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Matti 
Prog Reviewer
Joined: April 15 2005
Location: Finland
Status: Offline
Points: 2118
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 Topic: Some guidance to new reviewers!
Posted: June 16 2005 at 04:33 |
Are there others that are annoyed by this phenomenon: a person reads a new review and writes one himself just to say how stupidly the previous reviewer rated it. The main goal is to 'correct' other's opinions. Otherwise (s)he has very little to say about the album. (I haven't tried "Discuss in the forum" link right there next to "write a review", would that be meant to eliminate this problem? Is it ever used?) This is one thing that so clearly shows how ex tempore, just for moment's inspiration (after reading front page, not band/album pages) some people write their reviews. And this is the reason why the number of reviews spread so unevenly (snowball effect!).
Gladly I haven't seen collaborators or other familiar names doing this much, maybe it's mostly typical to new visitors. Therefore, would it be good to have some kind of 'ethical guidelines' or some information text for newcomers to read before they write a single review? There could be expressed - to us all - also the wish to choose some less reviewed bands/albums if you know them.
Is the threshold too low? What to do for the sake of quality? (I know, this issue pops up every now and then. And I hope I'm not offending anyone...)
PS. Guidance for technical things too, e.g. not to use CAPS LOCK and how to start a new paragraph (no one can know in advance that <p> should be used). 
Edited by Matti
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Geee
Forum Senior Member
Joined: April 08 2005
Location: Malta
Status: Offline
Points: 106
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 04:48 |
 Matti wrote:
Are there others that are annoyed by this phenomenon: a person reads a new review and writes one himself just to say how stupidly the previous reviewer rated it. The main goal is to 'correct' other's opinions. Otherwise (s)he has very little to say about the album. (I haven't tried "Discuss in the forum" link right there next to "write a review", would that be meant to eliminate this problem? Is it ever used?) This is one thing that so clearly shows how ex tempore, just for moment's inspiration (after reading front page, not band/album pages) some people write their reviews. And this is the reason why the number of reviews spread so unevenly (snowball effect!).
Gladly I haven't seen collaborators or other familiar names doing this much, maybe it's mostly typical to new visitors. Therefore, would it be good to have some kind of 'ethical guidelines' or some information text for newcomers to read before they write a single review? There could be expressed - to us all - also the wish to choose some less reviewed bands/albums if you know them.
Is the threshold too low? What to do for the sake of quality? (I know, this issue pops up every now and then. And I hope I'm not offending anyone...)
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"Just as a bell that has been rung cannot be "unrung", the annoying problem with the Truth is that, once you learn it, you can not "unlearn" it."
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: April 22 2005
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 21138
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 06:57 |
Matti wrote:
(I haven't tried "Discuss in the forum" link right there next to "write a review", would that be meant to eliminate this problem? Is it ever used?) |
That link just points to the forum start page. It would be really great if there was one forum thread for each album, and the link "Discuss in the forum" would direct you to that thread. This would for example limit the Octavarium to one thread. Other threads about album could be deleted, because there would be a single thread for an album. The same could be done for bands.
It's probably too difficult to realise, but I think this is how it should be ...
Edited by MikeEnRegalia
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Jim Garten
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin & Razor Guru
Joined: February 02 2004
Location: South England
Status: Offline
Points: 14693
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 07:22 |
Very good point Matti - this is an issue which has been bugging me for some time, especially as album reviews are the first thing a newcomer will see of the site, so quality reviews therefore give a good impression of the site overall - as we all know, there are those among out membership who write very good objective reviews which are informative and well worth reading, but these too often get submerged in ill-informed drivel  , although I am trying to improve my reviewing...
It's been my opinion for a while that before a newcomer can have a review "published" so to speak, on the site, these should be vetted for content/relevance etc; this has nothing whatsoever to do with grammar or spelling, as for some of our membership, English is a secondary language (I'm not only referring to our American friends here  ), this is only to weed out those so-called "reviews" which serve only to denegrate certain bands, or rave about the reviewer's current favorite. Ideally, an album review should be as objective as possible.
I know this idea is probably unworkable due to the man-hours necessary for a volunteer to wade through hopeful reviews, but short of restricting publication to those of us with "collaborator" status, it's difficult to know how to raise the overall standard.
Edited by Jim Garten
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Jon Lord 1941 - 2012
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Swinton MCR
Forum Senior Member
Joined: August 19 2004
Location: United Kingdom
Status: Offline
Points: 848
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 07:48 |
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I think that quite a lot of the reviews can be deleted - A review should attempt to describe the music and try to provide music synonymous with the reviewed album - so that a progster can expand his collection by buying similar music to his favourites without buying a wrong-un....
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Tony R
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator / Retired Admin
Joined: July 16 2004
Location: UK
Status: Offline
Points: 11979
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 07:51 |
I would be prepared to vet reviews...... 
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Snow Dog
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: March 23 2005
Location: Caerdydd
Status: Offline
Points: 32995
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 08:03 |
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tuxon
Forum Senior Member
Joined: September 21 2004
Location: plugged-in
Status: Offline
Points: 5502
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 08:39 |
MikeEnRegalia wrote:
Matti wrote:
(I haven't tried "Discuss in the forum" link right there next to "write a review", would that be meant to eliminate this problem? Is it ever used?) |
That link just points to the forum start page. It would be really great if there was one forum thread for each album, and the link "Discuss in the forum" would direct you to that thread. This would for example limit the Octavarium to one thread. Other threads about album could be deleted, because there would be a single thread for an album. The same could be done for bands.
It's probably too difficult to realise, but I think this is how it should be ...
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They tried that with genres, wasn't really appreciated by the majority (though I do think it wasn't all bad, and I believe Joren liked it a lot.)
I once made the same suggestion, but I'd like something like that to be incorporated with the review section (can be entered from the album-review page), aswell as a band review section.
Also a rating-system for reviews, or better still reviewers could be helpfull
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I'm always almost unlucky _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Id5ZcnjXSZaSMFMC Id5LM2q2jfqz3YxT
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MikeEnRegalia
Special Collaborator
Honorary Collaborator
Joined: April 22 2005
Location: Sweden
Status: Offline
Points: 21138
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Posted: June 16 2005 at 08:55 |
I guess it just makes the forum too complicated.
I don't think that rating reviews is necessary ... rating REVIEWERS would be far more efficient. For each reviewer, you could choose "disagree, indifferent, agree" or something like that.
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Some guidance to new reviewers!
