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Forums - News / General |
For General modelling or hobby-related topics that are not covered by any other specific forum. Please keep to topics concerning the hobby. |
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| Messages | 21948 |
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| Subject: | Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Late Reply |  |
| Date: | Mar 11, 2005 |
| From: | Doug Chaltry | |
Hope I'm not too late to chime in here. Since I can no longer access TL from my home PC, I only get here infrequently on breaks at work.
For those of you who don't know me, I also run a model review site, devoted to 1/72nd scale AFVs, so this issue of fairness in reviews is not new to me. Over the years, I have been accused of being: too lenient in my reviews, too harsh in my reviews, too detailed, and not detailed enough. Perhaps all of these accusations are correct, and perhaps none of them are. The only one that I take exception to is one fellow who accused me of pandering to manufacturers who send in review items. What a moronic thing to accuse any reviewer of! Perhaps for someone who has enough money to buy only one new kit every two months, a free review kit may be important to their pocketbook, but I have more models than I can build in two lifetimes, so I don't really care if I ever get another review kit again. And I would guess that it's the same for other people who write as many reviews as I do.
But back to the question at hand. I don't think there is anything wrong with the reviews at this site. In fact, even saying that something can be "wrong" about a review is nonsensical. As so many people have eloquently pointed out, reviews are only opinions. Some are based on a lot of research, and/or personal experience, but many (such as most of mine) are simply based on personal intuition.
What I think is flawed here, is how people use, or interpret, reviews. I don't use a star rating system at my site because I don't want people to rely on the number of stars to determine whether or not they even follow a link to a review. I admit, I've found myself doing that very thing at times. As I've said in an earlier thread, I think the most important aspect of reviews are scans of the kit parts. When people can actually see what's in a kit, many (though not nearly all) of their questions can be answered without even having to read any narrative. If they see in the review index that a particular kit only has a two star rating, they will probably never even look at the review to make an educated opinion of their own, based on what they see.
My opinion is that relying on only one or two reviews for purchase decisions is dangerous. So is relying on reviews from only one or two specific individuals. I recall seeing a comment on another discussion group that one person said he wouldn't even think of buying a model without seeing my review of it first. Although I'm sure he meant that as a compliment to me, I found it quite unnerving, because nobody knows better than I how flawed my opinions can be. And the same can be said of all "well known" reviewers/authors.
Regarding overly-high ratings: perhaps reviewers' penchant for scoring kits unusually high is simply a reflection of their desire to build the kit, and not necessarily the result of a mathematical equation relating the pros and cons of a kit with other models? For example, I can write a review about a specific model pointing out all sorts of errors (because it's always easier to point to negatives, than to positives, isn't it?), and yet at the end of the review, I can conclude with a statement of how much I look forward to building it. Just because it doesn't have enough bolts on the wheels, or the gun barrel is a couple mm short, doesn't mean it's a bad kit!
Maybe it's something as simple as: are you a "glass half full or glass half empty" kind of person? (Or the glass is twice as big as it needs to be?) If you want to stick with a five star rating system, then I'd guess that yes, the vast majority of new kits being released these days are indeed worthy of four or more stars. How many truly awful kits are ever released? I'm afraid that this is a question that simply cannot be answered because everyone has a differing opinion as to what makes a good model.
Someone mentioned "targeted audiences" for model reviews. I don't think there is a single group of people who can be characterized as a target audience. There are people who just want to know if the tracks are vinyl, or individual link. There are people who want to know if they got the turret shape correct. And there are people who want to know if every single bolt, weld, plate or rivet is molded correctly. Frankly, this last group of people are never going to be sastified with any review unless they write it themselves, so it's just not worth it getting upset when they take exception to your review.
I know I have rambled here, so I'll just give one final thought. Basically I no longer care any more when people criticize my reviews (unless they are pointing out factual errors which I will then correct), because for every one person who doesn't like my conclusions, there is another one who does. I'll repeat what I said above: there is nothing wrong with the reviews on this site; only with the people who want to take them as gospel, and feel slighted when they can't.
-Doug |
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 | Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Paul A. Owen - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Kurt Laughlin - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . "Or are the reviewers just plain wrong?" - Steve Campbell - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Paul A. Owen - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Sean Lynch - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Paul A. Owen - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Ed Bouwmeester - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Paul A. Owen - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Steve Frost - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - gene fong - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . Belly buttons? - Kurt Laughlin - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . Re: Belly buttons? - Steve Frost - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Belly buttons? - Paul A. Owen - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Formal Warning! - Steve Campbell - Mar 10, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - David Manning - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . . . . Yeah, I like this idea - Kevin Johnson - Mar 10, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Veli-Pekka Pelttari - Mar 8, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Peter Ong - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - terry li - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Extra stars - Leo Lee - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Steve Frost - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . Stars are OK - Kurt Laughlin - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . Re: Stars are OK - Paul A. Owen - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Hey lates review the reviewers!?! - Billy Bishop (Michael Wawrow) - Mar 9, 2005 |
| . . . . . . . . . . . . Re: Stars are OK - Steve Frost - Mar 11, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - adam lehmann - Mar 10, 2005 |
| . . . Well, I had one experience where.... - Mark Fergel - Mar 10, 2005 |
| . . . . . . Re: Well, I had one experience where.... - gene fong - Mar 10, 2005 |
| . . . Re: Reviews - Too Many High Ratings - Late Reply - Doug Chaltry - Mar 11, 2005 |
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