What's up with skin reviewers?

[fractalgp]

As I was browsing through some skins here on winamp.com, I came to ask myself this question (as in subject). The reason? They seem to be dealing out 5-star ratings to every skin they review, and that pisses me off. It seems the reviewers don't have respect for their ovn ratings. Listing all 5-star skins will help you NOTHING if you are lookings for a REALLY good skin, because most of the shit submitted are given ratings of 4 and up! When 0.1% of the skins here at winamp.com are any good for eveyday use, you really could have hoped that the 5-star rating was reserved for the GOOD skins, but no.

Delete all ratings, kick the reviewers to hell, and start over, the ratings of today are of NO USE WHATSOEVER!

Seriously, as an example, do YOU find the skin "Lady Lost in Time" (http://www.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentFlag=S=32557) to be a GOOD skin that DESERVES 5 stars (as it were given in the beginning by "CO", although it seems normal people's votes are pulling it down (it's at 3,5 at the moment))? Here's a snippet from the review: "I haven't seen such exceptional design in a long time. The imagery stimulates not only the eyes, but the mind as well. Color appropriately projects the mood"

JESUS! Take a look at the damn skin! "The imagery"?? I see no imagery, I see the contours of a naked female. "Color projects the mood"?? Those grey-blue colors? Hell, you can't even SEE the play-buttons! And where the HELL is my shuffle and repeat-buttons? And how on earth am I gonna use THAT equalizer?? This skin is absolutely useless!

Bottom line: Winamp.com's reivewers SUCK. Thank you for your attention.

[chiquita chad]

theres a bunch-o-garbage
there isnt even one 5 star skin currently
once in a while on will sneak through as a 4 star and somehow get put under the 5 star section
research b4 typing

[fractalgp]

Doesn't matter, my point is that the skin archive is flooded with too many shitty skins with too high ratings. 5 or 4.5, what's the difference, the shitty ones should be at 0-2.5 anyway, whitch most of them ARE NOT.

[fractalgp]

BTW: those vBcodes messed up the URL to that lousy skin I mentioned; the correct one is:
http://www.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentId=32557&componentFlag=S

[Namelessv1]

Yes, well, once u get used to this sorta crap, the ratings dont really matter to u anymore. Skinning for urself is probably the most important thing. Who gives a damn about wut other people think. ;)

[Princess Dagger]

Are you talking about the public reviewers also, because as far as I can see, unless no one's commented, Winamp's fuzzy math doesn't lend itself to deciphering what the staff reviewer's rating originially was.

If enough yahoo's give a skin a 5, it can be raised to a total rating of 5 after a while.

True, there are sucko skins out there, and perhaps winamp's original intention of having a public review system was to get rid of some of the ratings that were based on the position of the planets or CO's mood that day, but of course, when you leave it up to any old moron who can control a mouse, you get this...

Personally, I don't give any ratings except 5's and 0's. I only give 0's to rips and 5's to the absolute most amazing skins I've ever seen - I think I've only given about 4 and the skins were flawLESS.

Unless it's for spite... Mr Jones - check out your Jenny curves duo... :p

Everything in between, I don't think it's my place to say. Like, back when there were 5 star skins, I thought plenty of them deserved 4s and 3s, but I felt bad about knocking them out, so I said nothing. If you don't have something nice to say...

But Dawg's right. Unless you get absolutely jacked for no reason - like what apparantly happened to Jesper Bentzen, people will still find the good skins.

[JZ_UK]

Its true when you give people the ablity to say something thats "naughty" and they think that someone higher up won't see and punsh them for they'll be stupid... However fractalgp the fact is a review is someone's opinion you can't take it away and if they think somethings good/bad you have to accept it. I gave that a 4 :P

[BullGawD]

fractalgp, while I understand the basis of your argument from personal experience, your example of 'Lady Lost in Time' as a bad amp, as well as your idiotic solution of deleting all ratings and beginning anew, lead me to believe that you cannot have possible spent any significant amount of time looking for a skin that you like. Rather it seems to me that you have become dependent upon those ratings put forth by the reviewers to tell you what is 'good', and now that things have started to slip a little, you're at a loss as to what to do.

The fact is, that while it is not one of y favorites, Lady Lost in Time is a good amp, and as you said, there are far worse atrocities in existence on the winamp servers. If you don't like LLiT, fine, don't D/L it, or don't keep it. But your outrage toward it is completely unfounded, (in fact, you remind me of a coulpa guys who reviewed MJ). I, for one, do not understand what possible use you could have for a skin that departed from the baseskin in any way, and therefore suggest you check this (http://www.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentId=208&componentFlag=S) skin, as I feel it will meet your criteria for non-shitty skins.

here's (http://www.winamp.com/skins/detail.jhtml?componentId=25153&componentFlag=S) another amp that you might find useful.

This is not meant to belittle you in particular, but I cannot help but picture you as one of those simple-minded, metal-loving morons who flood the world. That's fine, I have no problem with that - but please do not label as 'bad' something that you simply do not like when it is obviously a product of time-consuming and careful work.

*sigh* [looking up] :rolleyes: I've gone and done it again haven't I? Oh my.......

[JZ_UK]

hmm, better be carefull a intellegent responce may follow... erm... nah thats not going to happen :rolleyes:

[midnite1]

If every skin on here were rated 5 stars...does that mean you would download them just because they were 5's? If I saw a skin that was rated with NO stars but I liked it I would still download it. Joe

[Princess Dagger]

True, but if everything were rated fives, I'm no mathematician, but I'd say, statistically, half of the skins any one of us would consider truly great skins would get lost and buried under half of the truly horrible skins, because there'd be no way of ordering them besides Most Popular and Most Recent, and those seem pretty much randomly selected anyway.

I hate the current system as much as anyone else, but at least for the most part, suck ass skins are kept at bay, because when they're bumped to the top, someone usually buries them back in their place.

The problem is the jerks who down-rate perfectly good skins, but again, for those that take the time to look for them, when they're found, people like to give them the ratings they do deserve, bumping them back up.

Midnite1 makes a good point, but I'd say the average Skin Downloader doesn't sift through pages and pages to find the perfect skin... Like they should...

But, right now it's moot since there are virtually no fives. My last bunch of downloads have been 3s, and I thought they were beautiful.

[The Only Lynx]

why not just delete all ratings.. and just put the skins in sections.. get rid of all the rating.. just check for rips, saves time, saves effort for CO and stuff like that

[Namelessv1]

Does anybody else notice that none of us (including myself) can be satisfied with the system? 1st, we all hated that old rating system, and were begging for this new rating system, but now that we have it, we find that its not so endeering to us. Just my thoughts. ;)

[BullGawD]

:D innit cool? :D

[Princess Dagger]

Yeah, Dawg4Life, I found myself feeling pretty hypocritical, too, but what can I say? :D

Where would the forums be if we didn't have anything to get pissed about?

[JZ_UK]

heh, old or new people can not be satisfied... maybe that just means the poeple making stuff aren't doing it well enough...