Dragongirl
First Post
Well if they give everyone basically the same score then it won't affect the top 20 since their reviews would pretty much cancel each other out and it will still depend on other reveiws.DocMoriartty said:
A rant about D20 Magazine Rack
- Thread starter JacktheRabbit
- Start date
- Status
Ghostwind
First Post
I usually try to stay out of potentially trolling insults, but when it involves an attack on myself, my site, or my staff, then you can bet I will get involved. 
Now to set the record straight for everyone to understand, when Morrus and I agreed to include the d20 MR as an affiliate reviewer for EN World, one of the significant reasons behind it was to help him build up his database of reviews. Morrus and I discussed the difference in my grading system versus the more restrictive one here at EN World. We came to the conclusion that it could probably still work out since the average 5 pt grading system (5-A, 4-B, 3-C, 2-D, 1-F) would come close to my grading system. We both had concerns but felt they would work themselves out. To my knowledge, the d20 MR is the only website that has an open and public posting of exactly how our reviews are scored. This has been done so that there is no misunderstanding or misconception on our grading system. All a person has to do is sit down and read it if they have a question.
At the bottom of every review that is posted on these boards is a line that directs readers who want to see our scoring back to the original d20 MR site. Furthermore, at the top of every review (except for ones that are over eight months old) there is the name of the reviewer himself. Why is this a problem? To address Doc's issue, if you don't want to read a certain person's reviews then go to the main d20MR site where you can easily see the name. I am not about to create a new account each time I have a staff change since I am the one who posts and hand codes every review that is posted here. My staff sends all reviews to me where they are then posted to my site and then eventually here. To go to all of the extra work of logging in with separate accounts just to keep one or two people happy isn't going to happen.
Another issue that has been brought up is that we are nothing more than the mouthpieces of the industry because of the scores posted here. That's utter bull crap! I have said this time and time again and will likely say it even more in the future. Read the review, not just look at the score! A review represents the opinion of that person about that product. Not every reviewer will score a product the same way, even among my own staff.
JeffB, your biggest beef is with the review of the Kalamar Atlas that I wrote. Yes, I cracked on it for being specific, however I marked it down for the retail cost vs. its overall useability. It's damn expensive for a book of maps, plain and simple. While we are talking about this, I find it very interesting that, except for the rarest of occasion, the only time comments are left are when folks really disagree with a reviewer (regardless of whether they are my staff's or not). If a review is scored a 3 or lower, you can almost make a bet that someone will be there to chastise the reviewer (especially if the publisher is well liked). You don't see that with reviews that score higher unless it represents a contrast to the bulk of the other reviews of that product.
Personally, I do not care if you do not like the reviews that my staff faithfully volunteer their own time to write. If you don't like them, don't read them. It's that simple. No one is twisting your arm and forcing you to sit there and read it. But I never want to hear my staff being referred to in a derogatory manner because you may disagree with their findings. They work hard and I am very appreciative of that fact. Everyone has their own style of gaming and that fact will surface in the way reviews are written. You may disagree with it, but do so in a polite manner rather than coming across as an inconsiderate whiner complaining about the merits of the numeric score. Unlike some reviewers on the Net, my staff tries to not only look at a product without bias but they also actively look for the good qualities and how they may apply in an overall bigger picture. If a product is bad, they will state so. But they will also say why it is bad, which is more than I can say for a lot of other reviewers.
I also want to note that at no point during the tenure of d20 MR's affiliation with EN World has Morrus ever contacted me to voice a concern or problem regarding our reviews or the scoring of them. Don't you think that if he felt it was a problem, he would have contacted me long before now? If Morrus feels it is a huge issue, then I would have absolutely no problem with discontinuing our affiliate relationship and having him delete all 185 reviews. I'm sure that would please several of you, but I also ask who's next? Do you single out Gamewyrd or trancejeremy or Crothian because you start to disagree with their scores. The EN World reviews are an open review forum where anyone can post a review. Yes, there are times when a moderator steps in to ask for a modification or even deletes it, but those are rare. You cannot be a community and then start trying to exclude people because you don't like the scores they give. To do so defeats the spirit of what EN World stands for.
Don't feel a company is worthy of its average rating? Write a few reviews yourself giving them the scores you feel they deserve. Being a reviewer is much harder than most folks realize when you take into account how much time is spent writing one. Some feel that our presence on these review boards may unfairly skew the top 20 list or a company's rating. Since both scores come from an average, our reviews will really have little effect unless no one else reviews those products.
Now if anyone takes offense at this rebuttal to the charges leveled at me or my site, feel free to take it off-forum and email me privately. I stand behind my review staff and the reviews they write and will continue to do so. If you don't like them, don't read them.
Now to set the record straight for everyone to understand, when Morrus and I agreed to include the d20 MR as an affiliate reviewer for EN World, one of the significant reasons behind it was to help him build up his database of reviews. Morrus and I discussed the difference in my grading system versus the more restrictive one here at EN World. We came to the conclusion that it could probably still work out since the average 5 pt grading system (5-A, 4-B, 3-C, 2-D, 1-F) would come close to my grading system. We both had concerns but felt they would work themselves out. To my knowledge, the d20 MR is the only website that has an open and public posting of exactly how our reviews are scored. This has been done so that there is no misunderstanding or misconception on our grading system. All a person has to do is sit down and read it if they have a question.
At the bottom of every review that is posted on these boards is a line that directs readers who want to see our scoring back to the original d20 MR site. Furthermore, at the top of every review (except for ones that are over eight months old) there is the name of the reviewer himself. Why is this a problem? To address Doc's issue, if you don't want to read a certain person's reviews then go to the main d20MR site where you can easily see the name. I am not about to create a new account each time I have a staff change since I am the one who posts and hand codes every review that is posted here. My staff sends all reviews to me where they are then posted to my site and then eventually here. To go to all of the extra work of logging in with separate accounts just to keep one or two people happy isn't going to happen.
Another issue that has been brought up is that we are nothing more than the mouthpieces of the industry because of the scores posted here. That's utter bull crap! I have said this time and time again and will likely say it even more in the future. Read the review, not just look at the score! A review represents the opinion of that person about that product. Not every reviewer will score a product the same way, even among my own staff.
JeffB, your biggest beef is with the review of the Kalamar Atlas that I wrote. Yes, I cracked on it for being specific, however I marked it down for the retail cost vs. its overall useability. It's damn expensive for a book of maps, plain and simple. While we are talking about this, I find it very interesting that, except for the rarest of occasion, the only time comments are left are when folks really disagree with a reviewer (regardless of whether they are my staff's or not). If a review is scored a 3 or lower, you can almost make a bet that someone will be there to chastise the reviewer (especially if the publisher is well liked). You don't see that with reviews that score higher unless it represents a contrast to the bulk of the other reviews of that product.
Personally, I do not care if you do not like the reviews that my staff faithfully volunteer their own time to write. If you don't like them, don't read them. It's that simple. No one is twisting your arm and forcing you to sit there and read it. But I never want to hear my staff being referred to in a derogatory manner because you may disagree with their findings. They work hard and I am very appreciative of that fact. Everyone has their own style of gaming and that fact will surface in the way reviews are written. You may disagree with it, but do so in a polite manner rather than coming across as an inconsiderate whiner complaining about the merits of the numeric score. Unlike some reviewers on the Net, my staff tries to not only look at a product without bias but they also actively look for the good qualities and how they may apply in an overall bigger picture. If a product is bad, they will state so. But they will also say why it is bad, which is more than I can say for a lot of other reviewers.
I also want to note that at no point during the tenure of d20 MR's affiliation with EN World has Morrus ever contacted me to voice a concern or problem regarding our reviews or the scoring of them. Don't you think that if he felt it was a problem, he would have contacted me long before now? If Morrus feels it is a huge issue, then I would have absolutely no problem with discontinuing our affiliate relationship and having him delete all 185 reviews. I'm sure that would please several of you, but I also ask who's next? Do you single out Gamewyrd or trancejeremy or Crothian because you start to disagree with their scores. The EN World reviews are an open review forum where anyone can post a review. Yes, there are times when a moderator steps in to ask for a modification or even deletes it, but those are rare. You cannot be a community and then start trying to exclude people because you don't like the scores they give. To do so defeats the spirit of what EN World stands for.
Don't feel a company is worthy of its average rating? Write a few reviews yourself giving them the scores you feel they deserve. Being a reviewer is much harder than most folks realize when you take into account how much time is spent writing one. Some feel that our presence on these review boards may unfairly skew the top 20 list or a company's rating. Since both scores come from an average, our reviews will really have little effect unless no one else reviews those products.
Now if anyone takes offense at this rebuttal to the charges leveled at me or my site, feel free to take it off-forum and email me privately. I stand behind my review staff and the reviews they write and will continue to do so. If you don't like them, don't read them.
At this point the Top 20 list is overgrown and increasingly useless.
Since it never gets culled, products with small and fanatically loyal followings tend to rise to the top over time. I've complained about this before - is Call of Cthulhu the "best" game d20 game system, or is it just that all 6 people who bought it wrote positive reviews of it here on the boards?
I'm not knocking CoC; it probably is a fine game. But I think its wrong to suggest that some reviewers aren't welcome because they'll mess-up this already messed-up List system. If anything, I think even a few extra reviews could balance out the fanboy driven "5 reviews, all are 5.0" syndrome.
JeffB
Legend
Ghost,
As I said, I'm not really concerned. Also that particular review (the KoK Atlas) is to my recollection the ONLY time I have made a comment about an Enworld review, because in that case I felt it was pretty obvious that knocking a campaign setting book for it's campaign setting content was just plain silly.
So yeah that's my beef. I think it's poor reviewing. But I really don't care one way or the other. Like I said that was enough to make me just ignore the D20 MR reviews which you stated we should do, anyways. So we are in agreement. I don't hold any grudges or malice about it. Nor were any of my comments "personal". I was not calling for that review to be removed in those postings like some other folks were (in fact I stated the opposite) nor was I downgrading the entire D20MR staff in this one, simply stating that in that particular review, I felt the product was poorly judged. I'm all for fair reviews, but common sense tells me in that review, it was not "fair". We will just have to agree to disagree on that matter.
As I said, I'm not really concerned. Also that particular review (the KoK Atlas) is to my recollection the ONLY time I have made a comment about an Enworld review, because in that case I felt it was pretty obvious that knocking a campaign setting book for it's campaign setting content was just plain silly.
So yeah that's my beef. I think it's poor reviewing. But I really don't care one way or the other. Like I said that was enough to make me just ignore the D20 MR reviews which you stated we should do, anyways. So we are in agreement. I don't hold any grudges or malice about it. Nor were any of my comments "personal". I was not calling for that review to be removed in those postings like some other folks were (in fact I stated the opposite) nor was I downgrading the entire D20MR staff in this one, simply stating that in that particular review, I felt the product was poorly judged. I'm all for fair reviews, but common sense tells me in that review, it was not "fair". We will just have to agree to disagree on that matter.
Psion
Adventurer
JeffB said:
Eh. While I agree that d20 MR's ratings are a bit generous, I don't agree with this notion and think that some people bank WAY too much on the scoring system and don't think it should be the basis of removal of some creidible and insightful reviews.
That, perhaps, d20 MR needs to be split into its component reviewers is a bit more of a pressable point though.
Olive
Explorer
i just read the KOK Atlas review over atd20MR, not over at d20reviews. I think it's a fair comment actually, when translated into the d20MR category of playability.
It's pretty much only usable for kalamar, which limits it's usefullness for non-Kalamar reviers. Fair enough call to me... especially given that it says outright it's a beautiful and well made book.
It's pretty much only usable for kalamar, which limits it's usefullness for non-Kalamar reviers. Fair enough call to me... especially given that it says outright it's a beautiful and well made book.
Crothian
First Post
I like their reviews and I think it will be a big loss for EN World if they got pulled. Ghostwind, you and your guys do good work and I like that you cross post them to EN World. I can understand people's frustration, but to me its frustratyion in the 1-5 rating system, a system that most people think should be mostly ignored at least until one reads the review.
Wow - what a cuffuffle!
The D20 Mag Rack reviews are well-written and complete, and I feel that they certainly add to the review collection as a whole. That said, looking at it, I do agree that perhaps we may need to have a look at the two scoring systems and see if we can't figure something out.
Sometime in the next few months, I intend to revamp EN World's scoring system (certianly not anything as complex as D20 Mag Rack's, but less coarse than the current 1-5 rating). This will be a while, though, as there are a lot of other complicated technical things going on in the background at the moment which you'll all find out about as the months progress.
For the moment, I'd ask you to put this issue aside; I'll talk to Ghostwind at some point once I get to playing with EN World' scoring system, and see what can be done.
For the record, though - please try to concentrate on the reviews themselves rather than the scores. The scores are only a *very* rough guide to overall impressions.
One suggestion that I have, which seems obvious to me. Ghostwind, instead of trying to "translate" between two incompatible scoring systems, why not score each review according to the system where the review is found? So, on your own site, it will have one score, and at EN World it will have another. That seems to make sense to me.
The D20 Mag Rack reviews are well-written and complete, and I feel that they certainly add to the review collection as a whole. That said, looking at it, I do agree that perhaps we may need to have a look at the two scoring systems and see if we can't figure something out.
Sometime in the next few months, I intend to revamp EN World's scoring system (certianly not anything as complex as D20 Mag Rack's, but less coarse than the current 1-5 rating). This will be a while, though, as there are a lot of other complicated technical things going on in the background at the moment which you'll all find out about as the months progress.
For the moment, I'd ask you to put this issue aside; I'll talk to Ghostwind at some point once I get to playing with EN World' scoring system, and see what can be done.
For the record, though - please try to concentrate on the reviews themselves rather than the scores. The scores are only a *very* rough guide to overall impressions.
One suggestion that I have, which seems obvious to me. Ghostwind, instead of trying to "translate" between two incompatible scoring systems, why not score each review according to the system where the review is found? So, on your own site, it will have one score, and at EN World it will have another. That seems to make sense to me.
Last edited:
Psion
Adventurer
Olive said:
No, I really don't agree. I find the idea that a setting specific supplement (especially a maps book, for goodness sake!) should be required to be useful outside of the setting for which it was intended ludicrous. It may be worth mentioning, but should not play into the final score.
- Status
