I've been around for a while, and use this site just about every day to read reviews and click around and discover new bands and what not... So I'm going to hope these suggestions aren't going to get totally ignored or ridiculed. Of course, I don't know how easily these things could be implemented or what not since I know little to nothing about coding, nor do I know whats in store for us with the v2 I've seen mentioned, but heres what I've got to put on the table.

First of all, I love the reviews and everything, but a lot of times people who listen to an album don't want to write a review for it. My idea (probably has been proposed before, but I'm not sure. I checked back a few pages just in case but wasn't about to go through every thread) is to have two seperate ratings. One where people who have heard the album but don't want to review can just submit a percentage rating on it, and the reviewers' ratings that are already there. I would expect them to differ since a lot of the time many albums only have one or two reviews. Only allow one rating per user so ratings can't get flooded by some idiot who decided to rate it 38298 times because he has personal qualms with someone in the band or something. It'd also be nice if users could change their rating at a later date in case they changed their mind about an album or something, because that happens. This whole idea, now that I think about it, is more just for people to feel like they have a say in what the albums are viewed as. Sometimes I think the reviewers on the archives differ from what a lot of metal fans actually think of them, and it'd be interesting to see the differences. Not only that, it would help really define what is considered a classic album and what isn't in the metal community as a whole. The only downside I could really see to it (besides the implementation) would be that maybe people would start just jumping on the bandwagon of what all the user ratings say and what not... Of course, that happens sometimes now with the reviews we have.

Secondly, I think maybe a review search option would be nice. For instance, if I wanted to look at reviews for black metal albums that were given 96-100% this search option would be pretty handy. (this next part is probably not necessary, as I think most of you are of reasonable intelligence, but I'm going to write it anyways just to get the point across to those who might not be) Right now I'd have to just go to the sort review by rating and manually browse through and look at all the bands individully to deternmine what genre they are, etc... With a review search option I could just select the parameters of my search and the results would pop up.

Anyways, just my two cents. Hopefully it's something fresh.

1. The obvious problem here would be people rating without actually hearing the album. Guess what would happen every time a new Opeth album comes out with that system.

2. That sounds okay, though I'm not entirely sure how useful it would be. I think it that it would mostly be people looking for albums from 90-100% or from 0-10%. But maybe those uses would be enough to justify it- I don't know, as I don't buy albums based off reviews.

I believe this has been suggested before, and turned down, because, well, maybe one user couldn't spam the ratings, but entire groups of users together would be basically spamming the albums with 0%/100% ratings.
[EDIT: After reading Noktorn's post, yeah, people will just give low ratings to every release because they hate the band without actually hearing them (Trivium and Cradle of Filth seem like examples here) or give 100% to bands just because they like the band in general, without hearing all of their releases.]


This seems like a viable implementation. V2 maybe?

Understood on the first point, although I still think it would create an interesting average (other than perhaps the groups of rating spammers that was mentioned).
On the second point, I'd find it quite useful just for finding new bands possibly worthy of listening to. Reviews are just a (sometimes) helpful tool to discovering bands I haven't heard of before. So I think the search option would be nice... although the use would probably be centered around the high ratings and the very low ratings as was said.

I called for IMDB style voting back on 28 Sep 2003 and was ignored. How dare you try to re-suggest this idea!

I still want it. The biggest downside to this is, of course, that the rabid fanboys will automatically give their favourite bands' releases the highest score. But as I also pointed out, the reviews aren't any better in regards to this problem. Most people, if they're going to dedicate time to writing a review, will either love the album or hate it.

A conscientious reviewer will have spent several hours writing an accurate review, and then a bunch of 15-years-old who don't know anything about metal but the Black Album will come and give their mindless fanboyish ratings? HELL NO.
Be sure the day such a system is implemented, chances are I not only stop writing anything for this site, but I also delete everything I've written before.




This one sounds interesting.

what ?

The idea for a a reviews search seems reasonable enough. I remain adamantly opposed to the first suggestion, however.

01. It's not going to happen.

02. Maybe in v2.

Haha, sorry mate.
Funny you mentioned IMDB style ratings. Thats exactly what made me want to suggest it.



It wouldn't replace reviewers' ratings, as I said. Anyone who reads the reviews now wouldn't stop just because that was added. It would simply have two ratings.
Obviously many shitty albums would get high ratings... To me, it'd just be interesting to see the average rating of an album by the general populus on the site. That way people can see what bands are the new cool shit to like so you can avoid them like the plague because you want to be totally kvlt, listen to them so you fit in with your cool mehtuhl friends, or listen to it and write a review on it so theres actual valid opinions on it as well. If some shitty album starts getting a bunch of good votes on the general rating thing, then reviewers are probably going to start writing reviews on it so we can get some valid opinions on the albums with support.

1. I agree

2. There are still good albums to some people when other people would think it is bad. Maybe have people be seperated into groups of what they listen to, or have them choose for their own, so that they can be shipped to albums according to their taste.