Reviewers should be judged too.

Dean wrote: Reviewers must be permitted to comment with impunity if they are to give their honest opinion of a piece of work, even if that is harsh or "unfair". Judging whether that harsh opinion is not an honest opinion is an "after-the-event" assessment that the reader is entitled to make, however, what we cannot do is presume that the reviewer is not being honest. If we start imposing rules (above the normal standards of conduct implied by the Review Guidelines) then we are enforcing restrictions on reviewing practices that will also hamper fair and impartial reviews.  Not every album is solid gold and a review is of the music presented, not of the effort involved in making it.

Argonaught wrote: ... improper reviews should be reported, just as improper ratings or other counter-productive behavior that doesn't make positive contribution to the community.

Edited by earlyprog - January 23 2015 at 07:41

Reviewers must be permitted to comment with impunity if they are to give their honest opinion of a piece of work, even if that is harsh or "unfair". Judging whether that harsh opinion is not an honest opinion is an "after-the-event" assessment that the reader is entitled to make, however, what we cannot do is presume that the reviewer is not being honest.

Edited by Dean - January 23 2015 at 07:08

Horizons wrote: 2/5 Review Didn't say atmosphere enough

Bwahaha, well I'm glad at least one person takes notice of a lot of my stuff, makes it all worthwhile!

Sonia, every reviewer has their own way of approaching what they want to praise or criticize about the music they listen to. I can only relate to you my own personal approach, so I won't be speaking for others.

It's difficult for me to be overly critical and negative in much of what I write. I've given poorer reviews before, but there's only been rare examples, for a number of reasons:

a) I am not a musician, so I hardly feel like I can complain about an artists work compared to the ZERO albums that I've recorded!

b) Because the majority of my CD/LP collection is progressive related music, there's more than a good chance that there will be at least several elements - be it the instrumentation, the singing, the lyrics, etc - that will show intelligence, musical sophistication and/or inventive elements that are only worthy of praise, so those will be the things to focus on.

and c) Life is too short to focus on negative, demeaning things, and even if there's some albums that don't mean too much to me (and I know my better friends on here will know plenty of albums/artists that I don't particularly enjoy! , I'd rather simply leave those alone, let others who find more to praise in them do the positive write-ups, than me personally launching into a negative attack. Also, there's plenty of negative things I have personally going on in my life, that I prefer to focus my attention and energy on positive, exciting directions, and I think my usually mostly positive reviews reflect that.

Do I sometimes think `Man, I really should throw in a couple of negative reviews once in a while....'? Yes, absolutely! But I don't have the time, energy or mental space to take the time to be overly negative and put others efforts down, nor am I immature enough to want to ruffle people's feathers and get a reaction from them for the sake of sh*t-stirring.

Anyway, I'm sure I had a point in there somewhere, but I'd like to hear other reviewers feelings on the matter!