Post Reply - Review Etiquette and Rationale

UMUR wrote: ^I think I prefer the bare bones concise reviews, but that�s subjective and one of the great things about a site like MMA. You have the opportunity to read reviews by many different people, who write in their own style (long ones, detailed ones, not so detailed ones and short ones). Some you�ll trust and some you won�t. Some you�ll prefer and some you probably won�t read that often.

Yeah, I prefer shorter reviews, too. I generally do not read review that are very long - except if it is a release that I am really interested in or if the review is very well written, humorous or innovative (I think this has to do with my day job which requires that I do a lot of reading, meaning that I am generally reading-saturated in my spare time - and the same thing goes for writing).

I prefer writing short reviews for the same reason (also, I am generally very busy IRL, so I rarely have time to write elaborate and lengthy reviews). That being said, I do enjoy experimenting with different review styles, such as the fanboy rant or the metaphor-riddled review or the vocative review or the would-be academic review, and I plan to do some nonsensical reviews for some avant-garde metal releases (I think they'd be very fitting).

I find negative reviews more challenging to write because I really don't want to be a dick and just bash the release, plus I always try to find at least some positive aspects of such releases (or at least aspects which other listeners might find positive). I do enjoy reading negative reviews because they can be very entertaining - like Wilytank's brilliant dialogue review of Black Veil Brides' "Set the World on Fire". One thing I refrain from is attacking the musicians personally - ad hominem reviews have no value whatsoever in my book, because they say nothing about the music itself and they just make the reviewer come across as a dickhead.

And, in general, I like the variety of reviews we get here on the MMA. That's also one of the things that I really appreciate about this site.

I like the fact that the reviews on this site, are written by "regular" folks contra so called "professional" reviewers, who often IMO aren�t better at writing reviews than many of the people here. They are just as subjective in their opinions as everyone else.

I agree... which is why I found that whole situation, when a rabid Sun caged fan went on a massive rant because Stephen wrote a negative review of their latest album, quite interesting. I remember that the guy ended up concluding that the MMA was not a worthy site because we're not professional reviewers (somewhere on Facebook where the whole "conflict" originated). It should be mentioned that Paul from Sun Caged took a much more constructive and diplomatic approach to the whole situation and the distinction between professional and amateur reviewers.