My point was not that there's no way you guys could do it - more that, why on Earth should you? Of course I'm not going to stop anyone who wants to, but your efforts could be far better spent. And what reason is there not to just lift the time requirement and write the reviews normally? Even if it's just a review for some mediocre demo, cranking them out mechanically just for the sake of hitting some arbitrary number is going to hurt their quality.

That's why it's called a challenge. Competitive people seek challenges, and this seems like a very tough challenge. I think it's an even bigger challenge is to crank out consistently good reviews, which would really be an accomplishment.

Exactly; it's a challenge for its own sake: masturbatory. I dislike the idea of something like MA and its reviews used for such a purpose, especially considering in this case you can't argue that the restrictions of this challenge are opposed to quality reviewing.

I won't stop anyone, and my posts here aren't meant to voice the "official" MA stance or whatever, but I just wanted to make known my opinion on the matter.

But if one is able to consistently write competent reviews, wouldn't that help the site out as well?

Sure, but the whole point of the challenge makes it artificially difficult to do so. Why impose silly restrictions and try to write quality reviews despite them, when you could just write quality reviews without the restrictions?

I completely see where you're coming from. Some people really dig challenges though. My point is, if it can potentially help out the site with good reviews (and a lot of them), and people will enjoy it, what's the harm in it?

There should be no harm if the reviews are good quality.

Even if the motive is masturbatory, if it produces good quality reviews than the motives should not matter. Nobody is going to read a review for X album, knowing the processes in which the review was conceived. It's the end product of the review itself, and what it entails, which is the most important aspect of writing reviews, not whether or not it was involved in a competition of sorts.

It's just a condensed version of the challenge we already have really. Besides, how bad could the reviews be? We have a mod staff to prevent anything bad from getting in.

Yes... Yes we have...

Speaking for myself, I write the best when I'm under pressure, particularly time constraints. I have well over 50 albums that I've been listening to for a really long time that I think I'd be able to do a solid review for within an hour, though truth be told I'd probably write many of them in half an hour since I like to get at least 5 hours of sleep every night.

You're telling me this as if it's something I don't know. The point isn't that they wouldn't be good, the point is without the challenge they would undoubtedly be better.


The bare minimum for acceptance isn't a good goal to shoot for.

Hmmm... I'd kept quiet so far because I felt like I was the only discordant voice, but now I may indeed say I agree with failsafeman on this one.

The other Challenge is collective. This one is individual, and I may add elitist (seriously, who could reasonably take up such a contest? mainly you, hells_unicorn, caspian, Perplexed_Sjel and a few others). That's a huge difference. Of course the more reviews, the better, nothing wrong with that - on the contrary. But I'm afraid such a challenge would be unlikely to encourage quality over quantity.

I'm not suggesting the other Challenge is perfect (its flaws are all too obvious), should remain the only one or whatever. I'm not opposed to any other "reviewing event", far from that. It's just I've serious doubts about the efficiency of this very one.

Well, it is true that this sort of challenge would likely be exclusive, but individual achievement may not necessarily be a bad thing to encourage as well, though I wouldn't say that the primary challenge doesn't do this. I understand the objections here, it would likely be an exclusive challenge, I would do this more as something to test myself rather than something in order to gain recognition from anyone. I may be inclined to try plugging Septic Tomb's idea into the next official review challenge just to see if I could pull it off.

If the reviews are judged the same as any other reviews, I don't see how it would matter why they came about. Sure, the goal would be to crank out 24 reviews but if only 3 of them from one person are accepted that were submitted within the 24 hour period, it doesn't reduce the quality of the website's material. I think the challenge would be less in writing 24 reviews in one day and more in writing 24 acceptable reviews in one day. In a sense, it is more a challenge for the writer to maintain a level of acceptable writing than anything. Its almost more a challenge in quality then in quantity because they would still have to be acceptable reviews.

No, the point you're missing is that the people who would actually participate in this contest would undoubtedly be our better reviewers; people from whom we've come to accept much, much more than the bare minimum for acceptance. I would far rather see our best reviewers challenge themselves to come up with a handful of reviews of superior quality than 24 mediocre ones in one day. If you can't tell the difference between a barely-acceptable 3-pointer and a really good 8-pointer (which many of the people thinking about participating in this challenge have shown themselves capable of), well, I guess I don't know what to tell you.

I don't think that those reviewers would write sub-par reviews just to meet the challenge. Also, the queue mods have come to know what to accept from certain users. I doubt that a sub par review from them would be accepted and it would be rejected on the grounds that it is nowhere near their level of writing.

Maybe there would be a whole slew of sub par reviews from the top reviewers. I don't see that happening however.

That's not how it works. You don't know what you're talking about. It would be silly to reject a review based on a user's previous review quality.

Oh c'mon failsafeman, he's got a vaild and solid point.



I don't see why this is so such a problem to allow/comprehend if this is kept as a standard.

Care to explain how?

I submitted a few reviews recently not even knowing of this challenge.

One the day before, one during (here is the link), and one afterwards. The one after hasn't been accepted yet (nor rejected), but there are already reviews up and posted from today...is there a reason mine is taking a bit longer to get posted? Is it because the mods have been overwhelmed with all the new reviews that they're taking a break?

Does that just mean they're taking a bit longer to consider it? Do some mods only like to review for certain genres, bands they've heard of, etc?

I read somewhere (I believe) that it can take a few days for a review submission to be accepted or rejected, could someone clarify that for me please?

In the past all my submissions were up within hours.

But I can understand if everyone was submitting reviews all of the sudden that they'd want a break.

Be patient, please. It can take up to a week (a fortnight, in rare cases) for a review to get accepted.

Probably not. We don't exactly work the queue linearly, but in a semi-random way, that at least I base on titles and band names that interest me. That may of course lead to one being a bit predisposed to certain genres, but I doubt that anyone is actively refusing to read reviews for a certain genre.



Well yes, it can take a few days. A varying influx of reviews, some moderator doing something else, one might need time to think about a review, time to explore suspicions of plagiarism etc. And then of course, there's the randomness of the approach.

So well, please be patient folks. (Even more so in the reports queue...)

What I quoted, that this is a challenge that some may interpret as "masturbatory" but in a sense it should be about being able to write these reviews in the amount of time while keeping up the standard that is held for writing reviews that people have come to be expected for.

Of course, I can't say everyone will follow that rule but at least it's what we would hope for.

Really? If Napero or OSS or Hell_Unicorn or whoever wrote a review like any number of numerous crap reviews that exist on this site would it be rejected because the author is clearly able to write far better or would it be accepted because it "meets criteria?" The reviewers that submit often are recognized and known for writing excellent material. I doubt that any reviews from them would be accepted if they were written in the same barely legible manner of the 13 year old dyslexic kids who submit reviews and get accepted.

If Abominatrix submitted a review like this:

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=207#106224

Would it be accepted? I would hope not.

... but that would be unfair, and ofcourse as failsafeman said, silly.
On the other hand, a competition of 24 reviews per 24 hours might be good if done for virgin albums especially if they are unknown. What I mean is that even if a reviewer of high-quality reviewing did sub-par ( but still acceptable) reviews just to win the challenge, then at least these virgin ( and unknown) albums would have a review instead of having none. I said unknown ,however, because if those experienced reviewers did sub-par reviews for more known virgin albums, then they might regret it since they would have wanted to do a high-quality review for this specific album after the challenge ends, and it would be silly to edit the review they did for it previously.

The best quality review in 24 hours challenge that failsafeman suggested seems more interesting though.

If the author was Napero, OSS or Abominatrix, well, yes they would be accepted. Mod reviews need no approval.

hells_unicorn, on the other hand... well, no way.

Another idea:
one review written in 24h, but the release is picked by a moderator; hence are the chances rather equally distributed that this one is 'new' to everybody and the challenge would be to write the best one in the given time frame.

It might be best to do it on obscure material, to avoid the problem of knowing it, and the ones who participate will get a download link to this piece of audible art. It is a little like the suggestion made by failsafeman before.

Another idea I played with a few years ago was that we could have a contest on a specific release. A well-known, relatively little reviewed one, with a day or a week to write. A panel would decide who is the winner, and we might even have a prize of some insignificant kind.

EDIT: ah, I misread oneyoudontknow, he meant the same, I believe.

Nearly, some good but overlooked band, i.e. ideally no reviews, would be something I would suggest, but beside this, yes, we talk about the same thing.

Your suggestion of a longer timeframe might be better than mine; only one day. Maybe a weekend should fit the purpose, starting on friday.

Perhaps extend that to the best two or three reviews for that album, instead of just one winner in that case? For all the reviews that would be written for that album, it wouldn't hurt to keep the few best ones to provide a well-rounded selection.

In fact, who is to say that a contest can't focus on more than one album at once? Pick three virgin albums, the top review(s) for each album would be the winners of the contest.

The point which so many people seem to be missing is that imposing arbitrary restrictions which make it more difficult to write a quality review is detrimental to the potential quality of the review no matter what. Imagine a review written under the restrictions of this challenge that meets the reviewer's personal standards; then imagine that same review written without such time restrictions, where the reviewer has had time to think about it more, come back later and revise it, take the time to proofread and fact-check, listen to similar music for traces of influence, etc. The review would undoubtedly have been much better written outside of the challenge.


Poor example, as that's not acceptable by the site's current standards anyway. I nuked it (in case you might think so, no, not just to make a point or weaken yours). A review with some decent musical description and no spelling, grammar, or formatting errors is almost definitely going to be accepted, barring breaking the rules in some other way. Sorry to say, hells_unicorn (and others, not to single him out) have written LOTS of reviews not up to their personal standards. Considering those standards are constantly changing (getting better, hopefully) it's very hard to pin down exactly what they are in the first place in a given point in time. Is the reviewer's current best his new standard? Is it his worst review you still like? Is it some theoretical review you've come up with after averaging his reviews' quality? Speaking for myself, I almost never give any reviewers "special treatment," except that often I will give the better ones more detailed advice on how to fix their reviews. I remember pointing out to h_u one time in a reject message that his review had way too much stupid OT ranting, and in another suggesting that ANA had a learning disability, with examples in both cases; both reviews were re-submitted with the appropriate changes and later accepted. It's not a question of who the review is coming from, but rather how high it aims; for example a short review going through musical description, valuation, and perhaps some explanation of context is almost guaranteed to get accepted if written without mistakes for a relatively unknown album. A longer review, usually written for a well-known album (but not always), with theoretical analysis, in-depth musical description, etc. I tend to be much stricter with. The challenge is much more likely to produce the former type, and thus unlikely to have them rejected. Anyway, as Naps pointed out, Abom, OSS, and Naps are all mods and thus their reviews are automatically accepted.


A fair idea. I would much rather see a contest based on quality rather than quantity; not necessarily with official judges or whatever, but rather maybe just everyone could pick their favorites and explain why they like them.

The thing about picking an album though, is that either Naps or OYDK is the way we'd have to go to be fair; either something no one knows, or something everyone is familiar with. Otherwise it could end up being totally unfair; for example if the given album was some obscure NWOBHM album that I happened to already know, while no one else did, or maybe it's some modern death metal album from a scene Noktorn knows well though he hasn't heard that particular album yet. Maybe a small selection of albums from different genres could be picked, and people could choose the one they're most comfortable with?

Agreed. A weekend is a sufficient timeframe, and especially if people need a couple of spins before writing, a day is too short for really valid opinions.

I'd certainly provide the modding needed for this.

Failsafe, I am glad you nuked that example and I would have been somewhat bothered had you not.

I completely understand where you are coming from. I just don't think it would hurt to try this kind of game. I doubt we would see many people even attempting the challenge.

About this other concept... How about each mod selecting an unreviewed album from each major genre. Challenge being, that the best reviews from those albums win and that each person can write only one review per albums selected for each genre. A weekend would be a good time frame for this.

I do like these review games however. I find myself writing much during them.

EDIT: On second thought, too many releases open to review do decrease the challenge of writing "against" the others.

Yes, maybe three to four genres shouldbe covered. I have already some releases in my mind, so how do we deal with the suggestions? Should they be posted publically or hidden? All the mails to Napero or how should it be done???

There would have to be at least a couple, as every reviewer has his/her specialty. Having one album and making it black metal or whatever would immediately skew the challenge in certain reviewers' favor, while making it power metal would skew it back in the opposite direction (more or less).

Honestly I'm not sure exactly how the challenge would be better: obscure albums no one knows, or classic albums everyone knows; the former way seems more fair in terms of leveling the playing field, however the latter kind of album seems like it would have a lot more that could be said about it. I mean, a challenge to write a review for some 3rd-generation Darkthrone clone doesn't seem like it would be a lot of fun, unless reviewers started jumping through hoops to say "this is boring and derivative" in the funniest way possible.

There can always be a "power metal review challenge" one weekend and a "black metal review challenge" the next weekend or something. I think I am in still in favor of having three or four albums chosen from each genre and have each challenger review one album from each genre of the choices given.

If this new idea does go ahead, anyone have any ideas for the times when it should occur?

I wouldn't object to starting up the first one, just need an idea for a good time to plan for it. Anything else that would need to be considered for it?

Well, there's a tiny problem that needs to be solved: the distribution of the album to be reviewed. I don't know anything about the modern day systems, and I can't help with that, but I'd be glad to work on the challenge otherwise. I believe the best way to proceed would be to have a series of challenges on consecutive weekends, with different genres each time.

How about someone more versed in the way of up/downloading taking care of the technical side, and Napero handling the modding, assembling the panel and acting as a contact person on the staff's side? I think I already have an overlooked basic heavy metal release in mind for the first challenge, and we could arrange a trial challenge next weekend.

Any takers?

One of us could probably set it up so that the album can be distributed through a system such a rapidshare, sendspace or easy-share or the like. It wouldn't be difficult to get that done. The problem arises as to whether you're sure such links should be posted on MA. I suppose, a blogspot site could be set up for the distribution of the albums.

The only other option short of distribution is expecting users to find the albums themselves. But that can cause a hit-and-miss situation, sadly.

Or we could provide the link by PM upon a request. Those with teh komputa skillz could find them themselves pretty easily, and the ones on the Napero level of internet intelligence could ask a dedicated provider for a download link. Also, using releases that are legally downlodable is a good solution (and gives me an idea on a good release for the thrash edition...).