1 star ratings

After writing a few reviews for this site, I can tell a few things. First, english is not my native language so it's not easy to write those reviews but writing at least three lines (yeah, 200 characters is only a couple of lines!) is something I definitely can do. And I think everybody that wants to review an album should be able to write a few words about what they like or not about that album (what time does it take? five minutes? ten?), even about average albums (after all an average album is a mix of good songs and bad songs no?). Second, about those:

Rating by Ricky @ 10:42:33 AM EST, 12/28/2005

Rating by exorcist @ 10:50:12 AM EST, 12/28/2005

When I wrote a review about the album on which those appeared (The Gathering - Mandylion), I was totally shocked by those. I was about to post a 5 star rating, and the 7 other reviews giving 4 or 5 stars to the album conforted me in my choice. So what the hell with those? Looking at the time of the ratings, we can see that they have been submitted at 8 minutes interval, which would indicate that those 2 guys are really the same person submitting a rating from 2 close computers. For me, this is total bullsh*t, this guy show no concern to the community here and I would even say they show no concern to the artists themselves.

So what to do about that? Not counting those reviews in the average calculation would be a minimum. Not accepting ratings without a (short) review would be better of course, but even that wouldn't prevent jerks from posting 50 words of garbage just to fill the requirement (and that would spam the "report abuse" forum section too). The best solution would be a sort of review validation system, but this would require a lot of time from the site maintainers... Probably the best solution would be to hide those ratings from the review page, not count them in the average rating calculation, and add a button "Show ratings without reviews" for people who really want to see them on the review page.

W.Chuck wrote: There should be a poll here to decide if they should be removed or at least not counted.

I think many 5 star reviews hurt the website just as bad- they can be very misleading

Removing ratings without a review is not a good idea. Why? Because you (a common man) write a review when you have a good reason: you have listened to a GOOD record ar a BAAD record. When you listen to an average record you have not so much to say. But you might want to express your feeling and just give a 2 star or a 3 star rating. Most of the review I have read are 4 or 5 star (==reviewer really liked the record).

Only way to get the ratings really mean something is to have enough of them so that the nonsincere get lost in the crowd.

You might think of splitting the ratings in two categorys:

1) ratings with review and their average 

2) ratings without review and their average

br Pirkka

Just to explain once again why ratings without reviews are allowed.

The view is that some people either do not speak English sufficiently well to write a coherent review in English (per the site rules). Others find it very difficult to put into words what they feel about an album, and do not wish to look foolish or as they see it tarnish the site with a poor review. The owners of the site(*) are committed to allowing as many people as possible to actively participate in the site, even if it is just by recording their rating for the albums which are listed here.

There are over 15,000 ratings without reviews. The site owners feel that to remove these, or simply ignore them would be unfair to those who have taken the trouble to record their views. The vast majority of these ratings reflect the submitter's sincere views of the album being rated.

The site owners are however aware of the controversy surrounding ratings without reviews, and are looking at how best to address this. This will take a little time, there are more important things to be dealt with, and everything must take its turn. Rest assured, a solution will be found, but please be patient.

Speaking personally, I have said many times that I do not like ratings without reviews. I feel that if they are to be included, their impact on features such as the chart and the average ratings should be reduced (say 50% of a rating supported by a review), or removed with the rating appearing for information only on the album page.  

(* For those who do not know, the owners of the site are M@X and Proglucky. I am not speaking on their behalf here, simply conveying their thoughts as I understand them)