It's completely necessary. You can bet some moron would've done 20+ singles in one of the challenges by now if it hadn't been instigated. Furthermore, reviewing singles just has no real benefit to MA if the full length could be reviewed instead. I'm glad the rule is there, definitely.

Somone probably has. This rule has only been implemented for the last 2 challenges, IIRC.

Regardless, you have to consider people new to bands who may want to check out a band by buying a single, just to get a short preview of what the band is about, and they can look at MA to see the highest rated single, etc etc.

That hasn't happened for years. There's this thing called THE INTERNET, where you can download full albums.

Whats the internet?

If you ask me, the value of the 5 single rule is this. Bands that release any number of singles are established, well-known and moneyed groups (If you look at this and past challenges it's been Maiden, Bodom, Nightwish and so on). The full-length releases have been covered many times, and the songs featured (except for any B-sides etc., granted) have been addressed in the past. The reason the same rule doesn't apply to demos which are often of the same length and obscurity is that the material is more often exclusive to that recording and therefore of more value to the site. I'd rather read five reviews of demos than five reviews of singles.

I think singles should be eliminated from the challenge altogether. They're a very easy way of knocking out 5 reviews without much effort. I did one this time and I didn't really want to do it. I only chose to do it to get my numbers up, but I felt dirty doing it. Personally, I'd like to see this being a full-length only challenge, which is why I reviewed ... What? About 80 of them? Maybe more.

I wasn't following this during the 8th challenge, but the data clearly reveals the motivation for the 5-singles rule:

Perplexed_Sjel: 2 singles, 72 other
hells_unicorn: 53 singles, 38 other
DeathRiderDoom: 33 singles, 52 other
OzzyApu: 42 singles, 38 other

I'm updating again, official results for 10 shortly...

this is pretty much what i was getting at before exactly. Also, getting at what Perplexed said - kinda agree. I mean, if this challenge were limited to just full lengths - i wouldn't mind too - much. i always have plenty of obscure stuff to review and i'm sure i can get still get pretty high numbers in the challenge, even if a lot of the bands i listen to only have singles or demos out - there's still a wealth of unreviewed full-lengths, live albms and compilations out there.

Limiting Singles is fair enough, but ONLY full lengths? thats just stupid.

Why is it stupid?

Just look at the data above! It's so easy to review singles, but full-lengths take more time and depth. You can't analyse a full-length anywhere near as quickly as a single and if singles were eliminated from the competition and perhaps if we only stuck to full-lengths, I think the quality of the challenge wouldn't come under scrutiny anymore.

Read what I said.

I respect the single limit, but Demoes, EPs, DVDs are just as if not more important than full lengths in some cases.

Final stats

605 reviews
590 releases
74 reviewers

OzzyApu: 97
Perplexed_Sjel: 91

wow now I feel bad. I had 3 days to crank out 6 reviews and we would've beaten out record.

oh well.

Don't feel too bad - i could/should have cranked out another 20. Saturday i woke up, skated round to pick up a friend, and got drunk all day, and all night. i was planning on cranking out a few that day, as i had been out a lot on Friday too. I definitely could have done more, but i'm pretty sure nowewhere near 100! Awesome work. Cheers to Sisters for the awesome looking stats.

I don't agree. If a band has no full-lengths, fair enough, but if they do, I think they should take precedence over the rest because the vast majority of demos and EP's are just as easy to cover as singles.

Also, well done to Ozzy, you cockmuncher. If caspian is going to write 100 for the next one, I'll write 101.

I don't know. People seem to do away with the analyzing of a full-length pretty quickly as well. I mean, sure, you can go through ten singles in the time you go through one full-length, but either way, I personally think it way too short a time to give justice to a release.

I was going for about eight, maybe ten, this time, but as usual life got in the way. A business trip on Wednesday-Thursday and friends coming over on Thursday evening as well as watching the world cup was more important than writing and I kind of lost the fire for it after that. Oh well...

The result is awesome! No complaints there, I assumed we'd fall short of 400, when I read the pre-challenge posts. Well done, everybody!

As far as individual scores and reviews go, congrats to the top dogs. Ozzy and Perplexed definitely didn't take the easy way out this time, everything they wrote was solid and definitely of decent length and depth. Perhaps Bolth and caspardo could have put just a little bit more effort into some of their works, but I'm personally quite satisfied with everything, really.

And about the singles and rules:

*ahem*

I personally dislike the rule, but since it seems that the majority here agrees with it, I have no problems with it. In any case, looking at the stuff I've read in the past (and I can assure you, there's plenty of it...), I don't see what the problem with singles is: my own qualm is definitely with bare-bones, short, effort-sparing lightweight aluminium doodlings, and it makes no difference if they are on a full-length or a single. I'm quite certain that if I was to settle on a mediocre or bad review, and spared all the effort I had the guts to allow myself, I'd be able to crank out 50 reviews on full-lengths a week, assuming the damn real life did not get in the way. On the other hand, I can easily write more on a single, if I have something to say on it, as in the case of Amorphis and Ajattara, for example, because singles are often definite parts of a band's development, they often get plenty of radio time (at least here), and they may provide interesting insights into the deeper workings of a group. I've written longer and more in-depth reviews on many singles than a lot of regulars do on the average full-lengths. Of course, I don't personally feel like reviewing anything if I don't have something to say on a release, so it's not like I'd be the reviewer with the worst sweatshop attitude here, of course... And I have the modding part to do, as well.

I'd say we need to crack on minimal and superficial blurts, no matter what the release format is, if the intention is to improve the MA and not just count a score.

Anyway, congrats to everybody who participated. I fell exactly 6 reviews short of my own record. Oh, the irony!

All I can say is yaaaay!

Yeah, I wasn't terribly happy with most of my contributions. Just wanted to do something for the review challenge. Most of it was done while tired (all of it was done while drunk) and yeah.. think I'll be redoing some of those reviews sometime.

I'm going to start tracking down various unreviewed demos next time I'm back from the mines, hehe. I will say this: my aim is to beat that 100, BUT if something exciting comes along (or I'm in Iceland) then it will quickly cease to be top priority and I might crank out 20 at the most, who knows.

Maybe album singles. From my measly 4 reviews I wrote for the challenge, one was a single, both songs exclusive to it for 4 years now. Not all singles are merely songs taken from an album, some are new material like eps. And those also take more time reviewing since you can't relate it to any album, you have to describe the sound as much as an album, instead of just stating the big lines.

Anyway, congrats everyone for the effort! I shall - hopefully - contribute more next time, maybe deflowering other virgins before that.

Great overall result, people! And of course I still can't imagine how anyone can do close to a hundred reviews in seven days, I'd probably have problems submitting that many, let alone writing them. Hats off to Ozzy and Perplexed.

I'm very happy with myself for managing to keep a steady pace of three reviews a day. 21 reviews was a lot for me, I don't think I'll be doing that many again. I set out to write a few too many and as a result, most of them could have been better, to be honest.

As for this whole singles rule thing - I did one this time, for the one and only single I've ever owned, so I don't really care either way. That said, I understand the restriction very well, it's definitely there for a reason.

Drat, I really should have gotten off my ass in the last few days. It's not like I didn't have anything to review. Regardless though, the numbers we put in are by no means bad. I'm proud that I more than doubled my last record, even if I did focus on splits and singles. Congrats to everyone who contributed!

Is it easy? Putting together 3 or 4 paragraphs for one, two, or three songs is actually quite a challenge, it commands you to get pretty specific. I wrote every single one of those reviews with the intention of absolutely NONE of them would be 3 pointers. The reason why I did a lot of those reviews were because I had collected 4 separate collections of singles, and wanted to remark specifically on songs that I only generally mentioned in most of the full length reviews I had done for the full length albums, not to mention that a fair number of those singles had b-sides that never showed up on the full length (although some did show up on EPs and compilations).

I'm not sure if you were intending to imply that OzzyApu, DeathRiderDoom and I were cheating on that last challenge, but this post really comes off that way, and it also sounds like you're whining about the competition being tilted in someone else's favor. I was under the impression that this was not the idea behind the challenge, but perhaps I was mistaken.

If this is the attitude that everyone is going to take about this, I think I may have to echo failsafeman's idea of getting rid of individual scores being posted. I like challenging myself and I'll keep tabs on my own numbers regardless, and I personally couldn't care less if all or no singles are counted or how many anyone else does, but there definitely needs to be an adjustment in everyone's attitude about this challenge or I don't see much of a point in participating anymore and will just review all of my virgins whenever it fits my fancy.

I write every review with the intention of none of them being 3 pointers regardless of what they are, but I certainly don't feel like I, personally, put as much effort into singles, since most of those feature songs I already know from albums and every single I've heard features redundant remixes, or songs that simply weren't good enough for albums anyway. There's no challenge in writing a review for a single and the general consensus must be similar to my own thoughts since the rules changed to limit the amount of singles featured. I think it was obvious that, on that 8th challenge, the quality wasn't as good because people were doing too many single reviews.

No, I don't think it's cheating, but I do think it's very lazy and a cheap way of upping your numbers. I don't think it's a coincidence that myself and Ozzy started to review more short demos towards the end of the current challenge simply because we were competing to win. When the challenge started it seems as though it was much easier to win than it is now, thus the reason people write reviews for shorter, easier to manage demos and singles because they're not as painstaking to work through as a 60 minute+ full-length. It isn't whining, it's an observation. If I was really that bothered about losing out, I wouldn't compete at all.

If hells_unicorn seriously believes he can guilt-trip anyone into believing he's the good guy with such a transparent performance he's nothing short of delusional.

Hmm, you don't think it is cheating, but then basically you give the definition of the word through your next statement and your comments about yours and Ozzy's behavior towards the end of the challenge. I'm not necessarily trying to split hairs, but this is precisely what annoyed me about your previous statement. Furthermore, I'm going to disagree sharply with your assessment regarding full length releases.

About 65-70% of the singles I ended up reviewing for the May 09' challenge had b-sides, some of them rare live songs that didn't end up on any official live releases. Sometimes these songs end up on some compilation, sometimes they don't, but I personally did not consider it a lazy and cheap way of upping my numbers by giving these songs a paragraph or so of description, while further elaborating specifically on songs I've already heard and giving my opinion on alternate versions of those songs. Furthermore, I can't speak for Ozzy or anyone else, but there isn't a huge difference between the length of my full length reviews versus single reviews.

And as you've said yourself, shorter demos are still floating out there, but the problem isn't the length of the release, it's the quality of the review itself. You can write a really shitty 3 paragraph rant about a full-length that is over an hour long, and you can get in depth about a couple of songs that may or may not be on other releases, although I admit that it is kind of lazy to just rant about a single song on a download-only single.

I'll be honest with you Sjel, I have no problem with you guys changing the rules to make the challenge more profitable to the website, though I most certainly will not participate if you guys cut out live albums, DVDs, EPs and compilations (particularly in the case of rarity compilations or demo rereleased as compilations) but I think everyone here (not just you) needs to hold off on the competitive rhetoric a little. Regardless to your assertions that you wouldn't be here if it was all about winning, every post on this subject gives off that impression.

You've obviously taken it to heart and all I'll say is ... I never stated your particular reviews lacked quality. In fact, I made a general statement with my own reviews for singles included. I will also say that there is obviously a reason the rules changed after the 8th challenge when so many reviews were for singles and I think that says more about the quality of them than I ever could. That wasn't even my assessment remember, it was the assessment of the mods, or whoever is in charge that singles should be limited because reviewing those gives an unfair advantage to certain people and the quality of the single reviews, in general, was not as good.

I have no problem with the rules and no grudges if I lose out to someone else. Ozzy deserved it. He put more effort in than I did. I just think people MOSTLY come to this site to read reviews for full-lengths, not singles.

This doesn't have anything to do with singles being allowed or disallowed, I didn't oppose the move when it was done provided that it was consistently enforced, it didn't make any particular difference to me. However, everyone's attitude about the challenge since when I first started participating has changed pretty drastically, and that is what is bothering me. I only took a small amount of offense at the way you worded your post in response to the stats that sisters put up, but what is really bothering me is the same thing that bothered failsafeman, and that is everyone bitching about A, B, or C.

The fact that this single debate came up again was something that I would have hoped to have avoided, I don't have sympathy towards either side on this issue, but there is also people bitching about MadTransylvanian starting a little early in order to make up for time he would miss due to scheduling (I would have done this too had I realized that most of my week for reviewing would have been shot by 6 or 7 family related things occurring), not to mention all of this arbitrary talk about full lengths being more important than EPs or live DVDs. I'm literally waiting for someone to float the idea that certain bands shouldn't be permitted in the challenge because they might be signed with a major label or otherwise not be obscure enough.

Any way, I'm happy that this challenge went well and that we had a wide participation, I can just do without all of this bickering.

Good heavens, dudes... what the fuck is going on here?

The rules are OK, even if the singles ruling is kinda silly. If someone wishes to limit the numbers of EPs and comps, for example, we will however move to the territory of nitpicking (or, as we say in Finnish, fucking the commas), and you may keep your rules-lawyering challenge at that point for all I care, I won't bother with writing or special modding at that point... I enjoy EPs. This is OK as it is, but I don't really see any problems in including reviews on singles, as I can guarantee that the average single getting a review will CERTAINLY be more readily available to the reader than, say, any of the 80s death metal demos Ozzy reviewed this time. In physical form, that is, someone intending to download it is, after all, unlikely to read reviews first.

I repeat: the problem is associated with bad and under-achieving reviews, NOT the format of the release being reviewed.

This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about.



This is part of the problem, and frankly this notion of arbitrarily determining time lengths and relating it to points awarded completely ignores the quality of the review itself, which I was under the impression was the original thrust of the challenge. If we're aiming at improving the website, I fail to see where a high quality review of a non-full length wouldn't accomplish this.

Indeed. The idea is to make the site better by adding more reviews to it and the challenge still does that. I don't see a reason why we can't discuss things, like possible changes, or alterations for example. I never viewed any of this as bickering, or bitching. Someone offered an interesting stat just before the challenge, I think it was. 10% of the reviews on the site have been produced during challenges, I believe it was, which is really impressive.

Anyway, I'll probably work on a list of virgins next month for the next challenge.

By my stats only about 6% of the total reviews on the site were produced during challenges, but 12.5% of the reviewed releases were first reviewed during a challenge.

What, that you were called out on inflating your numbers for the sake of inflating your numbers without giving a fuck about the purpose of the challenge, and then try to cover it up with bullshit lies (Yeah right, you just happened to get a stack of singles, totally) and appeals to how everyone else is missing the purpose of the challenge while you're a shining beacon of virtue? I don't believe a fucking word you're saying. It is people like you who tried turning this challenge into what failsafeman lamented - an e-penis size-comparison with no regards for quality - and now you have the fucking nerve of accusing others of what you started a year ago and which Sean16 tried to curb with the new rule? Jackass.

We're not having this conversation on here, PM me this stuff if you'd like, but I'm not going to derail this thread any further.

I am disappointed in seeing this challenge develop into a soapbox of petty bickering. If it's not an argument over which formats should be acceptable, or whether you should be allowed to stockpile reviews, it's bitching about how another user deflowered an album before you. It's a game, yes, but it need not develop into a football riot when things don't seem fair to you.

The overall, altruistic purpose of this challenge is to better MA's collection of reviews. For years, this challenge has done that exceptionally. The reviews of its contributors have been overwhelming positive for improving the quality of reviews and the availability of reviews for a wide variety of releases. Like every other review submitted at any other time, it is quality that matters - not quantity.

Everyone understands that individually numbers may matter; being on top, achieving a personal best. But... think of this challenge through its overall purpose. Does cutting the format of a release improve MA; would we be diminishing reviews for releases that don't already have them? would we be ignoring a review that may help a user understand a release better? Is that not what this challenge is supposed to do? The same goes for stockpiling, the same goes for deflowering any release. So long as the quality is up-to-par, and the review achieves the overall purpose of the challenge, then be glad and appreciate that such a review is positively improving the site.

We do not judge reviews differently for the review challenge. Full-lengths are treated the same as EPs or singles. We make no prejudgements on the user or their activities (such as stockpiling). What matters, as Napero noted, is quality. If you have an unacceptable review for any format, it wont be accepted. If you have an "under-achieving" review, it wont be a high pointer, regardless of format. It's never about the format, or the reviewer, or the way the reviewer acts... it is about the review itself, not how it's created, not who created it or what's being reviewed.

Back to the subject of filling in reviews for bands that lack them, I added a Prolific and Unreviewed view that shows bands with 4+ albums but so far not a single review...

This was pretty much the point I was trying to make, and looking back at the decision to discontinue singles past 5, it didn't really do much to change the culture of football rioting that's been brewing here of late. People are free to speculate on my motives to their heart's content on here, frankly I don't give a damn, but I liked this challenge better back before we had people complaining about stockpiling, singles, or yes, even individual scores. I personally did these challenges because they were fun, and because they brought a lot of additional attention to the site, to individual reviewers (including but not limited to myself), and to the music we were reviewing.

I've always tried to be congratulatory towards all winners of these challenges, and I continue to be impressed at how Ozzy and Sjel have pushed the envelop on this thing in the last 3 challenges (including this one). I was happy to see some discussion about some of the material that was reviewed this time around as well, and personally I'd love to yuck it up a bit more with ANationalAcrobat about our divergent views on Motorhead's live albums. Now everyone is accusing each other of A or B, and frankly it isn't a whole lot of fun anymore.

Any way, thank you to both the mods and sisters for their work on this challenge, I am astonished at all the stats that have since become available. I'm personally still finding the idea of dropping individual scores from the equation a little appealing given what it is now leading to, although I know that it is a principle motivator for most of the big contributors continuing to shell out boatloads of reviews.



This is a good resource, I actually bumped into Trust's page a couple weeks ago and I think I may check out some of their stuff soon.

This is very useful for this contest - thanks sisters.

My question for people here is: what reviews written during this challenge did you think were particularly good? I want to see examples of good writing, not arguments about fucking numbers.

For my part, I have enjoyed fellow trad metal fanatic whensunburnsred's contributions. He seems like an Engrishy Gutterscream, and his entertaining descriptions and comparisons hit the nail on the head. Here's an example written for a - gasp! - single.

hells_unicorn inspired me to check out Empire, since I love Tony Martin and anything with his voice in it I will probably enjoy a little bit. I can't find their album yet, but I sampled them on Myspace, and they're good. Very cool hard rock/metal stuff; nicely enjoyable.