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dougmcauliffe View Drop Down
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^ My bad, I was thinking of this collaborator also with very suspicious Dream Theater ratings

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422


Edited by dougmcauliffe - October 01 2020 at 05:16
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Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:

^ My bad, I was thinking of this collaborator also with very suspicious Dream Theater ratings

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

yeah, same guy, rating abuse definitely, now if only a mod saw this and nuke the ratings. 
not a collaborator. 
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Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:


Tis person here is in fact a collaborator with a similar case but to a lesser degree: http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=64154
Jeez, he's really got something against John Wetton and Jordan Rudess!
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Originally posted by Cristi Cristi wrote:

Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:

^ My bad, I was thinking of this collaborator also with very suspicious Dream Theater ratings

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

yeah, same guy, rating abuse definitely, now if only a mod saw this and nuke the ratings. 
not a collaborator. 

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=64154

Lets try that one more time! John Wetton Ratings kinda sus too


Edited by dougmcauliffe - October 01 2020 at 14:15
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Does this make sense? After a long and detailed singles review for Peter Gabriel's song 'Shock The Monkey', this reviewer gave the song 1 star based on this logic:
 
"So, this song is repetitive trash, but good artistic repetitive trash, i was going to give this track 3 stars, but it has so much rating that i'm going to give it just 1, it really doesn't deserve the recomendation for any prog rock music collection, but it is good though."
 
 Wacko  Review # 2475023. 
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Ok, continuing on what Bruford Freak picked up on, these users all have suspiciously similar ratings and many ratings were dropped in straight succession. All rate the newer Opeth, Pendragon, Motorpsycho and various other new releases as one star, while pretty much blanket rating Karfagen, Modern Rock Ensemble and Anthony from Karfagen as 5 stars. This appears to be potential rating abuse to boost those bands in the year end rankings. It's especially strange that many rank every other Pendragon album as 5 stars but not the most recent one. I don't know if there is substantial enough evidence, but they all just have too many ratings in common for me to not make note of it:

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=72614

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=71418

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=72113

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=71439

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=72472


Edited by dougmcauliffe - November 22 2020 at 03:29
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All dealt except 71418. Thanks.
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Thanks for looking into it and taking care of it!
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Here's a large assortment of users who have blanket rated everything Dream Theater has ever done as 1 star:

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=58629

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36533

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36932 (This one is exclusively 1 star DT ratings and 5 star fates warning ratings)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36216 (Apparently not a queensryche fan either)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=15571 (Porcupine Tree and Opeth hater tooI guess)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=14988 (The funny thing is, many of these ratings are straight in a row so you know they were successive or, the user just clicking through every album)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=18896

Is this breaking any rules? I can't say, but it seems strange these people kept returning to complete the discography of this band they apparently hate, and rated all the albums at the same time.
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Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:

Here's a large assortment of users who have blanket rated everything Dream Theater has ever done as 1 star:

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=58629

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36533

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36932 (This one is exclusively 1 star DT ratings and 5 star fates warning ratings)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36216 (Apparently not a queensryche fan either)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=15571 (Porcupine Tree and Opeth hater tooI guess)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=14988 (The funny thing is, many of these ratings are straight in a row so you know they were successive or, the user just clicking through every album)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=18896

Is this breaking any rules? I can't say, but it seems strange these people kept returning to complete the discography of this band they apparently hate, and rated all the albums at the same time.

yes, it is breaking the rules, it's rating abuse.
The user name deafmoon was reported before, either nothing was done about him or he started all over, I do not know. 

While some Queensryche albums deserve one star, I don't know with these people to be honest. 

Their ratings need to be nuked and be given a warning. 

Are they trying to lower down rating for some band and make other album higher? These people have too much time on their hands. The stupidity of rating abuse... Angry
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bartymj View Drop Down
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As a newbie I'm a bit worried reading this. I'm listening to album after album after album entirely at random, trying to broaden my prog horizons a bit... but I do have some tastes that won't change, and invariably anything from the Tech/Extreme category gets 1 or 2 stars as the death growling is an instant turn off. So you could probably look at my page, and complain about the blanket 1 star ratings I've given Atheist, Cynic, Death, Voivod....

Surely I'm not abusing the ratings system, I just happen to have listened to several albums from certain bands to give it a chance and don't like it? Am I eventually going to end up on this thread and complained about?
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dougmcauliffe View Drop Down
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^ I mean, I think it's kinda wrong to blanket 1-star rate stuff in a style that you admittedly don't get, and it sounds like you've only listened to many of these albums once? These are all albums that are held as some of the best of their style, many consider Symbolic and Blackwater Park to be the best metal albums of all time, is the album bad, or is it just not for you? I don't rate Black Metal albums or a lot of Post Rock/metal because I don't really understand the genres yet, it was the same with music with Death Growls where it took me really investing a lot of time into particular bands such as Opeth and Death and building up a familiarity to understand them. 

With that said, it seems like you've at least listened to them, and didn't just click through their pages dropping simultaneous 1 star ratings so you're probably fine. The thing is with death growls is, nobody hears them for the first time and goes "Damn! This guy can sing!" Take Opeth for example, the Death Growls on top of heavy chugging riffs work as a brilliant contrast to the soft, clean and melodic passages that tradeoff with it. The appeal is that it's supposed to sound as heavy and evil as possible, pushing the boundaries of how heavy music can be. I only listen to a few bands with Death Growls, but for me to get into a band who uses them I have to invest a lot of time into understanding their unique sound to really "get it."
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That's sort of my concern - should we be using the ratings system purely as a personal "this is what I give it out of five stars" or is it where the album sits within its own specific genre regardless of personal taste. Whether or not an album is 'bad' is entirely subjective so its quite a difficult thing to police.

All I can say is everything is given a chance. To take the Tech genre as an example, I've rated 22 albums (some of which I have admittedly heard for the first time), and yes most of them got one star on here - I actually keep a list where I mark albums out of 20 so there's a bit more detail and it does range from 1 to 4 out of 20 but of course that just makes it 1 star here. But, Cynic's Traced in Air, and Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor, and Voivod's Nothingface do enough to be 2 stars. I've given two of Opeth's later albums 3 stars (of course, probably because they're a lot less extreme) and there's also a Moonsorrow album that gets 3.

Another thing is that because I'm often only listening through the album once and sometimes even skipping tracks when I dislike them that much, I definitely don't feel I've given it enough thought to do an actual review and just going for 'rating only', which hopefully is a good thing for the overall rating of the album as it then rightly values my opinion a lot less than someone who's taken the time to do a full review.

It's not just restricted to the tech genre either, someone could probably look at my profile and think I have a vendetta against Frank Zappa or Art Zoyd. I don't, i've just listened to a few major albums a few times and not got into it. 

Just seems a little dangerous to be discouraging 1-star ratings and things, because it then calls into question why the facility to do that exists in the first place, then making it more difficult to people to explore new areas of the big wide world of prog. I guess maybe turn it the other way up, and think about if there was a relatively obscure band that most people didn't enjoy, but they have a few superfans that rate all their albums as 5 stars because they love their work - is that inappropriate too?

Guess there is no easy answer really. Must admit I'd be a little uncomfortable being told I shouldn't be rating albums badly because I don't like them and other people do. But if that's genuinely the way it should work I'll just stick to rating them "offline".

Don't want to upset the apple cart as a newbie! :)
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Originally posted by bartymj bartymj wrote:

That's sort of my concern - should we be using the ratings system purely as a personal "this is what I give it out of five stars" or is it where the album sits within its own specific genre regardless of personal taste. Whether or not an album is 'bad' is entirely subjective so its quite a difficult thing to police.

All I can say is everything is given a chance. To take the Tech genre as an example, I've rated 22 albums (some of which I have admittedly heard for the first time), and yes most of them got one star on here - I actually keep a list where I mark albums out of 20 so there's a bit more detail and it does range from 1 to 4 out of 20 but of course that just makes it 1 star here. But, Cynic's Traced in Air, and Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor, and Voivod's Nothingface do enough to be 2 stars. I've given two of Opeth's later albums 3 stars (of course, probably because they're a lot less extreme) and there's also a Moonsorrow album that gets 3.

Another thing is that because I'm often only listening through the album once and sometimes even skipping tracks when I dislike them that much, I definitely don't feel I've given it enough thought to do an actual review and just going for 'rating only', which hopefully is a good thing for the overall rating of the album as it then rightly values my opinion a lot less than someone who's taken the time to do a full review.

It's not just restricted to the tech genre either, someone could probably look at my profile and think I have a vendetta against Frank Zappa or Art Zoyd. I don't, i've just listened to a few major albums a few times and not got into it. 

Just seems a little dangerous to be discouraging 1-star ratings and things, because it then calls into question why the facility to do that exists in the first place, then making it more difficult to people to explore new areas of the big wide world of prog. I guess maybe turn it the other way up, and think about if there was a relatively obscure band that most people didn't enjoy, but they have a few superfans that rate all their albums as 5 stars because they love their work - is that inappropriate too?

Guess there is no easy answer really. Must admit I'd be a little uncomfortable being told I shouldn't be rating albums badly because I don't like them and other people do. But if that's genuinely the way it should work I'll just stick to rating them "offline".

Don't want to upset the apple cart as a newbie! :)

I really appreciate the fact that you're taking this so seriously. Also, please know that you can change your individual ratings any time you like (which I have done countless times as I have gotten to know and appreciate albums and sub-genres better over the 13 years I've been on PA). 

On another personal note: I often chose to refrain from rating albums from subgenres that I was new to--out of respect for the artist's seriousness and my ignorance. Like our Silly Pup was saying above, a lot of PA's subgenres and bands were completely new to me when I arrived and, over time, they have gotten more familiar and I have even come to appreciate and like several of them--though this may depend on the plasticity of your brain, I guess (whether or not you can be open to new things).

Welcome and good luck! Most of all, I'm glad to see you are at least being adventurous and thoughtful.

Sincerely, 
Drew Fisher aka BrufordFreak 
Drew Fisher
https://progisaliveandwell.blogspot.com/
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Points: 261 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote bartymj Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: November 29 2020 at 11:23
Appreciate the thoughts! Got every intention of going back through and trying things again, updating ratings accordingly, reviewing some when I have time, and so on.

One thing that has already happened is finding some "accessible" albums loosely linked to Zeuhl which I've enjoyed - I now need to go back and give some of Magma's more 'apocalyptic' work a re-listen. Dai Kaht's 2020 album seemed to be a novel take of a happier sounding Zeuhl album which I did do a review of. Now makes me feel I haven't done some earlier stuff justice.

All this makes me realise I've missed 99.999% of prog over the almost 30 years of my life and there's a lot of catching up to do....
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Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:

Here's a large assortment of users who have blanket rated everything Dream Theater has ever done as 1 star:

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=58629

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36533

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36932 (This one is exclusively 1 star DT ratings and 5 star fates warning ratings)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36216 (Apparently not a queensryche fan either)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=15571 (Porcupine Tree and Opeth hater tooI guess)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=14988 (The funny thing is, many of these ratings are straight in a row so you know they were successive or, the user just clicking through every album)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=18896

Is this breaking any rules? I can't say, but it seems strange these people kept returning to complete the discography of this band they apparently hate, and rated all the albums at the same time.

People are allowed to not like something. Maybe they are borrowing the albums from friends or are getting them free somehow. I find it strange too but I have seen it before and it's not breaking any rules imo.
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Originally posted by AFlowerKingCrimson AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

Originally posted by dougmcauliffe dougmcauliffe wrote:

Here's a large assortment of users who have blanket rated everything Dream Theater has ever done as 1 star:

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=7422

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=58629

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36533

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36932 (This one is exclusively 1 star DT ratings and 5 star fates warning ratings)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=36216 (Apparently not a queensryche fan either)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=15571 (Porcupine Tree and Opeth hater tooI guess)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=14988 (The funny thing is, many of these ratings are straight in a row so you know they were successive or, the user just clicking through every album)

http://www.progarchives.com/Collaborators.asp?id=18896

Is this breaking any rules? I can't say, but it seems strange these people kept returning to complete the discography of this band they apparently hate, and rated all the albums at the same time.

People are allowed to not like something. Maybe they are borrowing the albums from friends or are getting them free somehow. I find it strange too but I have seen it before and it's not breaking any rules imo.

how can anyone listen to an entire discography of a band they clearly dislike and then rates all the album as 1 star. If I dislike an artist, it won't get my attention, I move on to someone/something else. That's why I think it's rating abuse.  
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^ Yes, that's how most normal people would do things but not everyone does things the same way. Is it abuse? Maybe but then would it also be abuse if someone gave five stars to a whole bunch of albums by the same band? I think we need to look at it from the other end as well. 

Also, I'm not a fan of Coheed and Cambria and happen to have two cds by them. I will probably give the one two stars(if I decide to rate or review it) and maybe two stars to the other if I don'tlike it (which seems likely). Maybe one star but I'm not sure yet. So far I only heard the one. Would that be abuse also? If not then where do we draw the line?


Edited by AFlowerKingCrimson - December 06 2020 at 11:59
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Originally posted by AFlowerKingCrimson AFlowerKingCrimson wrote:

^ Yes, that's how most normal people would do things but not everyone does things the same way. Is it abuse? Maybe but then would it also be abuse if someone gave five stars to a whole bunch of albums by the same band? I think we need to look at it from the other end as well. 

Also, I'm not a fan of Coheed and Cambria and happen to have two cds by them. I will probably give the one two stars(if I decide to rate or review it) and maybe two stars to the other if I don'tlike it (which seems likely). Maybe one star but I'm not sure yet. So far I only heard the one. Would that be abuse also? If not then where do we draw the line?

You listening to a couple of albums and rating them low is not an abuse. 

Also someone giving an entire discography 5 stars is rating abuse as well. 
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As discussed above, I'm definitely one of those people that's listening to things I'm fairly certain I don't like, in order to have that occasional moment of brilliance which changes my view. 

Is it so impossible to think this one person might have decided to listen to the whole discography to confirm once and for all that they don't like them? 

Ratings are completely subjective and personal, to discourage people from having an opinion and calling it ratings abuse sets a dangerous precedent. 
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