Criteria of ratings

I'm not sure what the admins' guidelines say, but I honestly think it's ridiculous to give an album a lower rating because it isn't "proggy" enough.  In my opinion, you should judge the album according to its merit regardless of the genre.

Easy Livin wrote: No point in getting tied up in rules about such things. Just go with what you think is right.

Well apart from that 1 star rating you assigned to Future Days, which obviously was done out of delirium and a feverish state, I completely agree with Steve here. You shouldn't worry too much about the ratings, as long as you don't use them to bash, insult or you carelessly throw either extreme around like were they candy. 

Off on a brief related  tangent here -- as part of my job, I follow and analyze documentation for physician office visits, and there's a similar conundrum in that arena as well.  When a patient comes in for a medical condition, be it a cold or some chronic illness like diabetes, the physician has to assess the complexity of the condition, do some level of medical decision making, and can usually get reimbursed a higher rate for a higher level of complexity and decision making.  The codes used to submit claims for payment go from level 1 to level 5, and the physician chooses the level of the visit and submits it on a claim for payment.

Statistically, most visits should be level 3, with very few level 1 and level 5 visits.  Still, many physicians will tend to concentrate most of their coding in the level 4-5 range, and this is considered by us to be potentially abusive billing.  The assumption is that the "bell curve" distribution of patient complexity should apply; in fact, the system of levels is designed in a way such that patients should naturally fall into that type of distribution.

I feel the same way about album ratings.  Most albums out there in prog land should theoretically be 3's, with very few 1's and 5's.  If you're only rating your 5 favorite albums, of course, that distribution would probably not apply, since you're selecting a cherry-picked sample.  But over the course of hundreds of albums, I feel the prudent thing is to try to keep the normal bell-curve distribution in mind.

Don't worry about or pay too much attention to the ratings. The guidelines are guidelines.  If I don't think an album is prog enough to be here, I don't review it anyway, giving it an effective rating of zero.  When I review something my rating is weighted by whether or not the music is good.

Dayvenkirq wrote: Guldbamsen wrote: Well apart from that 1 star rating you assigned to Future Days, which obviously was done out of delirium and a feverish state, ... Sorry for the deviation, but ... : What led you to that thought, if I may ask?  'Cause, like the review says, the album has nothing to do with the resonant and the musico-cognitive.

Dayvenkirq wrote: ^ Keep going ... where did you sense irony?

Dayvenkirq wrote: I was afraid this thread would have only one reply.

Edited by Ambient Hurricanes - May 17 2012 at 15:20

You mean that my initial reply was a joke (it wasn't) or my post today was a joke (it was)?

The 'excellent addition to any prog rock music collection' needn't necessarily be a Prog album ya dig bro?