Its good that people REALLY like their music!

Its a good thing

Ideally of all albums in a given genre:

5* masterpieces should be 5% tops

4* excellent should be 25%

3* good albums should come to 25%

2* average albums to 25%

and 1* bad albums the remaining 20%

We are far from this  in our case.

the debate about too many 5* ratings is hardly new (thisis why there is this warning about using 5* as you click it, but it does not deter people from using it) and all collabs are aware of this!! This is why most collabs try to rate more in the middle

Unfortunately the younger members always are more enthusisatic and often have a fanboy attitude and certainly lack the sense of perspective an older proghead!!

Most people give 5 star ratings much more often than the archives want them to. I will not punish the albums by rating them 1 star less then everyone else just because I think that they should have done so.

Fact is: the tens of tousands of ratings in the database are not distributed like you want them to be. It's too late to change that, so if you choose to adhere strictly to the guidelines you will end up punishing your albums.

  Maybe people prefer to spend time reviewing the albums they like . I'd sooner right a review for TLLDOB than Abacab or Brain Salad Surgery to Love Beach. A 10 * system would be much better .

There are art critics out there who think Tracey Emmins tent is a masterpiece... I thought it was a publicity stunt and a crap exhibit.. Thats just my view..

Thats the thing about art of any kind, is that there is no such thing as good or bad art. The whole point of art, including music, is to express an artists ideas and feelings, and to hopefully evoke somekind of response in the listener/viewer/reader etc. If it capures an audience of just one person then it has succeeded in its aim.

What constitiutes a 'masterpiece' is entirely subjective for this reason. OR, arguably the terminology used by PA to define each star rating is misleading, but how else do you review a piece of art if not by what you, as the critic personally thinks.

erlenst wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Ideally of all albums in a given genre: 5* masterpieces should be 5% tops 4* excellent should be 25% 3* good albums should come to 25% 2* average albums to 25% and 1* bad albums the remaining 20%   We are far from this  in our case.   the debate about too many 5* ratings is hardly new (thisis why there is this warning about using 5* as you click it, but it does not deter people from using it) and all collabs are aware of this!! This is why most collabs try to rate more in the middle   Unfortunately the younger members always are more enthusisatic and often have a fanboy attitude and certainly lack the sense of perspective an older proghead!! Please explain why there should be 20% one star reviews and 5% five star reviews ... Makes no sense.

You will agree that the five-star scale is non-linear since good is three stars (the middle grade in a scale of 5), and that good usually means that it should be above the middle mark>

Therefore with three different stars ratings allocated from that 5 * scale to break down good category into outstanding 5* (which means exceptional and therefore rare> hence less than 5%) and very good 4* (or excellent) and simply the good 3* albums (worth having but nothing to write home about)

On the opposite side of that scale , we only allow one rating (2*) to speak of average 2* albums which we must agree should be the majority of all albums>  2* should still be a strong minority of album but given the fact that we are on a specialized site rating a genre that has many good or better albums, I reduced this part to roughly half of what it should be (hence the 25%)

This leaves the bad 1* albums (which on a linear scale would represent the lower 40% of albums) all allocating on that sole 1* rating. This sokle rating should be very crowded since it all less than average records should be in this category >>> hence I am quite conservative by stating that it should represent roughly 20% of the mass of albums.

Hope I could bring that concept up.

IMHO on a linear scale , our star system reads as such

5* should be 9,5 /10 and more

4* should be 8/10 and more

3* should be between 6/10 to 8/10

2* should be vetween 4/10 and 6/10

and 1* should be less than 4/10

I am not sure I can be more clear.

On my own website I'll make it a lot easier - just 15 linear steps, and no further guidelines. Let the people use any rating they see fit. They're also doing that here, no matter which set of guidelines there are.

Bern wrote: Come on! Five stars are for masterpieces. There are not that many albums who deserve this rank. It would be great if more of the reviews would be objective.

Agreed - however, this yet another perrenial discussion topic for threads - so do a local search and see what be said already.

erik neuteboom wrote: In my opinion writing reviews is a very subjective matter but you have to keep in mind that writing reviews for this site should not be too subjective. This sounds almost paradoxal but I notice many 5 star reviews about albums that are good but the subjective euphoric state of the reveiw lifts it to a 5 star level. At that moment you have to compare your 5 star awarding with albums like Foxtrot from Genesis, Close To The Edge from Yes, Dark Side Of The Moon ffrom Pink Floyd and In The Cour Of The Crimson King from King Crimson, then ask yourself or your 5 star rating is the best rating. I remember that I was often euphoric about prog when I started to listen to prog (in the mid-Seventies). When Marillion was my band I also bought everything that was similar to early Marillion like Deyss, later I felt a bit ashamed that I was so enthousiastic about bands like Deyss. I think that it is a bit too often the subjective enthousiasm from progheads to give 5 star ratings instead of analysing those albums more objective.

This is partly what I mean when I talk of a sense of perspective

If it was up to me, I'd have separate ratings for different aspects of the album: Performance, songwriting, overall experience...

Sean Trane wrote: Blacksword wrote: Thats the thing about art of any kind, is that there is no such thing as good or bad art. The whole point of art, including music, is to express an artists ideas and feelings, and to hopefully evoke somekind of response in the listener/viewer/reader etc. If it capures an audience of just one person then it has succeeded in its aim. What constitiutes a 'masterpiece' is entirely subjective for this reason. Very true about which album IS a masterpiece, but what is a masterpiece. This comes from Meisterwerk meaning an exceptional piece of work , a submit in a artist's career and there should be at most three of four of them for a lifetime achievement. The exceptional quality factor is really the notion to be thought of when considering something to be a masterpiece. This is why I say that masterpieces should be less than 5% and even less in a general art . OR, arguably the terminology used by PA to define each star rating is misleading, I do not really think the star ratings descriptions are flawed, but the over enthusiastic reviewer is!!!, but how else do you review a piece of art if not by what you, as the critic personally thinks.

What constitutes 'exceptional quality' ??

I've thought about this before, about my own reviews. But I thought, prog generally tends to be something special because of it's unique qualities. When you look in a paper or magazine you'll see the latest Kaiser chiefs or Franz Ferdinands album given, what me and my friend like to call "The 4 star rule", in other words, as great and as enjoyable as these bands come, they'll never give us any masterpieces as bands like Genesis, Crimson, Yes or Floyd did. In fact some people give 'The Yes album' four stars because Close to the Edge would be their best record, when I feel that 'The Yes Album' should still my given 5 stars as the album is flawless, fun and monumental. In fact, I have friends that aren't big prog heads at all that absolutely worship the album, no matter what the label. Now that's something.

But as for 'There are too many five stars on this site', I don't really think so, I mean come on now, we like prog for a reason, because it can be unbelievable at times, totally original and unique, and a lot of the time 5 stars isn't enough

But there are some albums that I don't think deserve 5 stars and when I see them getting the masterpiece rating I do cringe a little. And on that, the front page has a review of Islands at the moment and it is given' only 2 stars  I'm really getting into the album now and I love it!

But I wouldn't give it a masterpiece rating.. catch my drift?

^the star rating descriptions are flawed in that they only work IF all reviewers follow the guidelines. Obviously only a small part of them do. That will always be the case if you want to keep the open nature of the system.

On my own website I will do the following:

• People can rate reviewers. Each user can only issue one rating for each reviewer, and the ratings are very simple: ignore, neutral, agree.
• The reviewer ratings are not shown individually, but maybe you will be able to see a general hint as to the reviewer's status.
• In the calculation of the avg. ratings of songs and albums the avg. rating of the reviewers will affect the weight of their ratings.

I think that this will work really well. The general Top N lists for the genres will not be manipulated by single persons who submit irrational ratings, because most others will choose to ignore them. But they will increase the weight of reviewers which take their job seriously.

erik neuteboom wrote: In my opinion writing reviews is a very subjective matter but you have to keep in mind that writing reviews for this site should not be too subjective. This sounds almost paradoxal but I notice many 5 star reviews about albums that are good but the subjective euphoric state of the reveiw lifts it to a 5 star level. At that moment you have to compare your 5 star awarding with albums like Foxtrot from Genesis, Close To The Edge from Yes, Dark Side Of The Moon ffrom Pink Floyd and In The Cour Of The Crimson King from King Crimson, then ask yourself or your 5 star rating is the best rating. I remember that I was often euphoric about prog when I started to listen to prog (in the mid-Seventies). When Marillion was my band I also bought everything that was similar to early Marillion like Deyss, later I felt a bit ashamed that I was so enthousiastic about bands like Deyss. I think that it is a bit too often the subjective enthousiasm from progheads to give 5 star ratings instead of analysing those albums more objective.

I understand and agree to this perspective of rating with the notion in mind of the masterpieces that exist already. However, why did you decide that these would be the standard? Why not others? For someone new, the standard matbe something completely else and then the rating changes in accordance. We don't all have the same standard point of what is a masterpiece and what is not, hence we can not agree on the ratings. Without understanding the background, the likes and dislikes of each reviewer it would be impossible to translate his raintg to the album into our own comprehensible language. Frances the mute is a masterpiece to many people here. Is it to you? for me no, but I sure like the album and I can understand why others classify it as so.

I think Cobb has a point there of disregarding the system all together. However, only rating it good ir bad won't do. Any grading system won;t work unless we work on the same basic assumptions and standards.

Wow, that came out a bit longer than expected. Never thought I'd post something like this here.

BTW Erik- the Spanish prog thread is great

I tend to give an album 5 stars  if, for example I'm still listening to it after 20 years, and it still blows me away each time. That is a masterpiece to me. My rating has to be a reflection of the pleasure it gives me personally as the reviewer.

I would give Dark Side of the Moon, for example, 3 stars (3.5 perhaps ) as it's good, but not a masterpiece IN MY OPINION. It happens to be the album that made Floyds popularity go through the roof. For that we should be thankfull for that album. On the other hand did Floyd have to compromise on something to gain that popularity? Is the fact that millions of people happend to tune into that album, a reflection of its 'quality' or it's 'connectivity' with the masses. If the latter, then is that a good thing artistically, and if so why? In short I would never give an album a five star rating because the popular consensus is that it is a masterpiece. If it doesn't touch me in any way, then I shall review and rate it accordingly.

^^^

I agree. Who do you know that rates albums by popularity?

There are clearly WAY too many 5-star reviews on this site, but that has been the case since the beginning.  Part of the problem is the availability of only five stars; part of the problem is uncritical fanboyism.  When I rate an album, I don't review it -- I just give it a star rating.  This way, I don't have to worry about spending time writing a review for an album that doesn't excite me. 

Nevertheless, the arguments that ratings must represent a bell curve are completely erroneous.  This should only be the case -- and even then, it's just theoretical -- if the reviewer reviewed a *random* sampling of all albums released within the relevant time period, and the sample was of statistically adequate size.  Considering the tens of thousands of albums that fit the "progressive" standards of this site that have ever been released (Gnosis, for example, currently has over 52,000 albums in its database)  an adequate sample size would be fairly large -- significantly larger, I suspect, than total albums reviewed by most reviewers.  And since the albums reviewed on the site are hardly random (they were, in fact, largely heard by the individual reviewers because it was probable that they would have a positive opinion of them), I don't think that there is anything improper about raters not distributing their ratings along such a curve.   

Great discussion, many reactions!

I think that it should not be a problem if, for example, I rate Dark Side Of The Moon with 5 stars and Blacksword with 3 stars, the main thing is that wehould describe the music sufficient in order to give the readers a decent chance to make a choice. In my opinion you cannot avoid subjective or personal views but in general a review should be at least a good summary of the music (instruments, compositions, level of musicians, emotion or technique on the background). You can make exceptions for known album from Genesis, Yes or Marillion, Dream Theater and The Mars Volta, everybody knows the music so you can release some frustrations, as I did with post-Hackett Genesis albums and Marillion after Fugazi  !

By the way, thanks Avestin for your nice words about the thread Spanish Prog!, I am glad that is is so appreciated because one of my missions on this site is to give attention to less know prog.

I think the problem with the rating system is that people are either fanboys to a ludicrus extreem or have found something here that holds similaraties to what they were looking for. In the either case theres not a lot that can be done, fanboys that are tha extreem arnt going to be swayed any time soon and newbies like that may never have heard a progressive band before so they might get their minds blown by it but wont be able to compare it to anything else.

Personally when I review albums, I have to think of what is the best album(s) in that genre and compare to that, after all you cant compare CTTE with Scenes..., its just not possible. It also helps if you know several albums from different bands in that genre as well.

erlenst wrote: Sean Trane wrote: erlenst wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Ideally of all albums in a given genre: 5* masterpieces should be 5% tops 4* excellent should be 25% 3* good albums should come to 25% 2* average albums to 25% and 1* bad albums the remaining 20%   We are far from this  in our case.   the debate about too many 5* ratings is hardly new (thisis why there is this warning about using 5* as you click it, but it does not deter people from using it) and all collabs are aware of this!! This is why most collabs try to rate more in the middle   Unfortunately the younger members always are more enthusisatic and often have a fanboy attitude and certainly lack the sense of perspective an older proghead!! Please explain why there should be 20% one star reviews and 5% five star reviews ... Makes no sense. You will agree that the five-star scale is non-linear since good is three stars (the middle grade in a scale of 5), and that good usually means that it should be above the middle mark>   Therefore with three different stars ratings allocated from that 5 * scale to break down good category into outstanding 5* (which means exceptional and therefore rare> hence less than 5%) and very good 4* (or excellent) and simply the good 3* albums (worth having but nothing to write home about)   On the opposite side of that scale , we only allow one rating (2*) to speak of average 2* albums which we must agree should be the majority of all albums>  2* should still be a strong minority of album but given the fact that we are on a specialized site rating a genre that has many good or better albums, I reduced this part to roughly half of what it should be (hence the 25%) This leaves the bad 1* albums (which on a linear scale would represent the lower 40% of albums) all allocating on that sole 1* rating. This sokle rating should be very crowded since it all less than average records should be in this category >>> hence I am quite conservative by stating that it should represent roughly 20% of the mass of albums.   Hope I could bring that concept up.   IMHO on a linear scale , our star system reads as such 5* should be 9,5 /10 and more 4* should be 8/10 and more 3* should be between 6/10 to 8/10 2* should be vetween 4/10 and 6/10 and 1* should be less than 4/10 I am not sure I can be more clear. Ok, that was an acceptable explanation.. BUT then we can reflect over wether or not there are an unproportional big amount of masterpieces in the prog scene of the early 70s. I truly believe that there is. Therefore, as far as the classic albums of the golden era go, there should should be unproportional large amount of 4 and 5 star ratings. Of course, this is easily outweighed by the enormous amount of crap that were released in the late 70s / 80s , but I don't believe this is the problem in this topic ! Makes sense ?

I have to agree with you on that, I mean look at Genesis- up to '76 a lot of 4-5* albums. After '76 the less said the better.