Ratings for Reviews - A Cure for Abuse?

Hi Joolz,

Of course you're not being presumptuous! You're views are considered, valid, and very welcome!

Welcome to the site.

i have just deiscovered this thread and found it very
interesting, occisionally funny, and at times narrow
sighted.
But that it just my opinion, and how I see it. Which is
surely what a review should be?
If I write a review, (I havn't written many) it will be
about something I feel passionate about, (personally
I tend to keep my negative passions away from a
public arena, so I don't waste either my or your time
telling you when I think an album sucks!) So In my
passion, I will tell you what I think of an album, how I
feel about it, and why I think it deserves your
attention.
Surely, if that is the basis a review is written on, then
all reviews are valid? Surely it's just the obvious
spam-monsters that need attention? Opinion is
SUCH a subjective thing, for example if I were to love
an album, it would be for me a personal thing, and if
the rest of you thought it sucked big time, that does
not make a bad review, (flawed opinion maybe!?) my
thoughts would still be valid?
This is where prog-snobbery comes in. Being
popular (and maybe therefore commercially a
success) does NOT make something bad, as a
group of fans of a particular genre we should
celebrate success surely? If we weedle out the
successfull on this basis we will be left with
talenless drivel, and we will all be left admiring the
Emperors new clothes!

My other point here, is how amusing I find it, when
some one who may have spent anywhere from 10
mins to a handful of hours writing a review, and then
feeling bad if someone says they disagree or that it
is "rubbish"............ imagine that feeling, then imagine
having spent, oooh lets say TWO YEARS of your life
writing and recording an album, you know in your
heart that it says what you want it to say, how you
want it said, it is full of passion and truth. Then you
log on to the good ol' WWW to discover someone
has written it off with an hours worth of typed
words..... yes I should imagine it hurts.
It does not mean this album IS rubbish. It is opinion.
thats all.

So I think we should all try to take reviews with a
pinch of salt.
They can be informative, they can be funny, that can
be ridiculous, but unless they are offensive or
illegible in language then they should stay.
If for no other reason, than for entertainment!
I enjoy the reviews here, the good (star rating) and
the bad.
We all have what other folk would consider flawed
taste on things we are passionate about. Thats what
makes us so interesting and so much fun!

Prog-Chick x

Sean Trane wrote:

I take great pride to review under my name, which is not a majority of members who "hide" (not meant to be cowardly but rather prudent , because of abusers)  under a nickname . Writing under your real name (how to make sure it is your real name is a different matter altoghether) is proof that you do so with a real honesty (who knows , one day Latimer will one day tell me:" oh you are this guy who wrote that not-so-good review about Snow Goose, care to tell me more?"  and then he knives up in the belly if I ever get to meet him and have a chance to tell me my name.) and I even spend money to rent the albums, so I can write reviews. I love to give you an idea what Interference Sardine sounds like. look'em up if you do not believe me

That's exactly my case Sean, if you remember I started making reviews under my real and complete name (Iván Melgar Morey), recently my nick has been added because of the site's rules but I asked not do delete my name, because I love what I do.

I also made reviews for GEPR and Rick Wakeman's Communication center plus other places like Magenta Web site, and my real email address can be found in some of those places.

Thanks to this reviews (before Prog Archives) I got connected with Magenta and a group of Israel bands that had the kindness to send me exclusive material for clinics to my real home address.

Until today I mostly recieved positive mails (A lot of Spam) and one or two Phil Collins fans insulting me (One called me stinking negro latin who dared to talk against a white icon of Brithish Rock , something not too exact because my Mom is Scottish/Italian ands my dad is Spanish/English/Native Peruvian but I'm proud of my Latin inheritance, probably 12.5% of native Peruvian Indian from my father's father who was the most intelligent man I ever knew, MD, who learned 5 languages including ancient Greek and Latin by his own) 

So if I recieve negarive messages or ratings, I give a damn, most of my reviews are very large (Over 800 words except the first 5 or 6 first ones) because I take the job seriously, so if anybody wants to send me negative ratings, I honestly don't care and won't stop writting. 

But there are reviewers that could be discouraged, and we can't afford to loose good and hard working  members because a couple of trolls and flamers believe we manipulate the top 100 (As if none of us had a life!!!!) just because they don't see their beloved band oin the list.

I believe the system I explained could make even harder to manipulate ratings, because a good number of content administrators will be ready to delete reviews made with a lot of words but no sense, plus our members who keep sending flawed reviews to be deleted in the abuse section.

Iván

Edited by ivan_2068

[QUOTE=Snow Dog]For what its worth, I think its quite a good idea. There are a lot of reviewers who deliberately overrate and underrate albums by either their favourite bands or baNDS THEY HATE.[/QUOTE]

Agreed with you, this is one of the vicissitude of our system

I with my some 1500 reviews am not really concerned about someone challenging my views. I have been attacked/badmouthed (for even putting a three stars review) many times and always managed to defend succesfully what I have written if I am aware someone is attacking me but this means you have to check back on your previous reviews.

If you post some 50 reviews, one can actually monitor the reviews attacking your reviews but once you get to spme 300 you lack the time to do so or even worse in my case the will or wish to do so. I must say that if there was not Bob (now with Atkingi) monitoring the reviews, I would have stopped a while ago to review, simply because you do not want your name being plastered over a toilet wall of hate simply because you do not think Snow Goose is not a 5* and someone is hating you for it.

 

I take great pride to review under my name, which is not a majority of members who "hide" (not meant to be cowardly but rather prudent , because of abusers)  under a nickname . Writing under your real name (how to make sure it is your real name is a different matter altoghether) is proof that you do so with a real honesty (who knows , one day Latimer will one day tell me:" oh you are this guy who wrote that not-so-good review about Snow Goose, care to tell me more?"  and then he knives up in the belly if I ever get to meet him and have a chance to tell me my name.) and I even spend money to rent the albums, so I can write reviews. I love to give you an idea what Interference Sardine sounds like. look'em up if you do not believe me

But having haters, fanboys and trolls already abusing the system , why give them another opportunity to trash reviewers (for the haters), skew the ratings (for the fanboys) and spread unrest (for the trolls). If this guy hates my guts for having given Snow Goose three stars, he might just be tempted to give me a bad profile just to discredit me and you will not trust my reviews on Interference Sardine or Art Bears

 

Not that I care so much about my name being trashed (I am fairly thick skinned) , but this rating ther reviews may stop some people from discovering new bands

 

 

And unlike Amazon (which is about selling records and therefore will retrieve any reviews not favorable as Ivan stated, since it will not sell the record - and probably retrieve any bad rating of positive reviews), we are not in the selling business here. We want newly found fans of prog to be directed to the better bands (not to the third division of also-ran) whether they are known or not. Amazon will never propose you to sell a record it cannot easilty get or is widely available , therefore AMAZON has no interest in objectivity (which is what a worthy reviewer tries to reach beyond his particular tastes)

Amazong, uh?

That's not a bad idea, Ivan.

I now implemented a really simple solution - it occurred to me while I was preparing the algorithm that I explained above. While I may still implement that later, I think that the following solution might suffice:

1. For each track compute the average rating.
2. For each rating, determine a weight using this formula: 1/(1+d), where d=distance between the individual rating and the average rating.
3. For each track compute a weighted average rating using the weights computed in the previous step.

This is really simple, and it minimizes the effect of odd votes. And it's perfectly fair - the algorithm makes no preferences or anything.

What all this means is that the more a rating deviates from the average, the less it's weight will be. So if someone comes along and rates an established 5 star album 1 star, the effect on the average will be negligible. But if more people follow that example and at some point there is a substantial amount of 1 star reviews, the weight will adjust itself.

To put it even simpler: The more stable an average is, the less is the impact of new ratings which differ much from that average.

Edited by MikeEnRegalia

Mike, Slipp3ry I rest my case with this statement:

Progger wrote: Hurray, Does this mean that the top ten will no longer be clogged up with *** star Genesis albums!!!

Guys like this one will only vote to destroy what has been achieved for all of us since 2004.

We have grown a very bushy tree, healthy and big, it's ok to shake it to let the rotten leaves and fruits fall, but with guys like this that declare they will shake it to destroy the roots, and this is not acceptable.

Iván

Edited by ivan_2068

To Eugene : Your explanation of my words are not at all what I mean. You just twisted them around.

You also said,

You guys sound like you must have been brought up in totalitarian system, and now, being too scared about too much freedom of speach, want your "good old days" back.

Please, if you don't like the idea just say so without the rubbish.

By the way, Thanks Snowdog.

Edited by glass house

eugene wrote: MikeEnRegalia wrote: glass house wrote: Mike : I don't know if your idea will work, we will see. I hope her on Pa the collaborators will rate a review before it is posted. If they think it is allright then post it. There are many skillful people here that can do that and who I trust. That's another topic ... I like the idea, but it sounds a bit like cencorship. No, it sounds like a terrible bloody censorship in full force!!! You guys sound like you must have been brought up in totalitarian system, and now, being too scared about too much freedom of speach, want your "good old days" back. I am aware that there are always certain individuals who are ready to smoothly provide their censorship, and there always will be crowds "trusting" their beloved leaders (quite skillful by the way) and allowing them to act as they want, no matter what. Funny and quite unbelievable that this is being discussed nowadays on international site devoted to progressive music. Ah, never mind, go ahead, it's interesting to see what happens next...

I would like that idea if (and only if) the cencorship is limited to abuse. From time to time the front page suffers from a few members who post offensive reviews - and this situation could be helped if new reviews would have to be approved of by a collab (or admin) before they become visible.

But of course this would seem like cencorship even if we would approve of 100% of all the reviews, because visitors - knowing how the system works - could never be sure of what's going on behind the scenes.

glass house wrote: Mike : I don't know if your idea will work, we will see. I hope her on Pa the collaborators will rate a review before it is posted. If they think it is allright then post it. There are many skillful people here that can do that and who I trust.

That's another topic ... I like the idea, but it sounds a bit like cencorship.