but it would still need those abusers to rate albums first so the analysis could be performed.

In the past I have spent a lot of time and effort tackling ratings abuse and have deleted 1000s of bogus ratings, deleted/disabled 100s of bogus accounts and blocked 100s of IP addresses for very little positive benefit. During this time I analysed the effects of ratings abuse and the effectiveness of rating manipulation and came to the counter-intuitive conclusion that it doesn't make a great deal of difference. The current review and collab weighting out weighs the rating-only score and that is more effective than deleting 1000s of bogus ratings. The problem is that the perception of this abuse is that deliberate manipulation makes a big difference - you can look at any well respected album and see lots of 1 and 5 star ratings and that looks bad. Perception is everything since the number of votes we get for any album is too small to have any statistical value or meaning.

[I have seen artists complain of rating-abuse for their latest album only to see it drop down a place or two the yearly Top-100 chart after I had deleted a few 100 suspicious ratings. The reason for this is two-fold, the first has already been identified in this thread - after deleting ratings the new average for each album is only re-calculated when the next person rates that album; and the second is that all albums in the chart get abused so if we delete a bunch of bogus ratings then the average score for each album is affected and, on the whole, this tends to average out.]



Edited by Dean - October 22 2014 at 03:35
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Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

This is appalling and inexcusable. You cannot review an album you have never heard. That is a preposterous idea and your review must be deleted immediately.

My apologies Dean if what I have done was incorrect, it was not intended to be that way by my explanation. However if the Moderators feel my review should be deleted then I accept their decision.  
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I have an interesting question. Since I rarely review albums that I don't like, except for the sake of completing some review sites where many albums are unrated such as later day Roy Harper material, do my 4 and 5 star ratings look amiss? I generally check my reviews against those of a collaborator when possible and we are usually on the same page. But again, I don't relish reviewing inferior material unless I absolutely have to.


Edited by SteveG - October 22 2014 at 10:57
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Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by Bonnek Bonnek wrote:



Why not the RYM system?
Your ratings don't count till your account is 'somehow' proven not to be a troll, rating manipulater or belonging to a mentally 3year old.

I admit there's a grey zone as to which criteria they apply to establish that but I expect just like here mods apply common sense rules to make such decisions.


I agree Karl.
During this time I analysed the effects of ratings abuse and the effectiveness of rating manipulation and came to the counter-intuitive conclusion that it doesn't make a great deal of difference. The current review and collab weighting out weighs the rating-only score and that is more effective than deleting 1000s of bogus ratings. The problem is that the perception of this abuse is that deliberate manipulation makes a big difference - you can look at any well respected album and see lots of 1 and 5 star ratings and that looks bad. Perception is everything since the number of votes we get for any album is too small to have any statistical value or meaning.



Great points Karl and Dean. Before I went through this, I thought "just how much of a problem is it really?" and your post gives the answer. This needs to be SPELT OUT somewhere on the site for artists/members/abusers to understand along with a note that checks are performed etc.

A previous idea of making the rating's value even smaller than it is now compared to reviews helps towards this direction. Perhaps not the ultimate solution, but an improvement.
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Originally posted by aapatsos aapatsos wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Originally posted by Bonnek Bonnek wrote:



Why not the RYM system?
Your ratings don't count till your account is 'somehow' proven not to be a troll, rating manipulater or belonging to a mentally 3year old.

I admit there's a grey zone as to which criteria they apply to establish that but I expect just like here mods apply common sense rules to make such decisions.


I agree Karl.
During this time I analysed the effects of ratings abuse and the effectiveness of rating manipulation and came to the counter-intuitive conclusion that it doesn't make a great deal of difference. The current review and collab weighting out weighs the rating-only score and that is more effective than deleting 1000s of bogus ratings. The problem is that the perception of this abuse is that deliberate manipulation makes a big difference - you can look at any well respected album and see lots of 1 and 5 star ratings and that looks bad. Perception is everything since the number of votes we get for any album is too small to have any statistical value or meaning.



Great points Karl and Dean. Before I went through this, I thought "just how much of a problem is it really?" and your post gives the answer. This needs to be SPELT OUT somewhere on the site for artists/members/abusers to understand along with a note that checks are performed etc.

A previous idea of making the rating's value even smaller than it is now compared to reviews helps towards this direction. Perhaps not the ultimate solution, but an improvement.


Yes I remember that analysis of how the trolls basically sabotage other trolls, so it's futile, but it's a nuisance and indeed it looks bad on us.

- Another advantage RYM has is that they have significantly more ratings
- And compared to PA it looks like the number of ratings has a greater weight then the actual rating (it's an impression, i have not checked the actual calculation).
- Also, they have half stars which avoids somewhat the overabuse of the 5 stars

Anyhow, not much we can do about the number of ratings, but it all balances out their ratings much better.



Edited by Bonnek - October 22 2014 at 14:39
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The main fact here, we should take in consideration that this site needs a constant flow of activity and interest by newcomers to survive in order to stay at the top. Unfortunately the bogus ratings manipulation equally discredit the site.
However, I think it's important that we not make it even more difficult for newcomers to join, this is detrimental to the wellbeing of the site, in fact maybe we should facilitate this even more for newcomers to join and give more incentives for them to participate, however in terms of ratings I too think this method is being abused, maybe as a suggestion newcomers should only be able to rate albums after they have written at least 2 reviews?
There is no simple solution, we know this unfortunately, nor do I know how to fix this problem :( bah 
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