I've been writing lots of reviews (currently all of them are drafts because I haven't submitted or deleted anything yet), and there are three things I would like to suggest:
1. Please increase/remove the character limit for review titles. I know this might sound simple, but there are multiple completely reasonable review titles I can't use because of the limitation. I'm not sure if the limitation was imposed accidentally or because of how Metallum's code works, but if it's because mods feel like users will submit overly long unnecessarily spammy titles (example: "this album is great, it's the best death metal album I've ever heard, I love how the riffs are technical and the band incorporate avant-garde elements and unique song structures, go but it now if you haven't already
" as a whole review title) I might add that can just be addressed by the mods after the reviews are submitted. Just looking to the
Crappy Diem thread, I can already see that the mods do a really good job at filtering through all the bad reviews in terms of body text (which isn't limited by characters), so if the mods are going to catch all the bad titles that surpass the current character limit I can only see gains to be had here. Users would be allowed to submit all their review titles that just happen to be longer than the arbitrary character limit, which they wouldn't be able to without this change.
Examples of titles that aren't currently able to be used due to the character limit:
1. Meshuggah - I [Title "A concise immense representation of the destructive power of the individual"]
2. Gnaw Their Tongues - I Speak the Truth, yet with Every Word Uttered, Thousands Die [Title "I title my album, yet with every extra word added, you get more confused"]
3. Teitanblood - Death [Title "It's too filthy, vile, and deranged. That's both an insult and a compliment"]
4. Saving Grace - The King Is Coming [Title "Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord"]
2. I know this sounds small and insignificant (even smaller and more insignificant than the last one, I apologize), it would be good to be able to use decimal values in review scores. For example, being able to score a review as "69.42%" or "33.44%". This would be especially useful if your score consisted of multiple parts averaged together
Two examples of averages like this would be:
Lyrics: 0%
Guitars: 97%
Drums: 85%
Vocals: 92%
Average 68.5%
Guitars: 54%
Drums: 67%
Vocals: 99%
Bass: 23%
Average: 60.75%
3. It would be really good to be able to utilize HTML and the potential of text to the fullest as we can here on the forums. It would be good to be able to use colored text (for emphasis, a sense of specialty to certain words or characters, formatting, and for so many great aesthetic opportunities), usage of spoilers (if you're currently dissecting lyrics in your review and you aren't putting all the lines next to each other the review gets really long really fast), embedding images or YouTube videos (or really anything else that happens to be relevant), and really just utilizing HTML to its full potential and allowing it in full for the super experienced. If you really know what you're doing (not saying I do now but I would totally learn, everything I know about HTML I learned here) I don't see why you should be limited by the current constraints placed on HTML by the current review engine here on metallum.
The reviews here are great and the review engine is great as it is (nice job Hellblazer and Morrigan), I just think these are good constructive criticisms to help improve things.