Rating without Reviewing

To be completely honest, ratings are ONLY helpful to me when I know the person who rates the albums personally, and/or they are very prolific with their ratings. If they were to have over 400 ratings, I would take their opinion into consideration. Keep in mind, however, that ratings never appear on the front page, and there's no list for the most prolific raters. For that reason, it's hard for me to even be aware of who has how many ratings.

Also, as mentioned, reviews can be as brief as you want them to be. You don't need to write an entire novel on the album. A few paragraphs let us know your opinion, so long as you can justify it. All in all, ratings are rarely helpful to me. Take 15 minutes and write a short review. I often find reviews that are brief and concise to be better than ones that meander upon one subject for far too long.

I'm not a great writer at school, but I have a natural love for writing subjective reviews, and I get some positive comments from people every now and again, which lets me know that people actually read those things

Just my two cents,
-Jeff

Epignosis wrote: J-Man wrote: Keep in mind, however, that ratings never appear on the front page, and there's no list for the most prolific raters. For that reason, it's hard for me to even be aware of who has how many ratings. That's a killer point. If you don't write a review, no one even knows you rated an album.

I'd actually love it if there was a list of the people with the most ratings somewhere on the site. Some people have tons of legitimate ratings, but they never get noticed with the current site layout. Unfortunately, there's no way to know if ratings are legitimate, and I would assume that people would submit as many ratings as they can, just to get to the top of the list.

-Jeff

If you just want to rate your music, there's other sites for that. If you want to review your prog, well, here you are.

For an up-and-coming band or artist, every review is meaningful. I have had artists send me emails of thanks for my reviews (at least the positive ones... haven't got any hate mail yet), and I am happy in turn to have done something to help them along on a path that certainly is not easy. Obviously, a rating instead of a full review won't have any effect on the likes of Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd, but the majority of the bands or artists in our database are nowhere in that league - and, for them, those few words on a screen do make a difference, and a big one sometimes.

manofmystery wrote: rpe9p wrote: I understand where you are coming from, and I have also considered the same issue.  I have rated a ton of albums with just rating on rym but never done the same here on PA (part of the problem would be converting from the .5 scale) If you can, saying anything it is going to be more useful than just a rating, but I also find that hard because I dont know that much about music (other than knowing what I like) and I'm not a very good writer.  Frankly half of me wants to go back and delete the few reviews I did a while back just because im not a good writer and im self-conscious about posting my poorly-written reviews on the internet. A lot of the time I would only have a few sentences to say about an album and so I dont review it because I am intimidated by all the really great reviewers there are on PA.  After reading these multi-paragraph eloquent reviews, who wants to see us write "This album rocks!  I really like this song because its really cool and emotional and I like that part in the middle."  At the same time though, there are albums out there with very few ratings that I think are great and would want others to take notice of. ^^see, ending a sentence with a preposition, told you im not a good writer   This is exactly the problem I have: have no idea how to write a review that actually adds anything of value.  Seems to me that any review I write would be of no more value than a simple rating, unless it is an album with very few reviews.

crimhead wrote: I'm not sure if anyone wants my opinion on music.

The great thing about the internet is that you can give it anyway.

UMUR wrote: Yep I´ve had similar experiences with smaller artists giving feedback to reviews I´ve written. To those types of artists a review means the world. Even if it´s not all positive things you include in the review. I recently wrote a review of Life Stage debut EP: http://www.progarchives.com/Review.asp?id=267298 and made a small critisism of the vocals on the EP. The singer Ross Phillips contacted me shortly after and told me that he was really happy about the review and that the part about the vocals made an impact. So reviews do mean something to the artists.

speaking as a newbie, i don't have a problem with it but i would rather read your opinion too. that's one of the best things about PA to me. i like the reviews on the classic stuff but  i've been  out of prog for awhile and the reviews on the newer bands are really valuable to me. creative shmeative.

There are raters that I trust whose tastes are similar to mine, and so I can appreciate ratings without reviews.  I have benefited from prolific raters such as Roctopus and Yukorin (I have enjoyed what reviews I've read of his since I enjoy his rather perverse sense of humour) in the past.  I generally don't feel like writing reviews, it tends to kill my enjoyment of the music and feels too much like my job.

I've often looked at raters' block lists, even if I haven't been familiar with them before -- sometimes because I question the rating, and other times because I agreed with the rating.  I look at ratings more than read reviews (I might skim them a bit).  If I know the music, I don't generally feel the need to read a review here, and if I don't I don't want other impressions to affect mine too much commonly.  I tend to discover music not through PA reviews, though (youtube is a common way, and google searches when I'm looking for kinds of music).

I don't trust reviews or ratings unless I know that person has sufficiently similar tastes to mine. 

I think it not good when people rate or rate with review thinking about manipulating the ratings so the weighting of a review vs. rating without review is unimportant to me. I wouldn't write  a review so that my rating carries more weight, I think that's the wrong reason to do it, and if I were to write reviews I'd rather focus on those that haven't been reviewed.  I just did a 5 star rating for an album of an artist I recently added (looks better to have it rated then no ratings at all, I think), and I might write a review when I have the time, but I have no reason to think that people will care or notice what I say.  I find creating a topic for an album/ artist a better use of my time and is likely to bring more exposure to the artist than writing a review (at least then I can post music samples). 

Though average ratings interest me, I don't give them much weight.

I respect reviewers, but I like to discuss music.  If we had a "comment on this review" feature, then I would review more.

I've said it before, but when I was really into film and reading reviews (and I once wrote reviews for a local rag), I disliked ratings period.

Of course many people try to abuse the system with ratings, but I have found ratings personally helpful (but I'm not one for top lists).




Edited by Logan - May 12 2010 at 12:36

manofmystery wrote:  Is there anything really left to be said about albums such as CTTE of DSoTM?

Yes, that's possible - recently a new reviewer registered for PA and posted reviews on classic albums that I found myself reading with great pleasure, and checking his review list for more! He got promoted Prog Reviewer in less than a week, I think. Anyway, it is also a good idea to review some classics because in this way you can let people know the orientation of your tastes.