5 Stars not enough!!

5 is perfect IMO.

5 - Perfection
4 - Great
3 - Good
2 - Kinda OK
1 - Didn't enjoy at all

Having just 5 evaluation criteria forces you to choose. The option of either half stars or increasing the evaluation criteria merely enables you to defer choice. Many posters seem to conflate the idea of a 'masterpiece' with a work that they consider to be flawless. In this case, only the semantics are flawless.

Quinino wrote: Saperlipopette! wrote:  If I'm about to rate a near-or slightly flawed masterpiece - getting to choose 4 1/2 out of five instead of just a 4 or a 5-star is kind of a big little deal imo.  I understand that  - not trying to be funny but that would be a strong case to write a review and make it clear (and maybe useful) to others, in spite of the choice to  rate it 4 or 5 which finally will get only a slight weight on the global score.

nothing wrong with the PA rating system, it makes sense to me.

It really puzzles me  someone assumes his musical preferences to be so importanto to others that they should be rated so accurately and detailed like a scientific analysis -  when in fact it's just a subjective opinion better expressed and shared by way of a review (besides, we can always keep our hugely important "grades" for ourselves, right?)

IMO what we have now is more than enough - for me it works this way:
1 - Hate it (emotional response)
2 - Average, more on the weak side
3-  Balanced middle point, good work with both its strengths and weaknesses
4 - Average, more on the strong side
5 - Love it (emotional response)

noni wrote: Logan wrote: noni wrote: Personally I rate my albums 10/10   5/5 on this PA site is not enough info!... Checking most reviews on the PA site,  people want to vote more  or less then 1...  Get my my drift!!...  5/5 does not cut this for me...  Does not reflect my perspective to vote!!...   Most votes or scores world wide are carried out of 10 not 5.....  Why PA? This can only be changed by the site owner, and I highly doubt that he would even consider it if you were able to bring it up with him. Various people have requested this in the past, but I don't know what sort of response might have come from him. There are 1,435,110 ratings and reviews from 58,786 members, so changing it might prove challenging. The one way would be to multiply the old ratings by two and institute the new system for new ratings, but I doubt it would happen and that would require a lot of work. Personally, I find the current 5 star system adequate, but would like to change the descriptions for the ratings. The rating are only a rough guide, it's the review that really says something, and one can always say in the review, I rate this 9 out of ten, or 86.357 out of 100. Of course if we had a ten point system than there would have been some changes to album ranking, and overall rating, as sometimes people round up... Say a 4.5 album becomes 5 (a masterpiece of progressive rock), but I don't care much about ranking. Rating alone is no substitute for writing an informative review when it comes to sharing your perspective if that is your aim --not with five stars. not ten, nor 100 to choose from. I recently got criticized for posting 5 stars, but to be honest had no option!...  2 stars is poor but OK, 5 stars must have to a prog fan, what option is that?.   This system to me seems poor IMO!!...  Just a thought!.... I agree on the reviews but the scoring system equally works well.  A 10 out of 10 is the best...  If I rate this 8.5 or even 9 for that matter,  should I rate this 4 stars or 5?...  Personally I like most music i have rated and want the band to do well....  So in my opinion, this is not a fair system towards  the artist.   A review helps, I agree,  but some comments leave me confused, saying they like the music a lot and rate it only 3 stars...  To me, 1-3 scoreline is borderline crap to likeable!!..  4-7 Is getting to something more phenomenal , 8-10 is just pure brilliance.

Oh, who criticized you for that, and what album? I don't imagine you mean me with Eela Craig's Hit and Miss as my only concern was you rating it without having heard it.

As for the band doing well, the purpose of rating and reviewing is intended to be to inform visitors and site members if they might be interested in the album. I think the ratings descriptions make that quite clear and guide the rating reasonable well. If you believe it to be masterpiece, give it five. If you think it's great for most anyone's prog collection give it four etc. People might give a three to something they like a lot because they are trying to be somewhat objective and don't think that most would find it an excellent addition to their Prog collection. The descriptions, though I believe flawed are in part there to try to get people to think a little more objectively about how they think most others will receive the album rather than just how much they like it. Sometimes looking at how others rate an album affects how they rate it. Kind of hard to objectively say that an album is one star when it gets good reviews (one star albums should be rare and actually five star albums should be quite rare too).

Here are the descriptions:

5 stars: Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music
4 Stars: Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection
3 Stars: Good, but non-essential
2 Stars: Collectors/fans only
1 Star: Poor. Only for completionists (or as I say, completists)

I adapt those to:

5 stars: Essential: a masterpiece of its subgenre (I compare it to other albums that I think are great in the category)
4 Stars: Excellent addition to any collection of music from its subgenre
3 Stars: A Good, but non-essential album of its subgenre
2 Stars: Only fairly serious collectors of the band and or subgenre should check it out out
1 Star: An atrocious album in its category, and only masochists or OCD individuals who need every album by a band or in the category should consider listening to this.

Not trying to get you goat with this, but since you brought up "a fair system for artists"....

You rated Soft Machine's Third with one star. I love it and would give it five, you have every right to hate it and give one star, but by the way I interpret the ratings descriptions I don't find a one fair. To me you would have to demonstrate that it is very poor example of a Canterbury Scene album, and it would be a rare person who likes Canterbury Scene music that would like it. Of course you gave the first Soft machine album a five and Bundles a five and you have every right to do that. Is a one fair to the artist, perhaps. Is it a rating that most Canterbury Scene fans would consider fair, probably not.

Incidentally, there are categories here that I would not rate the albums of because I don't appreciate the categories much so I don't think that my ratings would be helpful to fans of the category. Not saying this is the case with you.

Similarly, giving The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Meddle, and Close to the Edge 2 stars seems odd to me if one is following the ratings guidelines. Clearly those are loved albums by many, so your rating only reflects your tastes and not how you expect others to react to the album. You want to treat the bands fairly, but some might consider these to be unfair ratings according to the descriptions that one is asked to follow when rating an album.

That said, I would rather like ratings merely to reflect the tastes of the individual and not consider what will think, but I do think when really going against the grain that it's a good idea to explain your misgivings in a review. A reason for the descriptions is to make people think when they rate without reviewing since there are those who abuse the ratings, rate without listening to the albums, or not listening properly, or giving it enough spins and time to get a good feel for the album, rate out of spite to offset other low or high ratings, or to manipulate the scores to get the albums higher or lower ranked.

Incidentally, if you care about ranking and overall rating, a review is worth five times that of a rating only. I have argued that "ratings only: (ratings without reviews) should have no effect on overall score (a zero weighting) and not affect ranking at all, and so only act as a sort of list-making for people.

Anyway, if you can convince the owner to change the system, more power to you, but I think you'll need a plan on how to best implement the changes that will take into account the 14 or so years of rating by people using the current 5 star rating system (if you have experience in web development and know your algorithms it might help).

As i've always stated, ratings are overrated. This site came along before many of those other sites and changing it now could be problematic when there are so many more important issues to tackle.

noni wrote: Personally I rate my albums 10/10   5/5 on this PA site is not enough info!... Checking most reviews on the PA site,  people want to vote more  or less then 1...  Get my my drift!!...  5/5 does not cut this for me...  Does not reflect my perspective to vote!!...   Most votes or scores world wide are carried out of 10 not 5.....  Why PA?

This can only be changed by the site owner, and I highly doubt that he would even consider it if you were able to bring it up with him. Various people have requested this in the past, but I don't know what sort of response might have come from him. There are 1,435,110 ratings and reviews from 58,786 members, so changing it might prove challenging. The one way would be to multiply the old ratings by two and institute the new system for new ratings, but I doubt it would happen and that would require a lot of work.

Personally, I find the current 5 star system adequate, but would like to change the descriptions for the ratings. The rating are only a rough guide, it's the review that really says something, and one can always say in the review, I rate this 9 out of ten, or 86.357 out of 100. Of course if we had a ten point system than there would have been some changes to album ranking, and overall rating, as sometimes people round up... Say a 4.5 album becomes 5 (a masterpiece of progressive rock), but I don't care much about ranking.

Rating alone is no substitute for writing an informative review when it comes to sharing your perspective if that is your aim --not with five stars. not ten, nor 100 to choose from.