Way too many five stars review out there!

Its good that people REALLY like their music!

Its a good thing

Bern wrote: Almost all of the 17 last reviews give five stars actually.

so what!?! it's their opinion...plus nothing's wrong with 5 stars album...my god...

Ricochet wrote: Bern wrote: Almost all of the 17 last reviews give five stars actually.  so what!?! it's their opinion...plus nothing's wrong with 5 stars album...my god...

I agree with you but giving 5 stars to every album you like may affect the objectivity of the final rating an album gets. I'm not totally against five stars. I sometimes use them.

Now that i think about it....    it takes effort to write a review. There are just
more 5 stars because people want to share experiences more with their
favorite "5" star albums

Bern wrote: Come on! Five stars are for masterpieces. There are not that many albums who deserve this rank. It would be great if more of the reviews would be objective.

Yeah but 5 stars album came often with an explication.  But There's also a lot of vote rated 1 stars  and the most of them came without justification at all.  (and do not appear on the main page)



Edited by D.Noisserger

Five stars for masterpieces??? I thought they were for something you just happened to like a lot at that particular point in time. How wrong can a guy be?

Most people give 5 star ratings much more often than the archives want them to. I will not punish the albums by rating them 1 star less then everyone else just because I think that they should have done so.

Fact is: the tens of tousands of ratings in the database are not distributed like you want them to be. It's too late to change that, so if you choose to adhere strictly to the guidelines you will end up punishing your albums.

The ratings should in theory follow a Gaussian bell curve, wtih the majority being at 3, a good deal at 2 and 4, and only very few at 1 or 5. But for some reason people seem to be reluctant about dealing out 1 star and enthusiastic about dealing out 5 stars. And there is of course an important factor to take into account: The proposed Gaussian bell-curve with the maximum at 3 would occur if the same number of people would rate all albums. There is a tendency though that people will review and rate albums they like (and hence recommend to others) rather than writing negative reviews about albums they dislike (unless they are really pissed off by an album for some reason). I must admit I notice that tendency in myself too. My chief goal is to bring forgotten gems back to the minds of people, so I will usually write about albums that fit into that category. They often have to be added to the database first, and there will be some more activities like that in the near future. And Jean is currently preparing to add Mother Gong, by the way, a band that is obviously missing, with one 5-star masterpiece ("Fairy Tales"; this album can not be recommended often enough) and several 4-star albums.

There are art critics out there who think Tracey Emmins tent is a masterpiece... I thought it was a publicity stunt and a crap exhibit.. Thats just my view..

Thats the thing about art of any kind, is that there is no such thing as good or bad art. The whole point of art, including music, is to express an artists ideas and feelings, and to hopefully evoke somekind of response in the listener/viewer/reader etc. If it capures an audience of just one person then it has succeeded in its aim.

What constitiutes a 'masterpiece' is entirely subjective for this reason. OR, arguably the terminology used by PA to define each star rating is misleading, but how else do you review a piece of art if not by what you, as the critic personally thinks.