Multiple scores

[The Jade Knight]

Makes sense to me.  Would there ever be 5.5 clocks?

[Peter Ahlstrom]

I agree with the merits of the "6th clock appears only if something gets 6 clocks" idea.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I dont think people think its short of the mark though...

take restaurants which typically go up to 5 stars, people dont say, "oh it just got 4 stars, it must just be good  and not great." Somewhere above three it becomes great or very good and the 5 becomes sublime... People understand that 4 stars is really good... but that there is a higher level of quality an establishment can obtain...
However if you just want to
Perhaps if we just showed the number of Clocks the movie (or book or whatever) that would be enough to mollify folks.

So a 2.5 just gets 2.5 clocks and readers assume it gets more...

[Shrain]

I agree with the merits of the "6th clock appears only if something gets 6 clocks" idea.

Totally.
I'd hate to see the clock system go caput. I like the extra spread it allows. To me, it makes the ratings more accurate.
Always having an empty clock might give the wrong impression. So I think Froskar's idea makes god sense.

[Spriggan]

I don't think that will help, since then users have no idea how many points its out of?  2.5 out of 4? out of 5? out of 10? out of 100?  Considering that we have an unique number system, out of 6, we should keep it the way it is.  

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I agree actually the more I think about it. So what it we end up having 5 out of six a lot. Its not like it will hurt the review. People will just think we're being honest.  When we do have six out of six it will mean something and everyone will know.

Plus there is a place for 5.5 clocks...

[Skar]

Under my suggestion, 5 clocks would always appear.  A score of 2.5 would include 2.5 empty clocks.  That way a 6th clock really means something.

It does give the wrong impression if there's always a 6th empty clock.  The industry standard in movie reviewing and pretty much anything else, (perhaps restaurants are an exception) seems to be that an excellent film gets full marks.  We simply reserve the right to add an extra clock if a film, game, whatever, goes beyond that.

As for there being 5.5 clocks.  Sure.  the half full clock only appears if there's a score of 5.5.

[Skar]

Considering that we have an unique number system, out of 6, we should keep it the way it is.  

But that's part of the problem.  It's not really out of 6.  It's actually out of 5, with the possibility of getting 6 if the piece is over-the-top-amazing-good.

Movie reviewers and others hand out 4 stars for far more than we think is reasonable to hand out 6 clocks.  4 in an outside system equates more to 5 in our system than a 6.

[Spriggan]

Well then you're suggesting changing our actually scoring system which is something I don't agree with.  It's 6 clocks for a reason (it has to do with hours) not because 6 was a fun number to use.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

Why should a movie get full marks when it doesnt deserve it. Why pretend a 5 is a six? If you think it deserves a 6 give it one, and explain why. Fell will run it if you back it up. Ive had a six on a review I did for hero, because I backed it up. (which appears to be gone now... but we have several 5.5's) (although I would probably change it If I did it again) If the movie doesnt deserve a six, then maybe it does deserve a 5 (excellent but not perfect like the rating says). Why change that when it explains our policy perfectly.

And it is out of 6 ... or 7 actually...
I mean it could also get a zero, which we've never given out.
Should we get rid of zero too?

[Spriggan]

We've had one or two 0s before but I believe Fell made them change it (one of our old movie reviwers gave Panic Room a 0).  And if you want to get techincal our score is out of 14 not 7 (you have to doubble the number since there are .5s).

The reason I'm against not having the 6th clock appear unless selected is because the problem that lead to this discussion isn't a problem with the review system its a problem with people always giving out 5.5 or 6 reviews (most noticeably our movie reviewers).  So saw we implement Skar's system and now all the 6 clock movies become 5 clock, well now 5 is considered the perfect score because people don't see the 6th clock so we get the same comments like Mustard made saying they give things too high of scores.  So we come back here and have another discussion this time with the solution being "lets make it out of 4 clocks then" and we just start a cycle.

This is just a band-aid fix and all it does is temporally calm people down instead of actually fixing the problem which is just because you like something doesn't mean its a 6 clock movie, book, game, etc.  Fell is the type of guy that doesn't like to step on toes and while that's great most of the time in this case it's not.  Some one needs to flat out say, if you can't adjust to our 6 clock system then don't write reviews for us.  We've been using it for almost 5 years now and so far only one person has really complained about it so we're not going to change just because ONE person doesn't like it when everyone else does.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I will say that lately Ive had to rethink my review numbers because I feel like I was being too nice to the company or the product. Some of that is because I've had to resort to reviewing products I love because TWG east hasnt been able to get a steady stream of product. The best reviews I think I've done got poor reviews instead of good ones. I had to think a lot more for them.
Still there are several products I would re-review If I had the time and inclinaiton. I might even do so...
Something along the line of XXXXX a year later.

I dont know how it is on the Movie review side but its tempting to give things good reviews on the RPG side because hey we get this stuff for free half the time. But maybe its something we should address with the reviews themselves and not the number of clocks.

Frankly I think Spriggans right... make five the new top dog and everyone will be doing fives.

[fuzzyoctopus]

I agree with Sprigganbaum.

I also agree with him.  Welcome to the Department of Redundancy Department.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

thanks I plan to pay the department after I go to the automatic teller machine machine...

[Skar]

5.5 clocks: Nearly perfect. Consider this the "perfect" score for most works that do not distinguish themselves above and beyond the call of duty.

So, right now 5.5 clocks is supposed to be considered the perfect score with 6 being something beyond that.

I get the impression that 6 was supposed to be the 11 on the volume knob, and extremely rare.  That does not describe most 4 star movies.

The root problem here is that 5.5, with half an empty clock still to go visually, is supposed to stand for perfect.  The half an empty clock doesn't look perfect.  It looks like it fell short of it by half a clock.  When a reviewer wants to give something a "perfect score" they don't want it to LOOK like it was half a clock short of perfect.  That's reasonable in my opinion.

The reason Fell wants an explanation for every 6 clock review (correct me if I'm wrong Fell) is because 6 is supposed to be something truly special, something beyond a normal run-of-the-mill perfect score.  It's outside the normal continuum.

Making 5 clocks appear with the 6th popping up only in the truly amazing instances is true to the spirit of our rating system.  Having an empty clock hanging there on a "perfect" score is misleading and doesn't represent what we're trying to say.  It just takes away from the 5's perfectness.