Review Reporting Thread

Sleepwalker wrote: We've got this: http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=180&PN=1 But, in the end I'm sure there are people who won't read the guidelines or simply won't care, so moderating reviews always is a pretty important thing I suppose, definitely when the site will get bigger and more crowded.

Please review PA guidelines and report so I can implement this on MMA soon.

I absolutely agree with you about making the guidelines as visible as possible. What I meant, however (even if I expressed myself rather badly), is that people who want to ignore the guidelines will do so anyway, therefore we have to be ready to act. On PA there are quite a few Prog Reviewers who break the guidelines all the time, even if they should know better. 

You can have all the guidelines you want, but if they are not enforced, they will serve no purpose. Personally, I would be in favour of some more editing - PA has been criticized quite often because of the poor quality of some reviews. Being an official reviewer for another site, I am a stickler for both style and substance, if you get what I mean. In any case, even if we decide to be more flexible than most reviews-based sites are, there are no excuses for remarks such as the ones Ovidiu wrote in his review. 

Vehemency wrote: ^ Ah, I had a feeling that we already had those guidelines... Perhaps that topic should be linked somewhere near when posting a review? Just an idea, for people to see how things reviews are handled in MMA before submitting their first review.

Vehemency wrote: ^ Yeah, true too. And I must underline that I'm not expecting anyone to write formal and professional reviews (because I can't and don't want to do so either). :-) Anyhow, I think there should be SOME line that shouldn't be crossed, when the text becomes way too hard to read / understand. I'm not talking about any specific one (nothing wrong with ovidius's reviews even if their appearance is not for my taste!) but in general for the times to come: perhaps we need some vague guidelines / "rules"? Or perhaps not, we can always just moderate / report reviews if so needed? Just philosphizing. :-)

^ Yeah, true too. And I must underline that I'm not expecting anyone to write formal and professional reviews (because I can't and don't want to do so either). :-)

Anyhow, I think there should be SOME line that shouldn't be crossed, when the text becomes way too hard to read / understand. I'm not talking about any specific one (nothing wrong with ovidius's reviews even if their appearance is not for my taste!) but in general for the times to come: perhaps we need some vague guidelines / "rules"? Or perhaps not, we can always just moderate / report reviews if so needed? Just philosphizing. :-)

I sent ovidiu a PM. 

Not to judge anyone, but it is not easy to read reviews with tons of exlamation marks and whatnot. Healthy use of paragraphs and reduced use of special characters always makes a review already better. I'm definitely not a good writer nor excellent in English, but I think those are worthy tips for improving reviews. :-)

I posted most of my metal reviews from PA here on MMA, and in most cases they needed minimal editing. There was one, however, that needed almost to be completely rewritten - it was the review for Queensryche's seminal Operation Mindcrime, which of course I had originally tackled from a progressive rock point of view.