harbringer wrote:
To everyone that argues that the school grading system is worthless for "grading" an album [...] It doesn't matter what you compare your scoring system to because when it comes down to it, you still gave ART a SCORE, just like you're pissed at me for doing.
Here's why I compare giving an album a score to the grading system:
100% = perfect album
90% = excellent
80% = great
70% = good
60% = ok
50% and less = no good
You're right and if I had the choice I'd rather go either without scores or with very simplistic indicators like some mags and sites do, like between 0 and 5 stars or something similar. Those who use such systems typically have a small table that spells out what it means, ie "__: hate it, *: dislike it, **: indifferent, ***: like it, ****: love it, *****: treasure it", but even when they don't, the scale is so damn small that no one is likely to confuse it with a precise system that compares albums reliably. It's just a quick way of letting you know in advance if the review will be rather negative, neutral or positive. But it's not the case here, there is a scoring system based on % and it's impossible to submit a review without using it. So let's see how that can be used.
There is one hundred and one possible scores, which is quite a large scale in itself, especially when people sometimes give very specific scores that can feel random if there's not a discernable pattern justifying it (our human minds are designed to look for patterns, anyways). What doesn't work too well for me in the scale you've described (which indeed seems relatively close to the US school grading scale) is basically what I've described in my previous comparisons between that scale and the French one: it doesn't use the whole grid, and the range between good and perfect seems too small (which might justify relying on more specific scores). What'd make more sense to me would be roughly:
100% = The infinity of perfection, something for all to aim at, all the while knowing it's unreachable by nature...
90% = godly
80% = masterpiece
70% = excellent
60% = very good
50% = good
40% = okay
30% = not so good
20% = bad
10% = very bad
00% = When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you. In this case, "the abyss" could be anything from horribly bad to blank. Same advice anyway: avoid it!
It's just that the scale you use (which is used by many reviewers, hence my original question on this thread) has a much wider range available (but hardly used) for the realm of suckiness than for the realm of goodness. It'd make more sense the other way around. "How bad does it suck, exactly?" just seems less useful a question than "How awesome is it, exactly?". With your scale, there's only 30 out of the 101 possible scores that you can use where it matters the most. Isn't it a waste?
TrooperEd wrote:
Ultraboris broke down the way he did it and I think it's brilliant. [...]
79-70%: I really, really, like it, but can't objectively call it a classic.
69-60%: I don't hate it, but it has flaws galore.
Same thing here. It's phrased a bit differently, but the actual scale is exactly the same as that described by harbringer above: if he gave below 70% to an album, it basically means that he thinks his readers have better things to spend their time and money on than this album (if he sticks to his scale). Does he really need 70 subtly different ways to get that message across? I think not. Could he use more than 31 levels of quality for albums he deems worthy? I think yes.