hey guys,
just thought i'd poke my head in and say something here since anime-planet is getting brought up a bit
i first wanted to speak about my own experiences with the review system here, which mirrors what ultima/requiem/some others are saying.
i went off on a random tangent one day and decided to post tons of my reviews here. most of them were for rare series (since i tend to watch lots of those
) and others were for well known ones such as KGNE, Princess Tutu, etc. most of the reviews i added were the only review for that series.
anyways, though some were definitely not up to par, most of my reviews, i feel, are/were well written, descriptive, and informative. certainly not two sentences long or anything bad. for most of my reviews, i got good ratings. but for quite a few, especially the ones where my opinion might have been different than the norm, i would get terrible ratings for no reason. obviously because people disagreed with the sentiment. after watching this happen over and over, i finally decided to remove all of my reviews and handle it elsewhere.
And again your ego. If people like your reviews they won't care about being rated bad.
here's the thing, though. it's a little discouraging to put a lot of energy into reviews (mine always take at least 15-30 minutes) and then see them shot down because people are immature asshats who want to bring down your rating. keep in mind that if there are a lot of reviews, this also puts yours down on the bottom where people might not even read it. sometimes all it takes is one review for people to know they want to see/not see a series, so guess how much impact mine has at the bottom of 10 reviews? probably zero. is it an ego thing? damn straight it is... if i write a good, thoughtful review, why does mine deserve to be down under a review of someone who wrote 3 lines saying "wow i didnt like this, it sucked" with a -5 rating, just because people are jackasses and want to ruin my score? it's discouraging, period, and it will drive people away.
so i dunno. i understand that you might think wanting to change the system is elitist, but you also should be understanding why people are saying what they are saying. i'm sure for those who are upset, they are wondering why they bother spending time making something they are PROUD of, only to have it be not read and appreciated (potentially, since its at the bottom of the list), marked down, etc. and regardless of if people are talking about anime-planet or not, it *will* make people want to post reviews elsewhere where they are appreciated. if i hadn't made my own system, i still would have deleted them all from anidb and then offered them to somewhere else such as themanime, etc.
now, as far as the my site vs anidb thing that seems to be coming up, i just wanted everyone to know that i didn't make a reviews db to spite anidb (we are partner sites after all) or because i am pissed off at exp or how the anidb system works. anidb has succeeded and DOES succeed for what it is: a very large anime community, run by the community, for the community. this means everyone has a chance at reviewing, voting on series, etc. this is a system many people want, and that's cool. that's why i'm all for trying exp and "the other side"'s way of modifying the review system. for the majority of the people here, the "everyone gets to participate 100%" thing is what's needed, and it works! for my site, i decided to make it sort of half and half... and that works too on my end.
so yeah.. just thought i'd throw that in. i don't think it's wise to just throw away people's opinions as "this is just your ego talking", because obviously quite a few of the lengthy/good reviewers agree with the sentiment, and it isn't always a bad thing that it's related to ego.