Well Uncle Spooky, Raff is being modest, I saw her waking every day at 5 am to join me (She lives in Italy I live in Peru with 7 hours of difference) to discuss what bands were going to be added or moved to other genres.

 

Not one day, 365 days a year.

 

In my case; I have added 460 bios searching for bands hardly any member (inccluding me) had heard, because they released a cassette in Indonesia in 1979 or a Swiss band that only recorded an LP that was sold among the people who went to a concert in 1974.

 

We are here when the administrators call us to do anything for free, so we deserve some extra prerrogatives.

 

But that's not all, Ratings used to be weighted much more close, the site had to place two administrators (Atkingani and Easy Livin) to check review by review and notice who was trying to manipulate the site succesfuly), since we are always here, it's easy to send us a PM and tell us to remove a review or check a rating, something that doesn't happen with the hundred of lurkers that come here (Not saying you are a lurker).

 

So, everything has a reason Uncle Spooky.

 

Thanks

 

Iván

 

My kudos to PA. 

 

We are here when the administrators call us to do anything for free, so we deserve some extra prerrogatives.

Preferential access to the site/ability to edit/etc for sure.  Weighting votes?  No.  Nobody deserves that privilege.

Do you honestly feel your opinion is 10 times (I think that's the current weighting) more valid than somebody elses?

But that's not all, Ratings used to be weighted much more close, the site had to place two administrators (Atkingani and Easy Livin) to check review by review and notice who was trying to manipulate the site succesfuly), since we are always here, it's easy to send us a PM and tell us to remove a review or check a rating, something that doesn't happen with the hundred of lurkers that come here (Not saying you are a lurker).

 

 

 

 

 

Right on Mike, this is one of the most democratic sites you will find, sometimes so democratic that our impassioned staff are at each other's throats in the pursuit of making it better.  According to me. 

 

Meanwhile, we have the same old whiner argument rolled out again by a guy who's posted here.....how many times??

Six musicians, one exquisite album

Formed and conceived as a ''progressive'' side-project by Parallel or 90 Degrees front man Andy Tillison, The Tangent eventually took on a life of it's own and became a full blown band. Good thing too, because if they'd stuck to a one album project we would never have received this effort from the band. Not As Good As The Book represents a very personal record for the lead singer/keyboardist, with the entire album focusing on events in his life or his reactions to the modern world. As such the album has a very sarcastic feel to it at points, but a very emotional and attached feel at others. However, even with this mix of messages the album never gets lost. Whether he be commenting on warfare and media reactions or telling the story of himself and a friend trying to get into a club in Soho the album always manages to keep a familiar feel, and the songs segue perfectly from one to the next, never jaunting the audience, but bringing them along for the ride.

Though not a concept record in of itself, the album is tied together in the form of a book. That's right, for Not As Good As The Book Andy actually published a near 100-page novel to go along with it, harking back to the days when albums weren't simply groups of songs to be downloaded from iTunes, but an experience which one could actually sit down and enjoy the entire way through. It would be redundant to actually make comments on the book itself since it has nothing to do with the actual performances on the record, but it certainly does tie all the songs together. Not to mention that old and young proggers alike should be able to get plenty of kicks from all the prog references in the book itself. Tillison may not be the greatest novelist to have ever lived, but he certainly knows how to entertain.

The music itself on the album is very reminiscent of progressive records of old, while maintaining a modern sound. The opening synth riff right off the top of A Crisis In Midlife gives that away immediately. The album is rather keyboard heavy, but what prog head is going to turn that down, really? The keys always press the album along in a satisfactory manner, and this is likely because (as he's said before) Tillison really builds the songs from the ground up. Start with the keyboards and start to layer everything on top of it. Thus, everything feels like it's in the right place at the right time, long songs like The Ethernet manage to express an idea without becoming redundant and short rockers like the heavy and cynical instrumental Celebrity Puree and Bat Out Of Basildon come off as excellent music instead of a hard rock song out of place on an otherwise very progressive record. Of course all the other instruments are there when you need them. The heavy guitars, the powerful sax and the graceful flute all appear exactly when you'd want them to.

The two disc set is split heavily between discs, and one could even go so far as to call them separate albums. They maintain feel and consistency enough to be able to let them run together without having the album feel long to listen to, but they really are separate entities, as suggested by Tillison's naming of them. The first disc [A Crisis In Midlife] is full of the shorter songs. There's a kind of light feel to these songs thanks to pieces like the somewhat humorous Lost In London 25 Years Later (in which Andy and friend Ian find themselves face to face with a Soho pimp), with its calm progression leading up to outright heavy parts, and the formally mentioned Bat Out Of Basildon which is fairly uplifting thanks to lines like ''He's only as old as his helmet, and he only got it last week''.

The second disc is where prog heads will likely turn, these are the 'epics'. This disc holds a mere two songs, and two wonderful songs they are. They heavy, brooding, and socially aware Four Egos, One War makes wonderful use of everything The Tangent is good at, its good when it's quiet and when it's loud it's spine chilling. It's hard to not get worked up listening to the lyrics of the song too (I'd quote them, but there's far to many good lines to make reference to), it really makes you want to take to the streets with 'Stop the war!' signs. At the shrill scream of ''Throwing metal at the sky!'' it's hard not to feel a chill down your spine (no wonder they chose that line as the title of the second disc). The second track The Full Gamut is a hugely personal song for Tillison, reflecting on the end of his long marriage between the time of this album and the band's previous. The emotion comes across very well in the song and Andy gets a similar effect in this song when he starts into the ''This is not a rehearsal'' lines of the song. Surprisingly heavy for a song of its nature, this one does not let go oft he energy started on the first track.

Honestly, either one of these discs packaged on their own would have been great, putting them together only brings the album to another level.

As for the topic of the album, it's not aimed at the norm. Yes, it covers a large area (the size of New York...?), but it's mostly for the people Tillison's age. A Crisis In Midlife indeed, and a lot of the older audience of prog heads should appreciate that quite a bit with a lot of songs being aimed at the majority market (16-30 year olds). However, if you're young are you going to miss the point of the album? Not likely. Sure, we may not be able to relate to the album in completely, but it does give a strange insight into a different generation, and that's something not a lot of artists are able to capture. Besides, now I find myself looking forward to that 'crisis' in midlife so I can put on this album and say to myself ''ah, that's what he meant!''. Besides, since the music on this album is just so enjoyable it's easy to overlook not being the target audience for once. Kind of refreshing actually.

It may only be halfway through the year, but I don't think it's premature to say that this is a must have album. It takes a bit for this album to grow on you, but after three or four spaced out listens you might find yourself coming back to it every single day needing more. 5 Soho Jazz clubs out of 5! It doesn't get much better than this. It's going to be very, very hard to top this album for my album of the year. 

Not as good as previous works.... I am one of the few fans of this group who has been disappointed by this album? I just had few listens but it doesn 't give me any thrill and all the songs appear very proggy but with no special feeling generation... Sorry to say, but the atmospheres which made A Place in The Queue a number one, have disappeared...

Uncle Spooky, should these two reviews have the same weighting - really?

 

But it does show what thought and effort was put into the number that was assigned.  A five-star review that describes the excellence of the album as it brings on memories of Close to the Edge is going to mean a lot more to me than a five-star review that describes the excellence of the album because it brings on memories of Fantomas' Delirium Corda.  The first review tells me the reader that I will  be interested; the second review tells me the reader that I will not be interested.  A review with no words tells me nothing.

 

The forum and the archive are two seperate items - many people who regularily review and rate albums do not spend hours of the day posting on the forum.

 

Personally, I would like to hear more views of non-collaborators on this issue.

I'm more interested in hearing how we can eliminate spurious ratings - frankly, without building up a database of voting trends for each reviewer against various genre-types I cannot see how this can be implemented. Simply eliminating all 1 and 5 star reviews like you demonstrated in your example is far from accurate and skews the results even more than by weighting the results in favour of collaborators who have demonstrated (by peer review) that their ratings are an accurate reflection of their opinion and not biased towards vote-rigging.

 

The algorithms used have undergone several changes and improvements since they were first included into the site and we are always open to methods for improving them. Unfortunately simple un-weighted algorithms proved to be non-viable in the past due to excessive vote-rigging by spurious voters.

You're right, it's been a bit of a star pile on.

 

The collabs could be weighted less, I guess--although in a way, doesn't the fact that their reviews are really long weight themselves? ;-) Ratings only should be almost worthless. I must strongly object to any notion that this is a democracy. Every website is a benevolent oligarchy, or at least mostly benevolent ;-), and you can embrace your Glorious Leaders or leave.

 

I am more upset that the regular reviews are pushed off to the side, even when there isn't a collab review. I'm sure there were reasons, and I know it's probably not going to get changed any time soon, if ever, but it seems to me to be a bit of a slap in the face of the normal reviewer.

 

I'm with you on that one, but that's how the site owner has chosen to display them. As Admins and Collabs we have control over the content, not the layout.

Yeah, I know it's up to Max and not you, and Max is probably doesn't care about my opinion of his layout choices, but I'm not awake enough now for math, although it's not like I'm ever awake enough, so I was just contributing in the only way I could.

 

Although if you're planning a mutiny, dean, you have my sword. ;-)

 

On the ratings issue, bear in mind that the weightings are just that, weightings. No ratings are excluded.

 

IMDB is an excellent resource and the founders etc. are to be congratulated on its development. I suspect however that it is more commercially orientated that this one, which is a genuine fans' site. Our sole objective here is the appreciation of prog and the widening of its appeal.... our two objectives here are.... (sorry wandered off into Monty Python there). The offering of incentives must be a legitimate way towards achieving that goal.

I'm glad to hear that! 

IMDB is an excellent resource and the founders etc. are to be congratulated on its development. I suspect however that it is more commercially orientated that this one, which is a genuine fans' site. Our sole objective here is the appreciation of prog and the widening of its appeal.... our two objectives here are.... (sorry wandered off into Monty Python there). The offering of incentives must be a legitimate way towards achieving that goal.

-------------
if you own a sodastream i hate you

 

In first place, that's not how it works:

Ratings without reviews have weight of 1: I believe you won't even ask why, we don't know if the person who rated it, even heard the album or just rated because he/she loves or hates the band. We've seen people who come here and rate (for example) all Pink Floyd albums with 5 stars, then they go and rate all Yes and Genesis albums with 1 star......Do you think Close to the Edge (I don't like Yes) is worth 1 star in any universe? Or Foxtrot? I guess you won't complain about this.

Ratings with reviews: Are worth 3 times, because the person has taken the time to listen the album and rate it, we can know if the person at least heard the album. But still it's not secure, when Dream Theater released Octavarium, we received like 50 reviews from non usual members,all of them described the album as the best thing since sliced bread...Well not my taste but it's OK. But a Collaborator noticed this guys were rating "Elements of Persuasion" by LaBrie, as if it was Octavarium.......So we must take precautions

Reviews by Collaborators weight 10, which means 3 1/3 times the review of a non Collaborator: Why? Because we know them, this are persons who have earned a place writing at least 30 coherent reviews before becoming Collaborators or worked on a team checking an analyzing albums that I'm sure you (and probably I) haven't heard in our lives, so their knowledge is improved.

3.3333 times is not an abuse, it's a rational precaution we take, BTW a rating without review by a Collaborator or even by mailto:M@x - M@x is worth 1, because that's a flat average.

Now lets go to the central piece, this is not a Democracy, but we are by far the most democratic place of the big Prog ones, lets see the biggest:

GEPR: I write reviews for them, but you have to send then to Fred Trafton, and in the best scenario you have to wait 3 months, I sent a review of the Peruvian band "Laghonia" several months ago,. but the last update was March 27, 2008. That's not all, he evaluates the review and adds it if he decides it's good enough...Here in Prog Archives you see your review 5 seconds after you posted it and nobody decides if it's good or not, we just add it.

Progressive Ears: Even though they are an excellent Forum, their database is very small, and the reviews have to be approved also.

Proggnosis: Another good site,. as far as I know only the staff writes reviews

DPRP: You have to be evaluated, make your review according to their standards and sign a compromise of exclusivity with them....For God's sake, it's for free and you have to be exclusive. And that's not all, they have just published:

Many thanks to all who responded for our call for New Reviewers. Due to the good response, we've now closed the application page and will be in touch with those who applied soon.

Bob Mulvey
Reviews Editor

Iván

 

If we are Nª 1 place in the web for Progressive Rock pages.....is because we are doing things well.

 

BTW: Music is not a democracy, if it was we would be listenin  Gangsta Rap because millions would chose them instead of us.

 

Iván

I'm not convinced you have demonstrated that with any degree of confidence; without analysing the content of the Collabs review with the numerical rating value, and taken that in relation to his other ratings and reviews. Even then it is difficult (nay impossible) to measure any bias or preference - for example we all know of a well known Collab who dislikes Dream Theater with a passion - yet he manages to review and rate Scenes From a Memory pt 2 with 4-stars - is that an indication of bias or personal preference? No. Compare that to some one who gives every DT album 1-star and every King Crimson album 5-star ratings-only. With ratings-only we cannot gauge the reviewers intent, only record their final vote, unless we fully analyse each and every rating they make across the board..

 

Weighting skews the results towards the Collaborators votes because that is what it is designed to do - and they are only effective on albums with a low total number of ratings to prevent nefarious people hyping-up an album - the weighting on albums with hundreds of ratings is less relevant.

 

It's just that we go through some of these same issues over and over again.  Folks who have contributed little or nothing to the site come by and tell Collabs, who have worked unbelievably hard over many long hours, that what we are doing is wrong and worth little.  Ya know, that is what the real "insult" here is, my friend.  Give the site a little credit please for the good it does rather than harping about your perceived injustices.  And that's just what they are, perceived by you.   There is nothing wrong with the way Max has set up his site for the majority of users who frequent the place and LOVE it. 

 

I'll extract myself at this point and let the calmer heads take it from here.  Cheers! 

I frequent the forum (don't take any notice of the low post rating, I am hopeless at remembering passwords). To tell the truth I don't even go to the archives sections. Ever since I have been here there has always been bias involved in the rating system, under different guises and this has always turned me off delving further. After 40 years of listening to prog I am quite capable of recognising what I like when I hear it, without needing a rating (flawed) rating system to point me in the right direction. What I do need is a site that has easily accessible new release info and this site doesn't. So for this I use another.

But I do love the forum...

 
No problem.

It's just that we go through some of these same issues over and over again.  Folks who have contributed little or nothing to the site come by and tell Collabs, who have worked unbelievably hard over many long hours, that what we are doing is wrong and worth little.

Again, I understand.  I've done my time on the front line and appreciate how stressful it can be and how easy it is to feel under appreciated, etc  but the truth is if the site wasn't so important I wouldn't be here putting my case. 

Ya know, that is what the real "insult" here is, my friend.  Give the site a little credit please for the good it does rather than harping about your perceived injustices.

Heh, and now you're being insulting again

That anybody cares enough to stand up in front of you guys and risk the flak should be taken as a compliment...

Look, I am being totally reasonable in my arguments.  I've not presented anything in a whiny, aggressive, lame manner.  Just reasoned observation.  I appreciate that this has possibly been discussed before, but that shouldn't stop people speaking their mind in a reasonable way when something is perceived as wrong.  USA invades IRAQ?  It's happening as planned, why should anybody stand up and speak out against it?  Women don't get to vote?  Whatever?  etc.  OK, these are slightly different extremes, but the principle remains.

If a reasonable answer is given then people shut up and go away, but so far the only honest answer I've seen is that the system is designed to give collaborators weighting.  The inference being that non-collabs are at best mistrusted, at worst seen as saboteurs with hidden agendas. 

I find this unacceptable and have presented an argument for why.

Discussion is nothing to be feared unless the answers are painful to give...

Mark

Low is something below an average - I have no I care what the average is, low is not 900 votes, average is probably 100 or so. I don't accept that weighting giving a 9% difference on 43 votes is "a large skew" - what you don't know (and cannot tell) is how skewed the results are without weighting.

 

I don't know about you, but when people give any album a rating that is below the average for that album I don't automatically see sabotage, but someone who simply didn't like it, so I'd like to know what they didn't like about it.

You've already said it is possible to automatically monitor voting patterns for sabotage - I've asked for details on how this can be done - on 21,000 members - considering that a lot of "sabotage" is done using multiple accounts with proxy IP addresses or dynamically allocated IP address - it is difficult enough keeping track of people who set up multiple accounts with fixed IP addresses. Beardfish was a poor example - look at Pendragon. I know that Pure has been sabotaged and I'm fairly confident that Sleeping In Traffic has not - please examine the ratings for these two albums and tell me where the sabotage is. I can assure you that simple analysis of voting-trends will not find or reveal it.

I really don't get the "in-crowd" and the "parochial and disingenuous" jibes. But I guess I'm on the inside looking out.

Uncle Spooky wrote: And if non-collab ratings are distrusted so much, why allow them?  It seems to me you should only allow ratings with reviews, that way you get to decide who is worthy? Mark

Because this is a multinational site where we insist the reviews are written in English - ratings-only allows non-English speakers the opportunity to share in the rating of their favourite Prog albums. It would be parochial (though not disingenuous) for us exclude these voters.

 

Unfortunately that opens up the site for abuse by people who want to hype their favourites, bash they're pet-hates and attempt to manipulate the Top-XX charts. We have seen this enough times to know it happens on a regular basis, and not just for popular or contentious albums.

 

Regretably that penalises honest rater-onlys such as yourself.

 

Of course the weighting system does not prevent people who can write a mere 100 words on a particular release from abusing the system, but it is more difficult to do that consistently and not get caught-out.

 

 

There is no confusion - neither site uses a simple arithmetic average of all votes cast. IMDb has the luxury of large sample sizes so statistical weighting has a reasonable level of confidence. Unfortunately we do not have large sample sizes so statistical analysis would be so inaccurate as to be meaningless. If we applied IMDb methods then most albums would be have zero ratings and many people who submitted ratings-only would be excluded completely. The system isn't perfect, but we do try to include everybody's opinion.

 

However, both sites do use the same Bayesian algorithm when computing the Top 100.

 

 

Not Bayesian Filters, you were the only person to mention Filters.

 

Bayesian Weighting is not filtering:

 

br = ( (avg_num_votes * avg_rating) + (this_num_votes * this_rating) ) / (avg_num_votes + this_num_votes)

 

 

 

 

 

Of course any statistical probablity based system is doomed to failure on the small sample populations we have here. Analysis of an album with only 6 votes is meaningless, even the a straight arithmetic mean is pointless - if 3 people love it and 3 people hate it that does not make the album "average", quite the reverse in fact. No amount of weighting will give a meaningful number because there isn't one. Even for albums with 900 votes the average tells you nothing because it does not take into account your personal taste or predilection.

 

The best computer to analyse a set of ratings is still the human brain, the numbers are just numbers.

The question then is which way to tweak the average. Do you tweak it in favour of the "lovers" or "haters"? Common sense says towards the "lovers" ... (a low rating by a "hater" is in effect a high rating ) ... but the problem there is what if the low ratings were from people who love the genre/artist but hate the album.

 

Standard deviation does give more information - we could flood the page with numbers, but that is a distraction which would open us to even more criticism by people who would not appreicate what the numbers mean. We do plot the distributions on each album page - people should be using that graph to draw their own conclusions rather than concentrating on the individual scores (sorry they don't display properly here, but in essence the 3.74 rating is better explained by the 44% of people who gave the album 4-stars):

 

Essential: a masterpiece of progressive music (22%)

Excellent addition to any prog music collection (44%)

Good, but non-essential (21%)

Collectors/fans only (10%)

Poor. Only for completionists (3%)

Well, I realize that this thread has been inactive for some weeks now, but I feel the need to make the question reappear, partly because I feel the debate was largely inconclusive.

 

I didn't join the crowd the last time around, but I must admit that the debate puzzled me. I have the deepest respect for most of the collaborators and the time and effort they put into this site. But this thread was a curious showcase.

 

To my eyes, the debate consisted mainly of non-collaborators (in particular, but not limited to one single person) that was questioning a particular (and very visible and impactable) feature of the site, against a massive load of collaborators who (with a couple of exceptions) went right down in the trenches to defend their privileges. I don't think these privileges are the reason they are active, so the total reaction was peculiar, and it certainly stopped me from engaging in the debate.

 

Well, this is not meant to be a rant against collabs, whose efforts - as I said - I admire. But this thread leaves the impression that there is a certain defiance against the common people here, which is an impression that gains noone, regardless of its accuracy. (Something similar can be found in this thread: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55758 - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55758  and this: http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55741&PN=2 - http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=55741&PN=2 ) I think Mark had valid points, and I was surprised at how he was met. Take it as friendly advice.

 

I believe that collabs in general write better reviews than non-collabs. Thus, I think the exhibition of their reviews should reflect this. For my part, the frontpage feed could consist of collab reviews only. And collabs should be rewarded manyfold for their efforts in various ways.

 

But ratings are an entirely other issue. Being a good reviewer doesn't mean that your opinion is more qualified. And what is the point of the rating system? First and foremost it is to show the standing of an album amongst the community at large. As such, the current system must be said to be misleading.

 

When I say that the debate was largely inconclusive, I refer to the fact that most of the defendants where people who "gained" on the current system, and those few who raised voices were (with a couple of exceptions) not. But there were a few concrete proposals that hardly anyone commented.

 

I'm curious to know if displaying different averages is something that could be considered, or alternatively why not. Even if the current system remains the "standard", would anything be lost if people could additionally chose basic average, non-weighted ratings, collab-only ratings etc?

 

And what about having a filter on the chart pages that removes the weighting? Or is that technically impossible?

 

I'd like to close with an example of how the current system works. Let me attract your attention to this album: http://www.progarchives.com/album-reviews.asp?id=12217 - http://www.progarchives.com/album-reviews.asp?id=12217

 

This album had a rating of 4,67 or something and was on the top 100 chart if minimum # of ratings was lowered. Then one collab gave it a 1-star rating, without review, and it dropped like a rock. First of all, this shows that it's dead wrong that it's the quality of reviews that matters. Secondly, it shows that this system doesn't primarily reward collabs - it primarily punishes the other 17 raters, many of them with well-crafted reviews. And this would have been the case also if the collab in question wrote a review alongside.

 

So in conclusion, if the site owners feel that weighting by mixing reviews and ratings is important for giving incentives to writing reviews, then I will hold my peace. But then my advice as a regular user would be to at least treat all reviews equal, and rather give other kinds of bonuses to collabs. At any rate, the current weighting is - sorry - ridiculously biased.