Star ratings

I personally think that the idea of adding up star ratings is pretty crappy. Not everybody's rating scale is the same. To some 5 stars means that the album is a masterpiece, to others "it's really good" and some people might give every mediocre Neo-Prog (cringe) album a 5 star rating (no review; who needs 'em anyway ), because the Artist tried. xD Only kidding, however the "top rated-ness" of albums is absolutely meaningless that way. Another thing is that most people rely of the "magical" stars too much when writing reviews. They don't give a constructive opinion, cause there's always the the power of stars that can replace all the arguments. So, what do you think? Is this a good system?

Edited by Hrychu - September 04 2016 at 11:08

^ exactly. There is nothing wrong with have a predefined scale. People just have to use it.

I used to be against star ratings period, and what was once my favourite site for Prog reviews, "Ground and Sky", did not use them. I've just seen it as so subjective as to be pretty worthless, but if you have a lot of people reviewing, then the aggregate can be of interest (personally I tend to be more interested in what particular reviewers or raters who have similar tastes to mine think of an album). I have found aggregate ratings useful, especially when there are huge discographies. I've used rateyourmusic a lot for discovering new albums by artists of interest to me, and have found that the ratings reflected my tastes an awful lot.

I have no problem with ratings without reviews as it gives an indication of an individual's tastes. I have in the past found those useful if a particular individual seems to have similar tastes to mine, and I also find that the ratings list for a profile can be useful in giving that person recommendations and just getting to know fellow forum posters likes and dislikes. I wouldn't mind if they had a zero weighting without reviews. Its been weird when I've occasionally seen people sl*g.ing an album that they rated five stars, although tastes do change.

I'm not keen on the descriptions of what the stars mean and would rather they be explicitly subjective: What's "Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music" to one person may be dreck to another. I'd also rather not rate something lower just because it's not really rock -- heck, some categories are more rock than others. I'd sooner the description be a "masterpiece of its category or genre".

Still, it's weird that the top ranked album in the Jazz-Rock/Fusion category is a modal jazz album. But how would I rate Kind of Blue? Following the descriptors I could not rate it more than three stars, but none of the other ratings descriptors would work that well for me either.

Anyway, I think the system could be improved, but I might change it by making it explicitly clear that the ratings given are about tastes -- the good reviews, on the other hand, tend to describe the actual music well. Another topic, I know: I'd also like the ability to be able to choose between rating algorithms, and getting more sophisticated, I would like something like Netflix where you get recommendations based on your personal ratings: For instance, because you like Comus - First Utterance, you might like Spirogyra and Jan Dukes de Grey, but that would be a major overhaul and would be improved with album multi-tagging.

In the past, I rather wanted a system where you you had different fields for rating different criteria, and then those points would be added up for an overall rating.

Edited by Logan - September 04 2016 at 17:08

There's nothing wrong with the star system, it's just a score.  Maybe 1-10 is more adequate, but then again it's just a system.  The star is fine!  

I waaaaaan't to be someone...

Edited by Barbu - September 04 2016 at 21:35

Logan wrote: I have no problem with ratings without reviews as it gives an indication of an individual's tastes.

I just wish they offered the opposite as well.....the choice to review an album without rating it.  Like Raff and David Guldie, I believe it is quite possible to write a useful review without being forced to numerically judge someone's art and passion with a ridiculous numerical grade.  I'm not saying take it away, as I know some people like stars.  But with all of our astounding modern computer intelligence, is it really impossible for the worlds "ultimate prog resource" to figure out the programming required to allow a Member to write a review without a rating?