Raters who suck

First off.....I realize there is nothing that can be done. There is a type of rater who I can't stand. They like an album and award it a 5 star rating.......this is fine, but then they take it to the next level by rating any competing albums with a one star rating. Grow up and be serious about  what you are doing. The site does not exist to be your little playground. Go ahead and rate your favorites with 5 stars and call it a day. After all if you feel so strongly that an album is only worth 1 star review it and tell us all why. I personally think there should be no 1 star ratings......in other words if you award an album with one star you must review it and tell us why.

Trolling much?

why not contribute in a meaningful way

it must be important enough for you to be having this conversation

timothy leary wrote: it must be important enough for you to be having this conversation

Nope.

Any review system is inherently problematic though, because it is biased in favor of positive reviews and extreme reviews.

It is biased in favor of positive reviews because if I hear one album by a band and I like it, I will seek out the other albums and review all of them. On the other hand, if I don't like it I will not bother to listen to the rest of the discography and so there will be more positive than negative reviews.

We also get more extreme reviews because in general people are only motivated to talk about things they either really like or really dislike. I might want to rave about how great In The Court of the Crimson King is or complain about how ripped off I feel by the Sigur Ros album I bought, but I am less likely to make the effort to review something like Rain Dances by Camel because it is fine, but not outstandingly good or bad.

Since all review systems are biased anyway, I don't think we should worry too much about a few people who don't take the process seriously.

Yeah. it's going to be biased towards the extreme by many.  A good review, of course, doesn't just tell you if that person likes the album, it describes the music, and relates it to similar music.  If the reader is knowledgeable enough to understand what a really illustrative review is saying, then that reviewer should be able to see beyond the biases to see if it's the kind of music that person will like.  I've never, that I can recall, been steered wrong by a review in a blog.

As for one star ratings without reviews, I would posit that the majority of said ratings are based on insufficient listening to the album.  Maybe because I only listen to the prog archives type material that I decided to get/ search for, I almost never hear an album I don't really like.  I've heard lots of samples of music I don't like, but not full albums (although I've had some disappointments, none of those were one star worthy).  To me a one star album is one that one really feels has  strong analytical case for being objectively poor compared to others of its ilk.  It kind of bugs me when people bash music who seem to clearly not "get" the idiom.

 I love some music that I know is very amateurish, such as by The Shaggs.

What's really terrible is when people rate albums lowly due to a devious modus operandi which does not represent any analysis of the actual music, but is merely to prop up others.


Edited by Logan - September 18 2012 at 13:47

There are only three reasons I will give an album one star:

1. It utterly fails to achieve its objective.
2. Severe defects in sound quality or other technical aspects to the point of being unlistenable.
3. Complete misrepresentation of the content in order to deceive people into buying it.

thellama73 wrote: There are only three reasons I will give an album one star: 1. It utterly fails to achieve its objective. 2. Severe defects in sound quality or other technical aspects to the point of being unlistenable. 3. Complete misrepresentation of the content in order to deceive people into buying it.

Snow Dog wrote: thellama73 wrote: There are only three reasons I will give an album one star: 1. It utterly fails to achieve its objective. 2. Severe defects in sound quality or other technical aspects to the point of being unlistenable. 3. Complete misrepresentation of the content in order to deceive people into buying it. 4. It is  a Dream Theater album.