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Rating Albums In Reviews



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Poll

Do you think we should rate the albums we review or not?

Duh, a review with no rating is lame
24
Nah, I can read and don't need a number
11

Total votes: 35
16.02.2019 - 22:56
nikarg

As you've probably noticed, a few of us here have stopped rating albums in our reviews for some time now. Speaking for myself, I'm inclined to find it inappropriate to put a number next to a work of art. I can describe it, say what I like about it and what I don't and leave it at that. I also sometimes find myself changing opinion about how I've rated an album in a review but never about its content. And finally, it pisses me off when people moan about a rating without having read a single sentence of the review. So, what do you people think and/or prefer?

In case it's not clear, you should vote "Duh" if you want albums rated in reviews or "Nah" if you don't find it necessary. Argumentative speech is always appreciated and taken into account a lot more by yours truly than a simple button click.
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17.02.2019 - 01:54
Starvynth
i c deaf people
First of all thanks to nikark for setting up this poll.

Written by nikarg on 16.02.2019 at 22:56

I also sometimes find myself changing opinion about how I've rated an album in a review but never about its content.

Ain't that contradictory?

I mean, if you review something, you should be capable of intelligibly phrasing your thoughts, feelings and arguments. That's the fundamental skill of any reviewer and it should be the most important ingredient of all reviews. Quite logically, all of this content will result in your personal opinion and rating of the very moment you are writing it down.
It's true that people change and so does their musical taste as time goes by. But I just fail to believe that your rating may change whereas your opinion (=content of the review) will remain unchanged.
If you are a good writer and true to yourself, both factors will change to the same extent. After all, we are talking about content (your well-grounded opinion and facts of the release) and not about unsubstantial chitchat that will not stand the test of time, right?

Written by nikarg on 16.02.2019 at 22:56

And finally, it pisses me off when people moan about a rating without having read a single sentence of the review.

Morons of that kind will never read a review anyway, but if they do, they will always fail to understand it entirely. They just see the plain numbers through the eyes of an unteachable fanboy. You really shouldn't worry about these folks but write reviews for people who actually want to hear YOUR opinion rather than being reinforced of their firmly held opinions and stuck-up patterns of thinking.

To put it plain and simple, I'd like to see more reviews with ratings because...
- ratings grab attention and arouse curiosity
- ratings can provide impetus for discussion
- ratings are reader-friendly as they provide a very quick roundup
- high ratings can persuade people to see beyond the end of their nose and check albums belonging to genres they usually dislike
- the feature does exist and 'X/10' looks more complete than 'N/A'
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17.02.2019 - 22:23
Redel

I clearly go for "Nah, I can read and dont need a number".

I would indeed encourage metalstormers to put a number tagged on their review -- largely for the aforementioned reasons by Starvynth -- if there were some mechanism that would normalize all the various distributions of ratings that can be found across all the forum members. What I am saying is: A rating of say 9.0 by the reviewer does not tell me anything if I do not know the average of the reviewer's ratings and how often they rate an album 9.0 (and the suggested translation "excellent" is somehow also only a relative term).
And do I really (want to) put all that effort into understanding the rate of a reviewer?
Even worse, I claim, it is possible that the reviewer's 9.0 is misinterpreted by the readers, in that the readers may tend to inadequately "anchor" the 9.0 they see at their own distribution of ratings, and that might be a completely different distribution.

Bottom line:
In my opinion, and in terms of my own rating distribution, ratings on metalstorm are generally distorted upwards, so I do not care much about the number attached to a review by someone whose rating behavior I am unaware of.
For those reviewers whose rating behavior I am sufficiently familiar with, the value of the review also does not depend on the number attached to it, because I would be able to get a rough idea of it by reading the text.
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17.02.2019 - 23:21
ScreamingSteelUS
Editor-in-Chief
Written by Starvynth on 17.02.2019 at 01:54

To put it plain and simple, I'd like to see more reviews with ratings because...
- ratings grab attention and arouse curiosity
- ratings can provide impetus for discussion
- ratings are reader-friendly as they provide a very quick roundup
- high ratings can persuade people to see beyond the end of their nose and check albums belonging to genres they usually dislike
- the feature does exist and 'X/10' looks more complete than 'N/A'

These points constitute much of my reasoning for rating albums in my reviews. As a rule, I prefer to include a rating. I usually feel that my thoughts are not complete unless I've expressed my assessment as a numerical value; I can spout a lot of exploratory narrative about an album, but commentary on a work doesn't always convey the sense of your overall satisfaction. Hell, we're talking about metal here - half the time, extremely negative descriptors are used to communicate a positive feeling.

If you neglect to stamp your review with a rating, it's freeing because you can take any tone you like and not have to spend any amount of time justifying your score, and moreover your readers can project a positive or negative slant onto your overall assessment, depending on how circumspect you have been. On the one hand, you might say that as long as your review is informative it doesn't matter how you yourself would rate it, but I've had enough of that subjective/objective back-and-forth underneath my own reviews; it's also true that an N/A could be interpreted as not wanting to take a stance for one reason or another.

I do think there's merit to both approaches, though. I recently omitted a rating for my Gama Bomb album because I was kind of stumped by the prospect of choosing a number. Sometimes it is tough to come up with a number that won't seem like nonsense next to the review itself. If I were reviewing an album that was particularly controversial, maybe I'd feel inclined to forego a rating just to avoid kneejerk reactions from readers.

I do agree with Nick as well that my exact ratings change over time where my words may not. It could be that the way I've described an album remains truthful, but I feel less intensely about it or it works less for me than it did when I wrote the review.

It's also easy for me personally to misrepresent completely how I really feel about an album; I've gotten better about it, but sometimes my numbers were wildly off, embarrassingly so, and I wish I had considered them more carefully. Looking back at my past reviews, I think I mostly stand by my ratings - or acknowledge that, if I don't feel the same way about an album still, my rating was at least honest relative to my experience at the time - but there are a few that I wish I had left unrated so they could stand a lot more firmly now.
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17.02.2019 - 23:21
nikarg

Written by Starvynth on 17.02.2019 at 01:54

Written by nikarg on 16.02.2019 at 22:56

I also sometimes find myself changing opinion about how I've rated an album in a review but never about its content.

Ain't that contradictory?

I admit it sounds like it but it happens. It's not any massive difference, one whole point at most. Rating sth with 8 and one year later thinking it was more of a 5 has never happened to me. But it has occurred that I now think I should have given an album a 7 and I had given it a 8. Another thing is what Redel states that ratings are inflated in MS in general. So when someone sees a 7 in a review they immediately think the album is shite, lol. And I, as a reviewer, have been influenced by this. Not a lot, but I have. Radu was overrating albums as well in my opinion, I enjoy his reviews much better now because his description and feel of albums is 99% of the time spot on but his ratings were outrageously high and sometimes even deterred me from reading what he wrote.

Anyway, thanks for posting and I'd like to read input from others, I find Redel's remarks also very interesting.
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18.02.2019 - 04:53
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Thanks to all of you for your honest and detailed evaluation!

I understand that most of you believe it's oftentimes neither easy nor adequate to link something as demure as some plain decimal numbers to something as complex and multifaceted an album (nikarg used the term 'work of art') can be. I get your point.

But I think your demands are too high. The most important part of the review will always be the thoughts you put into it and how you phrased it. No rating can ever supersede that. People - I hope it's not just me - want to know what you experienced listening to it. What you expected and what you got instead, whether or not it reminded you of previous albums or similar artists and which flaws you discovered. But no matter how much time and effort you are investing, all of your thoughts can only provide a contemporary snapshot. The more precisely you express yourself, the more likely your point of view will change as time goes by. The only way to safely prevent the decay of aging content are superficial and exchangeable reviews, containing nothing but the mere facts booklets or official sources are disclosing.
But who wants to write and/or read anemic reviews?

I believe you have to be aware of the fact that reviews will indeed age. You can't do anything to prevent it so you can as well just acknowledge and accept it. Your taste will change, that's for certain. So what? Your readers' musical taste will change, too!
Do you still remember that particular review you wrote and rated 9/10 five years ago? And now, you wish you'd rated it 6/10 since meanwhile, you progressed, it didn't age well and your taste developed further?
Then please try to imagine someone - a MetalStormer with a musical taste just like yours but five years ago - reading your updated review right now. He will most probably skip this album, having no chance to realize what gem he might be missing. He will not give this album a chance, no matter if you altered your rating only or changed the complete review.

What I'm trying to say is that reviews are like old history books.
Even the best history book is biased and inaccurate since it can only describe incidents based on the knowledge and experiences of the moment in time it was written. History books are neither intended nor capable of describing our future. But do we correct old books, now that we know they contain small mistakes and antiquated opinions? No, because meanwhile, those old books themselves are part of the historical context.

I don't really need ratings for my own peace of mind, I'll be reading most of them reviews anyway.
But I tend to skip reviews concerning genres I dislike if no rating is provided. For me, reading e.g. power metal reviews just to reach the awarenes that just another eunuch fronted and averagely talented band is sharing their swords and dragons fairytales is nothing but a waste of time. But I would read just about any review stamped at least 9/10 due to curiosity.

Therefore, I stick to my opinion that the benefits of ratings outdo conceivable impediments of the reviewing process.
After all, any additional feature is additional service.

In a very simplified form:
additional service -> pleased users -> more frequent visitors of the site -> more traffic -> more content -> more fun
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18.02.2019 - 14:12
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Maybe one or two (last?) thoughts regarding this topic...

"My only problem with the huge amount of great death metal releases lately is that I'm running out of words to uniquely describe them."

This quote is taken from a recent review and I know this statement was intended to be taken with some grain of salt. Anyhow, it shows that reviewing is not always the easiest job to handle.

Therefore, if you stumble upon some hassle of uniquely describing a singular 'piece of art', you should very well be aware of your readers' identical problems, since their problems are reinforced by the fact that they usually didn't listen to the album prior your review. All they have to decide whether or not that particular album is worth a listen are your well-chosen words.
But if you are facing a huge amount of great (and some not so great) more or less similar releases, ratings come in handy to quickly separate the wheat from the chaff. I believe that sometimes, ratings are the only effective way to clearly distinguish related albums - and their reviews.

Besides, we should not forget that there is only one forum language, but that English is just the mother tongue of round about 30% of the site's users. I am very sure that a significant amount of people fails to understand a typical review in it's entirety. But for sure, anyone suffering broken english will understand ratings. Even people talking very bad English (and even that particular member using his old etch-a-sketch to post messages) will most likely get the deeper meaning of a plain number.

All I'm asking for is not to decline ratings in your reviews by default just because some people think they are (always) worthless.
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22.02.2019 - 22:08
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Written by nikarg on 17.02.2019 at 23:21

Radu was overrating albums as well in my opinion, I enjoy his reviews much better now because his description and feel of albums is 99% of the time spot on but his ratings were outrageously high and sometimes even deterred me from reading what he wrote.

Hey
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22.02.2019 - 22:14
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
IMO if I recall it was Jup who did start not rating reviews. I say if fan boys rate no way, but if objective (not haters some in staff are some specific band haters for unlnown reason) , if its objectiveyes we can rate, but its just a number, we need good and more revievs , not votes
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22.02.2019 - 22:31
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
I understand Starvynth's points and I respect his opinion.

From my own experience, I am having way more fun writing reviews ever since I stopped having to worry about assigning a numerical value to the thing, since like nik has noticed, I tended to inflate some of those ratings because I perfectly understood that big ratings would attract more people. Which happens to be a problem when I listen to a lot of stuff that I want people to listen to even though I may not think it's exactly spotless or objectively as good as others with the same rating. I understand how ironic is it that now since all reviews have effectively no rating, there is no way to tell the quality of an album instantly but as well no way to tell if the score has been inflated.

I always felt uncomfortable having to rate stuff, not because I didn't think that I made my point accurately, but because it's really hard having to use the same 1-10 scale for albums with so little in common. If I review a thrash metal album and give it a 9 because it's good as a thrash metal album, but I still like it less than some sludge I rated a 7, it's iffy. I can't just review thrash metal and only rate it 7 or below just because I don't like the genre as much as I like other genres.

And concerning those death metal reviews, I used to rate my death metal reviews with pretty much the same 7.5 rating anyway, so nothing would have changed. There just aren't enough words in the English language to describe so many albums with mostly similar qualities, but that doesn't mean that they're not worthwhile and that's why I reviewed them nonetheless and tried to find out what unique qualities they had.

Maybe not being able to quickly assign a rating to something I wrote about means that I'm not a good reviewer. Whatever. I'd rather not sacrifice my writing integrity just to get people to listen to albums. I noticed that even when I reviewed something with a high score, the number of ratings on that album's page barely changed, so I'd rather not bother. Ive felt much more confident in my writing ability ever since.
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23.02.2019 - 01:28
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Written by RaduP on 22.02.2019 at 22:31

From my own experience, I am having way more fun writing reviews ever since I stopped having to worry about assigning a numerical value to the thing, since like nik has noticed, I tended to inflate some of those ratings because I perfectly understood that big ratings would attract more people.

In fact, this is indeed a comprehensible argument.
If you feel most comfortable to drop the ratings in order to focus on the content of your reviews, then I will be the last person trying to convince you of the contrary. I'd rather like to see reviews without any ratings than reviews with overvalvued ratings. Seriously.

But I have permitted myself to highlight an important aspect: it's your experience.
There are just too many good arguments not to suppress rated reviews by default. Undeniably, it's an (optional) feature with some benefits for the readers, so people should be encouraged to assign ratings if they happen to feel comfortable with it.

But recently, some people have been praising the denial of ratings as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
In my opinion, without ratings it's just uncut bread - and we all know that most people are lazy and do not want to use their knife every day anew. Some of us do not even own a very sharp knife, I suppose.
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23.02.2019 - 05:32
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Written by Starvynth on 23.02.2019 at 01:28

But recently, some people have been praising the denial of ratings as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
In my opinion, without ratings it's just uncut bread - and we all know that most people are lazy and do not want to use their knife every day anew. Some of us do not even own a very sharp knife, I suppose.

The reason for that is because a few months ago all of us slowly started dropping rating without prior discussion. It just kinda happened, so seeing that three different people silently deciding to do something, it's obvious that I was gonna do a gag and put peer pressure on the last one to drop em too.
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23.02.2019 - 07:34
Cynic Metalhead
Paisa Vich Nasha
Written by nikarg on 16.02.2019 at 22:56

And finally, it pisses me off when people moan about a rating without having read a single sentence of the review.


You really can't stop this ignorance. Somehow you bound to get traffic of dorks who going to whine no matter what.

Besides, I don't think it isn't a big deal at all in the first place. It's just an allotment of numbers justifying your review.
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24.02.2019 - 18:46
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
So, some final thoughts and remarks:
- there is no pressure upon reviewers not to rate their reviews; any comment on a rated review that would seem like that is to be taken as a joke
- it was a weird experience to witness a front page with absolutely no rated review and I'm grateful for it, as it's definitely more comfortable to not rate my reviews when it feels like that is the norm, but it came and it will go and Im not gonna fight it
- I will still not rate my reviews unless I feel compelled to do so, and I have stated why. I may or may not rate some reviews in the future, but most likely those would be of really popular bands so that the review can appear in that album's wikipedia page.
- SSUS seems to like rating his reviews, whereas me and Nick don't like rating ours, who knows how things will change with more writers whenever that happens
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24.02.2019 - 19:32
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Thank you, Radu. Sounds fair to me.

Special thanks to those anonymous fellows - whoever they are - supporting my point of view.
The poll is still open...
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26.02.2019 - 11:46
Ansercanagicus
endangered bird
Ratings just hint you about the review's content. It's green so it is surely a positive appraisal ; It's red so things are about to get salty ; It's orange so it's mixed. The review's intro also gives away those elements. But I think that the colors on their own do "grab attention and arouse curiosity", and "are reader-friendly as they provide a very quick roundup".

Maybe we could just use ratings for this purpose. They would just stand out for "you're advised to listen to this"/"you're advised not to listen to this" (find out why in review). Or with several nuances: "strongly advised cause it's a classic", "might give it a try", "album not for everyone but good in its category", "rather a disappointing letdown"... I fact if we could replace the grade by a big colored caption it would work the same way.

But "ratings can provide impetus for discussion", mmh, like in: - "oh I see you rated this an 8.6, but I think it's worth a 9, even a 9.1... or a 9.2 dare I say !" - "No I disagree, I gave a 8.6 for mass appeal but in fact it's closer to 8.3 !"
This is utter nonsense for me.
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26.02.2019 - 18:20
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Written by Ansercanagicus on 26.02.2019 at 11:46

Ratings just hint you about the review's content. It's green so it is surely a positive appraisal ; It's red so things are about to get salty ; It's orange so it's mixed. The review's intro also gives away those elements. But I think that the colors on their own do "grab attention and arouse curiosity", and "are reader-friendly as they provide a very quick roundup".

Maybe we could just use ratings for this purpose. They would just stand out for "you're advised to listen to this"/"you're advised not to listen to this" (find out why in review). Or with several nuances: "strongly advised cause it's a classic", "might give it a try", "album not for everyone but good in its category", "rather a disappointing letdown"... I fact if we could replace the grade by a big colored caption it would work the same way.


As already said before, I don't really need precise ratings for my own peace of mind. And in particular, I don't need ratings with decimal places. Some kind of colouring as per your description could serve the purpose as well and in theory, I like your idea pretty much.
The only weak point I see: people are accustomed to see numeric values, it may take a while to get them familiarized.
Still, it's a good idea and I think it's worth being considered.

Written by Ansercanagicus on 26.02.2019 at 11:46

But "ratings can provide impetus for discussion", mmh, like in: - "oh I see you rated this an 8.6, but I think it's worth a 9, even a 9.1... or a 9.2 dare I say !" - "No I disagree, I gave a 8.6 for mass appeal but in fact it's closer to 8.3 !"
This is utter nonsense for me.

Indeed, if you are talking about nuance nazis and their pointless quarrels, it's truly utter nonsense. But that's not what I meant. I was referring to civilized, daily forum discussions à la 'Your rating implies you liked X more than Y, but don't you think, that....'
It admit it does feel a bit weird writing that down, now... There's even some smell of utopia and naiveté I can't deny.
But after all, I'd rather have some slight forum hassle than no debating at all, since the lack of participation is nothing but a safe sign of slow decline.
Eventually, content (reviews, interviews) and discussions are the back-bone of any forum and its right to exist.

I'll give you a rather old example of a review. Infact, it's one of the first reviews I ever read on Metalstorm and the reason I registered. I wanted to be part of a forum where 'officials' are allowed to provide ridiculously low ratings and write stuff like

'Listening to this album is like being tied to a the front of a moving train and having monkeys throw water balloons full of Ceaușescu's spinal fluid and rusty Communist AIDS at you from a motorcycle speeding alongside.'

Without that red '2.0' I'd most probably never bothered reading a review of a band I neither knew nor liked.
And there are countless examples of (old) reviews I only stumbled upon due to the high reviewer's rating. This way, I learned to love quite a bunch of albums I'd otherwise missed out or ignored.

I am very sure that a significant portion of traffic on this site is caused by reviews and their ratings only. And oftentimes, it can be pure fun and entertaining (well, for me it is) reading all those comments of people defending their bands by attacking the reviewer's or other user's ratings.
I seriously doubt there'd be an equivalent share of posts if we were to move more and more strongly towards a renouncement of ratings without any substitution - and maybe your idea of providing coloured captions is the best alternative for numeric ratings.

But as long as coloured captions are not implemented, all we have are ratings or 'N/A' - and 'N/A' is not colourful but grey and empty.
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02.03.2019 - 00:42
Karlabos
Meat and Potatos
I think not rating would encourage people to actually read the review. Also maybe giving a title, hinting the impression.
Like: Album x by Band x: The Worst Album Ever Conceived?
And then the text

With the way the things are a lot of people click to check if the rating matches their mpression and otherwise caps lock the author the most they can.
You can confirm that by clicking any sub 8 rated review and reading the comments
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02.03.2019 - 01:46
Fellow Duh Say

I may be in a minority but I would like to know the genre in the thumbnail. You can generally tell by name but still would be nice. Also, the color idea seems like a good idea.
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02.03.2019 - 01:46
Fellow Duh Say

I may be in a minority but I would like to know the genre in the thumbnail. You can generally tell by name but still would be nice. Also, the color idea seems like a good idea.
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02.03.2019 - 02:45
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Written by Fellow Duh Say on 02.03.2019 at 01:46

I may be in a minority but I would like to know the genre in the thumbnail. You can generally tell by name but still would be nice. Also, the color idea seems like a good idea.

My thumbnail?
Well, that's 'bone music', oftentimes called 'jazz on bones' or 'rock on bones' or just 'ribs' or 'bones'.
It's no particular genre, but a russian method of smuggling in and distributing prohibited music in the 1950s and 1960s. Infact, they used real medical x-ray foils they found in the trash from hospitals as a substitute for vinyl.
Wikipedia can provide more information, but I'd recommend this article published in The Guardian some years ago.
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02.03.2019 - 18:15
Archie 666

Hmm.. I don't actually care. To me it's just some guy's opinion and a number attached to it. I have my own view of the album and I don't care if the reviewer gives it 1 or 10. I will check the album out myself and judge it so give it a score or don't..don't care
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03.03.2019 - 18:04
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
Written by Starvynth on 02.03.2019 at 02:45

My thumbnail?
Well, that's 'bone music', oftentimes called 'jazz on bones' or 'rock on bones' or just 'ribs' or 'bones'.
It's no particular genre, but a russian method of smuggling in and distributing prohibited music in the 1950s and 1960s. Infact, they used real medical x-ray foils they found in the trash from hospitals as a substitute for vinyl.
Wikipedia can provide more information, but I'd recommend this article published in The Guardian some years ago.

I think he meant that a review should have the genre of the album somewhere in the thumbnail so that you can know beforehand what it is.
Heard that soviet x-ray music story before. Pretty cool.
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03.03.2019 - 18:34
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Written by RaduP on 03.03.2019 at 18:04

I think he meant that a review should have the genre of the album somewhere in the thumbnail so that you can know beforehand what it is.

Ofcourse he meant that but I just didn't get it. Damn it.
Thanks!
And that's quite a good idea me thinks.
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03.03.2019 - 19:12
Starvynth
i c deaf people
Written by Fellow Duh Say on 02.03.2019 at 01:46

I may be in a minority but I would like to know the genre in the thumbnail. You can generally tell by name but still would be nice. Also, the color idea seems like a good idea.

Now that I finally (and thanks to RaduP) conceived your message, I'd like to quote my most favorite philosopher*:
'Good ideas can arise from minorities only, because the status quo is always the majority's idea.'

I like your idea due to one particular reason: it's not very easy anymore to tell the genre of an album by looking at its cover. Black metal, sludge, post metal, thrash, metalgaze, death metal, alternative... ...the boundaries between genres are blurring and so are their cover artworks.
A combination of your idea and Ansercanagicus' approach of coloured captions sounds really good to me.

* that's me, of course
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29.02.2020 - 22:25
nikarg

I have re-read all this topic and taken into account what people voted in the poll and the comments you all made. I've been thinking about returning to rating reviews mainly because bands/labels prefer it themselves (I am not sure they are going to like my ratings but anyway), so I have decided to start rating again. I will even revisit the 2020 albums I reviewed and add a rating to them. Given the fact that many of us here at Metal Storm tend to inflate the ratings, I have come up with a description of how I personally rate and I will add the following text to my profile so that it is visible to everyone at all times.

"My reviews are rated according to Metal Storm's rating system (1-Worst Ever, 2-Pure Shit, 3-Very Bad, 4-Bad, 5-Not Good, 6-Average, 7-Good, 8-Very Good, 9-Excellent, 10-Perfect). Additionally, I rate considering that the reader actually buys albums (8-10? for digital, 12-15? for CDs, 20-25? for vinyl) instead of streaming music for free or by paying a few euros a month.

9-10 (green): must buy if you are a metal fan.
7-8 (yellow): should buy if you are a fan of the style(s) the band plays.
5-6 (orange): may buy if you are a fan of the band and/or a collector.
1-4 (red): various degrees of telling you to stay away.

Whole numbers are enough, no decimals needed."
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29.02.2020 - 22:53
Starvynth
i c deaf people
^ COTY so far.
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03.03.2020 - 16:01
RaduP
CertifiedHipster
I'd follow suit, but I know I'd just be spamming 7s 8s and 9s
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