Okay, I am extremely pissed off. I submitted two reviews today only to have them both be rejected by different admins, one for being too detailed, the other for not being detailed enough. I will admit I should not have written a song-by-song review, but in the other review I honestly tried my best to describe the music to the best of my ability, yet it still was rejected. And then after re-writing the first review to have it not be a song-by-song review it was again rejected because I still didn't go into enough detail.

Don't bother looking for either of these reviews, I have deleted them, and the odds of me writing more reviews on this website are pretty slim.

I honestly think that all these guidelines for writing reviews are bullshit and no other website has these rules. Other sites you simply write your review, and unless it contains stuff that is clearly inappropriate such as hate speech or if what you are saying is irrelevant, your review is approved, or else it is added immediately without needing to be approved. I can completely understand having strict guidelines for submitting information regarding bands, but reviews are different as they are more opinion-based. Honestly, with all these rules about what must be included in the reviews it feels like high school again and being graded on writing a report, and not at all like a place where metalheads can go to share how they honestly feel about bands, albums, etc.

I honestly am not trying to cause trouble, but if you admins have a problem with me speaking my mind then go ahead and ban me. I will say though that I myself am in a band which is listed on this site and most likely will return at some point to update it, but I won't be writing more reviews. Hell, the only reason why I was even writing reviews in the first place was to improve my rank so I could edit information about my own band. And I also think the ranking system is bullshit and its stupid that you have to be a high-ranking member in order to edit your own information.

Peace! \m/

The ranking system exists for a very good reason. Without it, band pages would be constantly vandalized, edited poorly/improperly by well-meaning users or otherwise made worse than they currently are. Demonstrating to us that you have some understanding of how the site functions via submitting bands and reports (which both earn points) eventually earns you the privilege to edit data on your own or respond to reports made by other members.

We pride ourselves in having high quality reviews posted on our site. Our review guidelines exist so that our reviews have a higher quality standard than "anything goes" sites like Amazon and are more representative of fans' criticisms of the music than promo-fueled professional review sites that may be subject to all sorts of industry politics. If you're interested in improving the quality of your reviews so that they might be accepted, I encourage you to spend some time going through already-accepted reviews and, if you like, posting your rejected reviews in the Review Feedback Workshop thread here on the forums. If you're not interested in writing acceptable reviews, ceasing to submit more unacceptable reviews will be no big loss to us.

Well, the review standards exist for a reason and are same for everyone. I guess their point, in short, is that no one likes reading crappy reviews. I'm sure both moderators who rejected your reviews genuinely believed they weren't good enough for the site despite your best efforts, though, it's generally always possible that mistakes happen, since we're all humans too.

Anyway, writing reviews isn't that easy. If you change your mind, you could try asking for more detailed feedback and try for example the Review Feedback Workshop thread.

Speaking your mind is nothing to be banned for.

The rank / data control system is there partly for the reason you mentioned - people editing their own information. There's a sadly and surprisingly large group of people who would either remove all mentions of awkward moments or make up fancy-looking stuff. You can always report the errors and link good sources, the information will be fixed eventually.

Edit: he's still pretty quick, even if he is not batman!

It was this Agalloch review, right? We don't have many rules concerning reviews ( read them here: http://www.metal-archives.com/content/rules). One of them is to avoid track by tracks, something you didn't. It was quite easy to follow that rule (not a very restraining one either). When you submitted your review for the 2nd time, you removed this track by track analysis hence making the review...incomplete. I, for one, think you're overreacting here. We're not THAT restricting towards reviewers and from what I remember, your review was perfectly acceptable outside of the track by track thing.

And yeah, complaining about ranks is ridiculous, it's not "your" information even if it's your band. I'm sure you wouldn't feel the same way if the page was vandalised by a troll.

Am I the only one who despises this kind of passive-aggressive baiting and whining? Come on now. You have a grievance, fine, expressing it civilly will not get you banned, and you know that, that line invariably seems to be thrown in there to give oneself more importance or something.