I would argue people have a tendency to round up, not down (especially on stuff over 7), so adding .5s would likely reduce the overall scores, most notably the over abundance of 10s thrown around. I for one would would reduce the majority of my 10s to 9.5s.

Also, since when was the consensus of 8 to be "sucks?" People might have downtrodden views about good scores but it's certainly not applicable to 8s. 7 is, and always has been, the international sign for "average" and generally not something of particular worth. If you think people go around slapping 8s on stuff that they're "meh" about then you need to get out and see the beauty of the world.

If we have the ability to review something and be given the ridiculous and arbitrary freedom to reduce it down to 100th of a number (at best basing the rating on vague instinct) then I don't see why being able to rate it down to 1/20th could be seen as a bad thing, rather than the flawed out-of-ten system (out-of-five is much better in fact and a system I would be equally in favour of). Fact is that there's a horrible psychology to numbers that are rarely representative of what they should be, particularly the difference between a 7 (mediocre; not worth much attention) and 8 (more than just "good;" a staple listen). Adding a .5 system would go far in quashing that.

So yeah, 10 system with .5 increments, thus abolishing the retarded and futile attempts at ascribing worded descriptive meanings to the numbers along with the utterly backwards colour coding it has and giving people enough freedom to make more accurate ratings and alleviating those psychological gaps, or out-of-five which reduces the rating to its simplest quantitative form whilst maintaining some variation, or rather as much as is needed, as well as getting rid of the dreaded "perfect ten" trope and the irrelevant 2/10, 3/10 and 4/10 ratings that come with the 10 system (because anything below a 5 or 6 is automatically regarded as shit, as average is effectively a negative score when it comes to personal taste; no one listens to average albums after deciding it to be so).

Written by Guest on 15.01.2011 at 22:11

I support... but respect this current system, if it's found to be the best solution. Also, I'd like to see 6 as a slightly beyond average & 5 as the slightly below average. Now 5 is "not good", though in my mind it's like a 2½ stars of the maximum 5; meaning it's pretty decent. Then again, we all think differently and this current system is satisfying. <- well, there I made my writings pretty pointless

This is a response to you, Kuroboshi, and !J.O.O.E.!

To me, I grade things the way a schoolteacher would grade them. 70% (or 7) is a C, and that is average. In order to give an album a second thought, at must be at least average or higher. 60% is still a D, so it passes, but hardly. Any lower than that is a failure. The different low ratings are still useful, as things can still be a certain grade of failure. I've heard teachers say that getting a 50% on an assignment is much better for your overall grade than neglecting to turn it in and getting a 0%. For instance, perhaps I really dislike an album and decide to rate it a 4. I decide that it doesn't deserve to be rated it lower, because I know there's something worthy on it for someone else who has a completely different set of tastes than I. It probably deserves a higher average, even if I hate it. If it's something like Lulu, though, I'll rate it a 2, as I can't find a single millisecond of its sound that is redeeming.

I've never liked the 5 star system, as I've always personally rated things on the scale of 1-10 (or 0%-100%), due to my feelings of the 1-10 rating relating to grades. The 5 star system confuses me. Something that's 4 star is supposedly excellent, but when you convert it to a percentage (80%), it then appears to simply be an above average grade. Thus, for people like me, it's hard to determine how good the community perceives the album to be through that rating.

I would personally love to use a rating system that uses tenths of a number (7.1, 7.2, 7.3, etc., like in the reviews), providing a 1-100 rating system, but as !J.O.O.E.! has stated, for many it can end up being a lot of instinctual guesswork. It wouldn't really work for the whole community.

I don't think color is a big issue here, as green is an A (or A plus), yellow is a B or a C, Orange is a D (or a high F), and the rest of the red ratings are just different levels of failure. It all makes sense to me. I also agree with the current scheme of the labels/scale for each rating. The only real addition I think would make a lot of sense for all of us is the .5 rating, but no change is fine as well. As long as we don't change it to a 5/5 rating, I think I'll be okay.

It's pretty funny to see how Axe Argonian, who created this topic, is offline for a year...

Written by Guest on 02.02.2013 at 19:52

Well what do you want to happen? Let's delete everything except the handful? Let's remove the history?

I'm sorry if it seemed I meant this. It simply made me smile the fact that for an year nearly nobody cared about this topic, and now it seems to have become of the utmost importance. Just this, no polemical purposes.

Written by Kuroboshi on 06.01.2013 at 06:58

As it is now, I think the tags used ("perfect", "excellent", "very good" etc.) are not fitting.

The tags clearly need to be modified, although I'm unsure as to what are the most appropriate tags :S While perfect implies that the album could not be improved, average evokes the notion of a lack of originality. Semantics considered, this appears to be contradictory considering that to surpass average, an album must concomitantly be original, if only incrementally so. However, an album need not be original to be good, very good, or even perfect.

In addition, the notion of perfect is...debatable. One might argue that this tag implies that the album could not have further excelled for its purpose, suggesting that the criteria for each album is contingent on its sub-sub-sub-(ad infinitum)-genre. This also implies that there is a requisite level of understanding regarding that particular style in order to make an informed rating.

Does anyone else share these particular gripes?

Written by Syk on 15.11.2013 at 12:33

Quote above.

I'm unsure if this is a response to my post. If it is, I will say that I'm not demanding an overhaul of the voting system. I'm was just pointing out that the descriptors need adjustment. The present ones impel me to dish out 10s more frequently than would be considered "appropriate". The modification hardly seems like a time-consuming effort.

Edit: I read the rest of your post after initially thinking it wasn't directed at me. I see the point you're trying to make, however I still think there're a great deal of users who could benefit from less ambiguous rating tags...or I'm just OCD and I'll go away.

Written by LeKiwi on 15.11.2013 at 14:05

Written by Syk on 15.11.2013 at 12:33

(Insane rambling)

a response

Deleted my insane rambling. After reading through the whole topic again, it seems I was arguing a point only tangentially related to the matter at hand. Sorry, yeah, I get it now. You & Kuro are advocating for 6-10 to be [more] explicitly labelled as positive, with something like "mediocre" at 5, representing somewhat negative/disappointed or indifferent opinion, rather than what we have now: 6 is the "exact" mid-point and thus allowing only 7-10, not 6-10, be chosen to represent various positive takes on any given release.

This effectively reduces the (some would say) unnecessarily large range of negative options 1-5, and expands the positives to 6-10 from the present 7-10. So adjusting the wording slightly would/should make 10s a little harder to award, 6-9s (supposedly) easier to distinguish, and nullify the debate/requests for *.5 or other decimal rating re-jigs. My main point with the now-deleted post is that a vast majority of users won't see any difference, nor adjust their rating actions accordingly, so there won't be too much visible "correction" to the oft-criticized "over-inflated" averages seen on any album's (/band's/discog) individual page (or the yearly/top200 charts etc) - but this little change inside the bowels of the site is purely for greater potential of self-expression for those who see "6-average" as too niggardly a critique and "10-perfect"/"9-exce" too easy to award, yet less satisfying upon trying to examine/compare/whatever through their own collections [of ratings].

As I said, though, it shouldn't really matter all that much... we are all here because we enjoy the metallic music, so when I slap a "6 - average" on something, it is because my mind automatically calculates (disregarding the descriptor?) that yes, there was something enjoyable there, just not in abundance by any stretch of the imagination.

Written by Syk on 17.11.2013 at 05:07

Deleted my insane rambling. After reading through the whole topic again, it seems I was arguing a point only tangentially related to the matter at hand. Sorry, yeah, I get it now. You & Kuro are advocating for 6-10 to be [more] explicitly labelled as positive, with something like "mediocre" at 5, representing somewhat negative/disappointed or indifferent opinion, rather than what we have now: 6 is the "exact" mid-point and thus allowing only 7-10, not 6-10, be chosen to represent various positive takes on any given release.

This effectively reduces the (some would say) unnecessarily large range of negative options 1-5, and expands the positives to 6-10 from the present 7-10. So adjusting the wording slightly would/should make 10s a little harder to award, 6-9s (supposedly) easier to distinguish, and nullify the debate/requests for *.5 or other decimal rating re-jigs. My main point with the now-deleted post is that a vast majority of users won't see any difference, nor adjust their rating actions accordingly, so there won't be too much visible "correction" to the oft-criticized "over-inflated" averages seen on any album's (/band's/discog) individual page (or the yearly/top200 charts etc) - but this little change inside the bowels of the site is purely for greater potential of self-expression for those who see "6-average" as too niggardly a critique and "10-perfect"/"9-exce" too easy to award, yet less satisfying upon trying to examine/compare/whatever through their own collections [of ratings].

As I said, though, it shouldn't really matter all that much... we are all here because we enjoy the metallic music, so when I slap a "6 - average" on something, it is because my mind automatically calculates (disregarding the descriptor?) that yes, there was something enjoyable there, just not in abundance by any stretch of the imagination.

I certainly agree that the modification would only benefit the select few meticulous voters. That being said, implementing appears to be relatively simple and not excessively time-consuming. I wish I could just rate the album based on the numbers, but I can't help being influenced by the ambiguous and erroneous descriptors

Written by LeKiwi on 17.11.2013 at 05:44

I wish I could just rate the album based on the numbers, but I can't help being influenced by the ambiguous and erroneous descriptors

So ignore the descriptors. I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of others do. I certainly would if I rated albums.

Written by psykometal on 17.11.2013 at 06:07

Written by LeKiwi on 17.11.2013 at 05:44

I wish I could just rate the album based on the numbers, but I can't help being influenced by the ambiguous and erroneous descriptors

So ignore the descriptors. I'm pretty sure that's what a lot of others do. I certainly would if I rated albums.

They've been entrenched in my brain

Written by LeKiwi on 17.11.2013 at 06:10

They've been entrenched in my brain

If that's true then "updating the descriptors" would have no effect on how you vote, and therefore your entire argument for "updating the descriptors" is null and void.

Written by psykometal on 17.11.2013 at 06:16

If that's true then "updating the descriptors" would have no effect on how you vote, and therefore your entire argument for "updating the descriptors" is null and void.

Not entirely. If I had a reference to adjust to then time would eventually mold my perceptions.