Ratings for Reviews - A Cure for Abuse?

s1ipp3ry wrote: its time to shake the Tree  !   lets see what happens

Yes it's always time to shake trees, but this must be done by gardeners with desire to keep this tree alive.

I'm sure that a well known Genesis hate who has denounced corruption without a single argument will take the time to throw down every review that gives Genesis albums more than one star.

I know a couple of ELP bashers and a lot of Prog Metal haters, this guys will attacjk everything they don't like.

Honestly I wouldn't dare to consider bad any review about a Yes, ELP or King Crimson (Despite I don't like any King Crimson album except ITCOTCK and Red) album (Well except for 5 stars reviews for In the Hot Seat or Brain Salad Perjury aka Re-Works).

Some of us love this place, I love Genesis much more han any other band, but I rated a lot of albums higher and made more comlimentary reviews about albums by other bands than for example SEBTP or The Lamb.

You know why? Because I love Prog' and I love this site. If i get angry when somebody adds a non Prog band or says that Close to Edge is crap is because I want to keep the genre and Prog Archives alive. I'm sure most of the members will do it, but there are fanboys, flamers and trolls (Not few).

The faboys will do anything to take their favorite band to N° 1, the flamers will start problem ecverywhere and the trolls will use the new system to destroy Prog Archives.

I believe that at least 20 or 30 guys have been kicked out since I'm here, I'm sure this guys will manage to ruin the place, they will not only rate every reviewer low, but will use 5 or 6 nicks to do it over and over.

So lets shake the tree, but trying not to take the roots from the floor because the tree will fall.

Iván

BTW: Before I came here I made three reviews in Amazon about albums which I felt were horrendous, one of them was ABACAB, the other was Genesis (Shapes) and can't remember the third. In the first two cases I reccomended the people not to waste their money in those aberrations.

The three reviews were deleted, so I can't trust that place.

Ok guys, here's what I will do:

For each album each user will be able to rate the "controversiality" of an album (as a percentage).

From that the system can calculate the average controversiality of each album. From the ratings the system also knows the average general rating for the album, and the average user rating for the album (the average compiled from the ratings of the user for the tracks of the album).

Now the system can determine the "karma" of each user review on the basis of this user's deviation from the average rating combined with the average controversiality of the album:

deviation = abs(avg_general - avg_user)

karma = 5 - abs (deviation / max(0.2, avg_controversiality_pct)*14)

The deviation ranges from 0 to 14. A high deviation will decrease the karma value, but a high controversiality percentage will lower that effect.  For the maximum deviation of 14 (avg: 15 points, user rating: 1 point) the karma will range from 0 (20% controversiality and below) to 4 (100% controversiality). For the minimum deviation (0) the karma is 5.

If we do this for every album review, we can compute the user karma as the average of all the reviews of the user.

So now we have a karma number from 0 to 5 for each user. We can now use that number as a weight for each track rating of the user. But is it fair to apply karma to each track rating?  

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

I will do this on my website ... M@x will decide what happens in the archives.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

[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?