Bad Review vs. Good Reviews

[Darke]

Good Review @ Quasqueton

and another topic:

The problem I see with ENWorld reviews are:

1) 4 seems to be the average, instead of 3.

I noticed that 4-average thingie too, but only from those imported reviews à la magazine rack. That's the reason why I personally stopped reading those reviews.

das Darke

 

[blackshirt5]

Agreed. I don't particularly care for the magazine rack reviews, as they ALL seem to be positive, even the ones that I've picked up an item in a store and seen that it's horrible(Dungeonworld sticks out in my mind). I tend to ignore reviews from the mag rack now.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Good review. I like diversity in reviews because I want to find someone whose analysis is similar to my own reasoning. If I can't find that, reviews are near worthless because it is all personal preferance and we know from other threads the ENWorld family is not always in agreement

 

[Psion]

I noticed that 4-average thingie too, but only from those imported reviews à la magazine rack. That's the reason why I personally stopped reading those reviews.

If you click the "full reviewer list" thing, you can see what everyone's average is.

FYI, at the current time:

d20 Magazine Rack: 4.03 Good
GameWyrd: 3.79 Average
Simon Collins: 3.51 Average
JoeGKushner: 3.70 Average
DM Jeff: 4.63 Good (DM's Haven)
Me: 3.66 Average

Note that I don't agree with the notion that the average of all reviews should be 3.00... not all reviewers review all products, and discerning reviewers stop buying stuff they consider substandard, so I think a lot of "low end scores" get factored out of the equation. That said, I do think some reviewers are more generous than others.

 

[Victim]

I'd think that reviews would average over 3. It's hard to review products that you don't own, and most people are going to only buy products that they expect to like. Also, many people will flip through the book before buying it. So most casual reviewers are going to eliminate some bad products automatically. If I see a terrible book, I don't buy it so I can give a 1 or 2.

I'd expect more professional reviewer types to have a lower average though, since they can't be as selective. If CrapGames sends them a review copy of "The Book of stupid rules," then they should review it. On the other hand, people who look through it in the store will see that it's awful and not buy.

Ideally, everyone would give all their gaming books 5s.

 

[MThibault]

I'd expect more professional reviewer types to have a lower average though, since they can't be as selective. If CrapGames sends them a review copy of "The Book of stupid rules," then they should review it.

Nah, we still feel the pull of "If you can't say anything nice..." Maybe moreso because the publisher was kind enough to send a copy for free.

If my editor would give me the space (I write for print) to review everything that comes accross my desk, I would probably publish more bad reviews than good. But I only have the space to publish reviews of 2 or 3 of the dozen or so works I get for each issue, so I tend towards good reviews. Heck, why even finish reading a dreadful book if I'm not going to review it? If I don't have to submit to the tedium, I'll usually just skim it and it aside and read/review something else.

The main exception is when a book is not very good, but there is something "interestingly bad" about it. Isn't it just as boring for the readers of the review when the entire review consists of the usual list of negatives. But when a book fails in a new and interesting way, then I can write an interesting negative review. Recently I reviewed a work that was trying to do two things at once. It did both fairly well, but failed overall because the two goals were incompatible. That is a bit more interesting to write about than inelegant mechanics or lousy verisimilitude, or other such common problems.

I would love to see more "ambitious failures" in my mailbox.

Cheers

 

[Numion]

Note that I don't agree with the notion that the average of all reviews should be 3.00... not all reviewers review all products, and discerning reviewers stop buying stuff they consider substandard, so I think a lot of "low end scores" get factored out of the equation. That said, I do think some reviewers are more generous than others.

Maybe the averaging method should then be something else than arithmetic. Give more weight to the bad reviews, use geometric average or whatnot. If the reviews are mostly raves about the reviewers favourite products, it's not going to be as useful as it could be.

For one thing you could add a voting system, so that each product would have a public voting rate and a reviewer rate.

 

[Psion]

Maybe the averaging method should then be something else than arithmetic. Give more weight to the bad reviews, use geometric average or whatnot.

Eh... we considered weighting, and the truth is, you can fiddle with it only so much. Making the average equal 3.00 by some method will only tell you so much. Actually reading the reviews, especially of reviewers who you have identified as having sound reasoning and/or views that compare with yours, is going to tell you more about a product that an arcanely formulated number with no real persepective attached to it ever will.

 

[Mark]

(snip)

Simon Collins

Welcome to the boards...

 

[Nightfall]

And here I was thinking he was going to pan something REALLY good, like the Monsters Handbook or even BoEM III.