Originally posted by musicluva123: Fighting4Justice, THANK YOU! That's what I was trying to say, but I wasn't really specific about it. You explained it perfectly, bruh.
If that's the case then I misunderstood you earlier..lol
I like the Metacritic system. I think the numerical grade is better because it's less discrete and more informative than letters or stars (for instance, 7 albums can end up with 5 star ratings at the end of the year, but which is the better one? At least on a numerical scale, we can definitively say 97>95>94>93=93, or something like that). I think if people want to put a letter or star grade, that's fine, but in brackets, just go along the scale and match up a numerical score. Failing to put a numerical grade will leave the Moderator with the power to assign a number. But since it's YOUR review, you should decide whether it's a high A- grade (84) or low A- grade (80) you're assigning, for instance. It could make a big difference.
Posts: 8671 | Location: Canada | Registered: October 26, 2005
Metacritic doesn't work that way, though. That's my argument. They come up with their score by converting ratings into scores and averaging them to get the average score. Reviewers come up with the ratings (letter or star), and Metacritic uses that to get the METASCORE. That's not how we're doing it. I don't see how that's hard to understand.
Here's how Metacritic actually works:
quote:
A: To put it simply, a METASCORE is a weighted average of reviews from national critics and publications for a given movie, book, TV show, videogame, or album. For those of you who enjoy math, read further.
The basic concept is the same for each of the genres (except books, which has a unique system) currently included in our site. Let's use a fictional movie--'Iron Chef vs. Godzilla'--as an example.
Our staffers will go through every publication on our Film Publications list (see below) looking for reviews for Iron Chef vs. Godzilla. For each review found, we will take the score given by the critic and convert it to a 0-100 point scale. (For those critics who do not provide a score, we'll assign a score from 0-100 based on the general impression given by the review.). These individual critic scores are then averaged together to come up with an overall score.
This overall score, or METASCORE, is a weighted average of the individual critic scores. Why a weighted average? When selecting our source publications, we noticed that some critics consistently write better (more detailed, more insightful, more articulate) reviews than others. In addition, some critics and/or publications typically have more prestige and weight in the industry than others. To reflect these factors, we have assigned weights to each publication (and, in the case of film, to individual critics as well), thus making some publications count more in the METASCORE calculations than others.
In addition, for our film and music sections, all of the weighted averages are normalized before generating the METASCORE. To put it another way that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an exam in high school or college, all of our movies, games, and CDs are graded on a curve. Thus the METASCORE may be higher or lower than the true weighted average of the individual reviews, thanks to this normalization calculation. Normalization causes the scores to be spread out over a wider range, instead of being clumped together. Generally, higher scores are pushed higher, and lower scores are pushed lower. Unlike in high school, this is a good thing, since it provides more of a distinction between scores and allows you to better compare scores across movies (or CDs).
The resulting METASCORE, then, is a good indication of how a particular movie/game/CD was reviewed. The better the reviews, the higher the score will be; the worse the reviews, the lower the score will be. Ideally, if reviews are completely divided between good and bad, the METASCORE should be close to 50.
I think my issue with DoubleD's conversion is that it's not how Metacritic actually determines their score. If the reviewers were to go by a 100 point scale, wouldn't it be harder to rate as opposed to a star rating? You can use a letter or star grade and use the 100 point/Metacritic scale to determine its score.
Since everyone is trying to follow the Metacritic method, I was just suggesting that we should do this. I'm not here nor there. I just thought it was important to point out how Metacritic actually comes up with their score, since no one really knows.
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I know exactly how Metacritic scores it. I'm always on that site, and I'm extremely familiar with it. Torontophenom does as well; we discussed it in the past.
If people are comfortable giving a number, then I don't see the problem. In the past when I graded, I gave scores out of 10 like 9.3 or something. I could easily convert that to 93/100.
The problem with Metacritic is that critics don't critique with Metacritic in mind, so they will have their own scale, which is why they have to convert to a numerical score if the review scored in stars or by letters. Some critics actually use numbers like Pitchfork I believe.
Since we are grading with Metacritic in mind, then we can all decide on scale that works the best and use that consistently. I prefer numbers for the reasons I already stated. Maybe others do not see it that way. Maybe others want to grade with stars like you. I don't know. I think it's just a matter of preference. I personally hate grading with stars because it's not flexible. Sometimes I think 3.5 stars is too low, yet 4.0 stars is too high. With numbers, I can go with something that would be the equivalent of 3.75 stars, but there's really no such thing as 3.75 stars on the 5-star grade.
Posts: 8671 | Location: Canada | Registered: October 26, 2005
Their Grade Converts To A or A+ = 100 A- = 91 B+ = 83 B = 75 B- = 67 C+ = 58 C = 50 C- = 42 D+ = 33 D = 25 D- = 16 F+ = 8 F or F- = 0
We can use this too. The scale I gave was MY personal scale that I use to do reviews.
Fine. Since DoubleD's, yours and mines are all different, then we should just go by the Metacritic scale. But that depends on all the other posters, if they like to or not.
Originally posted by torontophenom: Kelly Clarkson (2009) - All I Ever Wanted
Finally Kelly is back in top form with her latest effort. After the critical and commercial disappointment of "My December", Kelly returns to her Pop/Rock heavy hook influenced tunes and hits it right on the nose with this new album. She proves with this effort that she is the most versatile American Idol winner. The Ryan Tedder produced tracks are among the biggest standouts here which include the crazy infectious "If I Can't Have You" as it mixes techno with rock which is destined to be a single, "Save You" which channels Kelly's her inner sympathy for a relationship gone bad, "Impossible" where Clarkson delivers a power vocal performance & Already Gone" which does have some similarity to Beyonce's "Halo" which is also produced by Tedder. Clarkson's "Already Gone" is the superior track. Clarkson's vocals on "Already Gone" is an ode to Sarah McLachlan Besides the Tedder tracks, other standouts include "Long Shot" which was a song that Katy Perry co-penned and you so can tell this was supposed to be a Katy Perry song but Kelly did a great job with this track. The production is stellar, its single material and its fun overall. Clarkson also has a very good shot at landing another Female Pop Vocal win again at the Grammys next year with this next track titled "Cry". The song will go down as a Clarkson classic. Other notable tracks include the "Don't Let Me Stop You" & "All I Ever Wanted". It's actually quite amusing that "My Life Would Suck Without You" is one of the weaker tracks on this album as it's the first single. Overall, this album is jam packed with so many single choices. Clarkson will have no problem achieving a string of successful hits on this album something which could not be said with her previous effort "My December". Expect this album to receive a Pop Vocal Album nomination at next years Grammy Awards.
Score: 83
T ---
I changed your score to an 83 since that now equates to a B+.
Originally posted by torontophenom: Kelly Clarkson (2009) - All I Ever Wanted
Finally Kelly is back in top form with her latest effort. After the critical and commercial disappointment of "My December", Kelly returns to her Pop/Rock heavy hook influenced tunes and hits it right on the nose with this new album. She proves with this effort that she is the most versatile American Idol winner. The Ryan Tedder produced tracks are among the biggest standouts here which include the crazy infectious "If I Can't Have You" as it mixes techno with rock which is destined to be a single, "Save You" which channels Kelly's her inner sympathy for a relationship gone bad, "Impossible" where Clarkson delivers a power vocal performance & Already Gone" which does have some similarity to Beyonce's "Halo" which is also produced by Tedder. Clarkson's "Already Gone" is the superior track. Clarkson's vocals on "Already Gone" is an ode to Sarah McLachlan Besides the Tedder tracks, other standouts include "Long Shot" which was a song that Katy Perry co-penned and you so can tell this was supposed to be a Katy Perry song but Kelly did a great job with this track. The production is stellar, its single material and its fun overall. Clarkson also has a very good shot at landing another Female Pop Vocal win again at the Grammys next year with this next track titled "Cry". The song will go down as a Clarkson classic. Other notable tracks include the "Don't Let Me Stop You" & "All I Ever Wanted". It's actually quite amusing that "My Life Would Suck Without You" is one of the weaker tracks on this album as it's the first single. Overall, this album is jam packed with so many single choices. Clarkson will have no problem achieving a string of successful hits on this album something which could not be said with her previous effort "My December". Expect this album to receive a Pop Vocal Album nomination at next years Grammy Awards.
Score: 83
T ---
I changed your score to an 83 since that now equates to a B+.
Why would you change it to an 83? I ranked it an 89. An 89 by your scale is a B+
We're going by the Metacritic scale. That means you have to use either a star or letter grade, and follow the scale to find out the number/score, which is what I've been trying to say for the longest but couldn't really explain it.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: musicluva123,
I think you guys are making things just too complicated now. I notice DoubleD just changed the scale system on the first page for a 3rd time...lol
I think it would be best if we could rate it numerically. It shows what grade percentage were giving the album instead of "X" number of Stars or letter grades. It distinguished which albums are better if they are both ranked a B+ and one of the abums was scored a 74 and the other a 76. This way we know the album ranked 76 would be higher rather than both just receiving a B+.
Also, can I go ahead and review/grade albums that don't have two reviews? My assumption is that some of the albums I (and others, for sure) get won't be heard by that many people on the board. But maybe my review will then pique their interest?
Originally posted by torontophenom: I think you guys are making things just too complicated now. I notice DoubleD just changed the scale system on the first page for a 3rd time...lol
I think it would be best if we could rate it numerically. It shows what grade percentage were giving the album instead of "X" number of Stars or letter grades. It distinguished which albums are better if they are both ranked a B+ and one of the abums was scored a 74 and the other a 76. This way we know the album ranked 76 would be higher rather than both just receiving a B+.
Read my above post. DoubleD is now using the official Metacritic scale.
Originally posted by bildo10: I'm confused by the grading system at the moment.
Also, can I go ahead and review/grade albums that don't have two reviews? My assumption is that some of the albums I (and others, for sure) get won't be heard by that many people on the board. But maybe my review will then pique their interest?
Yes. I intend to do so as well. I think what's going to happen is that we will decide on albums to focus on (popular albums coming out), but if other albums happen to garner some reviews (I'm sure you and I will have a couple similar ones), then it warrants being put up on the list as well.
Posts: 8671 | Location: Canada | Registered: October 26, 2005
But what's so complicated in taking people's percentage rankings of the albums and getting the average of it. That's the most simplest and we get a % figure in the end. Why is there such a big debate about this. We don't have to follow everything specific thing exactly like Metacritic.
So your telling me if I rank an album 3 stars the album will automatically get assigned a 75? What if I think the album deserves a 79? There's a big gap in between what a 3 star album receives which is 75 and a 3.5 star album receives which is 88.
Originally posted by torontophenom: But what's so complicated in taking people's percentage rankings of the albums and getting the average of it. That's the most simplest and we get a % figure in the end. Why is there such a big debate about this. We don't have to follow everything specific thing exactly like Metacritic.
So your telling me if I rank an album 3 stars the album will automatically get assigned a 75? What if I think the album deserves a 79? There's a big gap in between what a 3 star album receives which is 75 and a 3.5 star album receives which is 88.
*sighs*
The actual score is not up to the reviewer. We're going by the Metacritic scale. Aren't we following the Metacritic format? Isn't that easier and should keep down confusion? We should stick to one scale and call it a day.
I'm done with this. I'm getting a headache. lol
And DoubleD, I forgot to say thanks for this thread. I'll post my review for Melinda Doolittle's album tomorrow.
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