Review Reporting Thread

I sent ovidiu a PM. 

^ 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. :-)

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. :-)

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.

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. 

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. 

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

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.

Yes, I think it would be better to have the rules appear right under the review box, so that no one can claim they are not easily available to would-be reviewers. Not that having the guidelines so readily visible has ever stopped anyone from violating them...

I think that if you think something is shit, you should be allowed to say so. When it's about the music, I don't see the problem, because a review really just says something about yourself and your taste than about the music itself.

It's more reviews that attack groups of people or individuals because of sexuality, ethnicity, religion and whatever (like that review that attacked both Rob Halford as a person for his sexual orientation), because then it's not about the music - then its personal, and then its offensive. Also "this is crap because the the sound production is awful and the songs are too boring and formulaic" is much more informative than "this is crap because the singer i gay and the drummer is black" (which just informs us that the writer of the review is a racist homophobic C.P.)

I agree that writing a good and sober 1 star review can be very difficult, and that reviews that go beyond "this-sucks" or "this-is-crap" are more interesting to read (I especially enjoy negative reviews that make a lot of use of creative similes and metaphors - even if its a review that bashes one of my favorite artists). I don't mind "the music on this album is rubbish" reviews, but I don't like reviews that personally attack the artists (no matter how much they actually suck) and I don't like reviews that attack people who like or don't like that artist (I don't mind if reviews criticize, or agree with, the general attitude towards the release in question; those can actually become quite interesting to read).


Edited by Time Signature - 04 Jul 2010 at 8:58am