Moving forward, Ride into Glory will no longer be rating releases in our reviews.
When I first started Ride into Glory, I wanted to make sure I used a 100 point rating system so that I could still contribute to Metal Archives (MA) by cross-posting my content over there. In my opinion, MA is the single most important metal resource on the internet bar none and I wanted to do my part. Now this was the rationale behind the system back when it was just me here at the site and at this point I’ve come to hate it.
The site’s grown quite a bit since then to say the least and the rating system hasn’t translated very well to having a larger team. A 90/100 means something entirely different to each author and I’m sure it has a different meaning to each reader as well. At some point, it just becomes too subjective and arbitrary to justify.
After a while of feeling this way, it became clear to me that ratings weren’t really adding much benefit. Bands, labels, and PR folk can use them to help promote bands, which can help them get some traction, but this is pretty much the only major benefit in my opinion. Some readers can use them to shortcut the article entirely, but that kinda goes against the point doesn’t it? Besides, out of principle we only review and premiere stuff we like or see potential in. Ride into Glory only publishes 3 articles per week at most and I want to make sure that each of those articles highlights a band or release worth your time. Since we operate that way, it means our ratings effectively bottomed out at 80% and besides, what the hell is the meaningful difference between an 85 or an 86?
We’d love to hear what you guys think of this decision in the comments!
7 Comments
Allen Jerkins · July 3, 2020 at 12:37 pm
Makes perfect sense to me, Marco- things should be as simple as they can be, as complex as they must be.
Aiden · July 3, 2020 at 1:06 pm
No need for a number. The review should say it all. I think we have all read those silly reviews in the likes of Terrorizer years ago where they would ramble on talking about the likes of Plato and then call something ‘avant garde’ and we were all supposed to know what they were on about. Infuriating.
Jan · July 4, 2020 at 6:37 am
Agree, this makes sense.The ratings were never very important to me. Although I use them at MA, where they are useful to decide which album of an older bands discography one should explore first. If you want to contribute still, there is nothing to hinder you adding a rating for your own reviews over there.
Gerald King · July 4, 2020 at 6:55 am
Wouldnt want to make any snowflakes sad by deducting points.The poor boo boos would be devastated and have to tearfully blog to all their “friends” for the next 2 weeks.
ParallelofDeath · July 5, 2020 at 3:25 pm
Right on. I read ever review regardless and most ratings seemed to be in the same range and thus kind of meaningless, as you pointed out. Keep up the great work!
javi · July 16, 2020 at 3:50 pm
Good choice
Daniel Fernando Orozco · July 24, 2020 at 4:05 pm
I am pretty sure if we are here putting our energy towards writing an article about an album, I am sure that would be because we really like that album so I say nay to numbers myself.