Metal Reviews

http://www.metalreviews.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9283

Seriously, that's retarded. It will only scare people off. There are plenty of people who only have time or inspiration for a review once in a while (like me), and these people are duped by this decision.

they should just make a user review forum.....

but if you post there, they should be able to put it on the review portion of the site if they think it's good enough.

I agree 100% there are so little personal reviews here it would take 30 min just to read all of them.

Some of the reviews that have been posted in the forums are for new releases that we haven't posted reviews for yet. In certain cases, we have just received the promo CD, or it is on it's way in the mail. When someone in the forums posts such a review, it undermines the very purpose of this site, and the reviewer who puts in significant time to write the review for the site. We work hard to establish relationships with bands, labels, and promoters. In addition, we spend a lot of time writing reviews on a weekly basis. Having any of that undercut by an early forum review is unacceptable.

Of course, some of the forum reviews are for older, obscure albums. However, we don't want to go through each forum review and decide which are acceptable, and which are not. Also, we don't need forum member A complaining that his review was deleted while forum member B's review was left alone. As often as arguments happen around here, that would be an inevitable effect of trying to decide which forums reviews were OK, and which would undermine an upcoming review from the site. As a result, we came up with a blanket policy in the best interest of the site and the reviewers who spend so much of their time writing on a weekly basis.

Sorry, but that's bullshit. Why are you so scared of your reviews being overlooked in favour of someone else's on the forums? Your review is on the front page. And your review will be read regardless of whether someone beats you to it on the album. It's not as if we're all professional journalists competing with eachother for the first gander at the latest fad.

It all reeks of jealousy to me. And it strikes me as an incredibly stupid blanket decision. Don't you see the goodwill of those individuals who are perfectly willing to write reviews to fill in the gaps you 'professional' lot have left, is a godsend? I can see your point there in relation to the music business in terms of new albums, but then again, do those guys take the time to visit the forums?

Plus there really aren't that many user reviews posted. If policy was that we couldn't do one that was about to be reviewed by the site, then that's easily sorted out. Especially given the number of moderators. Mods are regular posters that tend to check most threads, it would be so easy just to delete soon-to-be-released stuff and leave anything else.

Exactly. If you don't have the time to check every thread, appoint some additional moderators.

i agree with Rio.

Well, can we at least post a few sentences about what we think of an album (not necessarily a "review")?

They used to before it turned into the big three ringed circus that it is now.

Also, people who thought they are doing us a big favor by filling in the "gaps" in our database by posting reviews are the very same ones who should be approaching us to write reviews. We are always on the lookout for dedicated people. The last thing any of us wants to do (or assign someone to do) is to police the forums and looking for reviews. The best thing is to come up with an across the board policy. Besides, most of you have mentioned that there weren't that many reviews posted in the forums anyway so why believe it would have a big impact if we disallowed them?

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Agree with Slayer Of Kings.

You may think it's bullshit, but that's the way it's going to be. We're not "scared" of our reviews being overlooked, but the official review should (and will) be the first to be viewed on the site; that's just common sense. What other reviews based website allows forum users to post formal reviews prior to the site's formal review. I know on none. There's a reason for that.

It all reeks of jealousy? Now you're reaching for straws. Jealous of what? That's just stupid. The reviewers here deserve their reviews not to be undercut by a non staff member posting a formal review in the forums; period. From a rational standpoint, it doesn't take much to realize that a forumite posting a review prior to the site's official review undermines the official review of the site. The main focus of the site is to review new material. Hypothetically, if each review that we post on the main page has been reviewed in the forums previously and discussed, then how can that NOT undermine the site? If a forum member gets a hold of the new Gamma Ray early, posts a review in a thread that generates 100 replies, can you honestly say that does NOT undermine the up coming MR.com review at all???? Of course it does!!



Absolutely. More musicians and folks from labels visit this site than you would guess. Almost none of them post, but we do receive e-mails from them. One unfortunate example was when someone posted porn in a review thread. The band actually e-mailed us and pointed it out. It was rather embarrassing for us to reply to the band in that instance. If a forumite posts a review of an album that is not out yet that he downloaded illegally, there is a very good chance that the label will see this. Obviously, we can't allow to happen while seeking to maintain and generate relationships in the music business. If a label wants to send us a promo, they will definitely change their mind if they see a forumite review in our forums! Not that they will notice it every time, but once is too many times for our liking.

Thank you for that incredibly condescending post. The bottom line is, it's a policy agreed upon by the people who run and pay for this site, so, no matter how "stupid" or "bullshit" you think said policy is, it won't change. If people are so intent on writing reviews, then I would respectfully ask them to send Mike a request to review for the site.

May be, in addition to User Ratings, Metal Reviews should now have the option for submitting user reviews for newly reviewed albums. You'd click on a link, it would go to a textbox where the user can write his/her review, the user submits it, the Metalreviews staff would look at it. And if it looks informative enough (and perhaps details some things that the original review overlooked), then it can be posted on the site with the original review.

Absolutely.....we're mainly talking about multi-paragraphed reviews that are in the same format as our reviews on the main site. The forums were designed to be used about music discussion (and we encourage that) in the first place anyway. This whole episode as well as a few recent others points out the need for us to establish more clearly defined guidelines and ground rules for the forums. All of us are extremely tired of constantly putting out fires by the actions of a very select few in the forums postings. We either establish more clear rules and guidelines that require less attention on our part or we strip it down to only a couple of categories that we can all monitor much easier. That would mean less open forum discussion on unrelated topics; an option that would not be favored by most at this point.

Exactly. Shane used to "fill in the gaps" with his archive reviews, but he disappeared a long time ago. If someone has the dedication, time, and passion to write reviews, why not inquire about writing formal archive reviews here? We realize that there are gaps in our database. However, we mostly concentrate on new material at present time. If anyone wants to concentrate on backfilling our database with archive/classic reviews, by all means contact us.



As Marty mentions here, and I mentioned before, there are a few different reasons to disallow forum reviews, all in the best interest of the site, MR.com reviewers, and maintaining our relationships in the industry. We take this very seriously, and will not allow it to be jeopardized. If we came up with a policy to "cherry pick" which reviews to delete and which to keep, there would be endless flame / argument threads bitching about the decision. You guys know that, too. We certainly don't need any more of that energy around here, so this blanket policy applied to all is that most equitable way to proceed.

i think those additional reviews are fine in the actual review's own forum topic, if any user decides to post them.

Mike: if you follow Rio's advice, i don't think there will be much "cherry picking" - the only factor to decide whether a user review is allowed or not is if it the album will be reviewed in the near future by someone in the MR team. it's hard even for us to create flamewars with that criteria

either way, i don't think there are that many user reviews here. aside from Metal Storm's recent one, i only remember Eyesore posting his own mini-reviews.

oh oh oh and and idea:
- forumites could submit reviews, and if they were accepted they could go on the main page under a reviewer created especially for user reviews!

I think this is kinda silly (both the rule and the anger its caused ) because of how few forum reviews are posted, I can understand the logic behind it.

Are the links to reviews I write in my sig a problem? :o


I got the impression that they're not for this idea because they don't want any bitching about why X review got accepted and why Y review got denied.

As far as I'm concerned, not at all. I hope you guys can understand why that is different.

hm, you're right. this would indeed encourage "cherry picking" as mike put it.