Entertainment Reviews Discussion

[judes]

iI noticed there was a certain amount of interest in having reviews for movies or albums or dramas. Karen also mentioned that it would be easy to set up a certain format with vBulletin, but like all the other projects, this won't get off to a good start unless we have people who want to take charge and have reviewers willing to cooperate and set up a good standard of reviewing (I am thinking along the lines of macdawn's discussion on translations).

---------------------------------------

What your job will be:
Leaders:
- make sure that each review is given 2 rep points as thanks?
- maintaining a list of certified reviewers (this will only happen after the project gets up and running)?
- editing and checking the reviews so that they are up to standard
- updating a list of already reviewed dramas / books / movies
- modding the reviews forum if we're having one?
- maintaining a list of review 'requests'

Reviewers:
- learning the reviewing format
- writing and editing and posting reviews
- obtaining certified reviewer status after an x number of reviews are posted (recognition)?

but for now, we want to see who is interested in writing reviews so we can see if this project can get started.

Ideas for Reviewing (written by dazzlette):

1. The review should be informative
-It would be useful to have some background on the movie/drama/book/album and the actors/authors/singers. For example, how many albums the singer has already released, the author's previous books or the singer's previous album results.

2. The review should not give away too much of the storyline (especially if it's a movie or book) without making sure that there is ample warning for readers.
--- Sometimes in their exicitment, a lot of plot points are lost.

3. The review should express some kind of an opinion.
--- I don't like to read review where they just summarize things already said or that is already known

Possible Review Format (written by lattae):

Music album:
1) Album info (artiste, producer, release date etc)
2) General commentary on the music style/artiste
3) Song by song review (brief) OR Highlights, e.g. reviewer's favourite 2-3 songs
4) Overall rating

Movie/Drama series:
1) Movie information (cast, director, release date, poster, yesasia link if applicable etc)
2) Brief General Plot
3) Reviewer's comments (whats good, whats bad... etc)
4) 1 teaser/interesting fact/quotables
5) Overall rating

Book:
1) Book information (author, amazon link perhaps?)
2) Brief General Plot
3) Review's comment
4) Recommended read for...
5) Overall Rating
---------------------------------------

Leaders:

Reviewers:
linny
dagamezmasta
jaychou_21
ftlouiea
fartking
hanzo

if you're interested, sign up! This is a way to get your favourite album or show or movie that you love known to everyone.

Comments, suggestions, VOLUNTEER!

[jayx8318x]

I have a concern that you want to "maintain a list of reviewers"
I was under the impression that anyone who wanted to post a review could, and we can have resident reviewers (or even just the mods of that forum) who will accept/reject those reviews based on standards etc..

But just having say.. 5 people ever doing reviews, won't that will get pretty bland?

[judes]

^ i was thinking that doing that would make it more organized, and maybe the people who contribute more will get noticed, because it is really really difficult to write a decent review. and it may motivate good reviews to have their names listed in recognition intead of just swept under a pile? i don't know, it's up to whoever wants to be in charge to decide!

and i don't think we're going to get everyone who is committed to reviewing signed up right now. perhaps this is just a way to "start up" and get people thinking? i basically put down all i could think of and things can be scratched out or added in.

these are all just suggestions that we could or could not use and all need to be discussed by whoever wants to review :)

[jayx8318x]

I guess we can have it where after you've done X amount of good reviews, you become a Certified Reviewer? In that sense we can maintain that list of reviewers.

But for now we don't know who will be a good reviewer or not. Having a leader would be good, but for now we can only round up people who are willing to do the first couple of reviews. Once we see they are good, then they will be added to the list of resident reviewers, how's that sound?

[judes]

yes, that's probably more along the lines of thinking i was going for.
i don't want any of these ideas to die, so hopefully people will become involved and sign up before stuff is left behind or forgotten.

i'll edit the first post a little bit so that it's made clearer.

[lattae]

I am not sure if you can create a group of "reviewers", and maintain a suitably broad based "reviews". We're all drawn to different things. It's easier to "determine the quality" and let any willing members submit their reviews. Say each good review earns 2 rep points or something. Some positive reinforcement.

[judes]

have we ever done that before?
like gave rep points for news or something?

that would be interesting to implement.

[jayx8318x]

have we ever done that before?
like gave rep points for news or something?

that would be interesting to implement.

Nope we never have. Rep points for news is harder to judge I think. You have to be able to read both Chinese and English to know if a translation is good or not, and I don't think they warrant rep points regularly as say a review would.

Translation is just that, take something already written up and transcribe it to another language. A skilled translator can push 2-3 translations in a day. Reviews take a tad more effort in my opinion (translators don't take offense! I think your job is hard too). And probably a longer time to write. So I think reps for [GOOD] reviews is not asking too much.

[dazzlette]

I think that we should have some guidelines as to contitutes a good review. After all, reviews by nature are subjective. This not only helps us decide if the review was good, it would also give the reviewer a general sense of what should be in his/her review. In that way, I think we will be able to encourage more people, even those who aren't that good at English to tell us what they think about something.

I can't really think about what kind of guidelines would be appropriate right now, but I think it should be something like :

1. The review should be informative
-It would be useful to have some background on the movie/drama/book/album and the actors/authors/singers. For example, how many albums the singer has already released, the author's previous books or the singer's previous album results.

2. The review should not give away too much of the storyline (especially if it's a movie or book) without making sure that there is ample warning for readers.
--- Sometimes in their exicitment, a lot of plot points are lost.

3. The review should express some kind of an opinion.
--- I don't like to read review where they just summarize things already said or that is already known.

Okay, I can't think of anything right else right now, but the above is the most basic thing I expect from a review. I guess we could include the standard "Out of 5 stars" thing, but I don't really like that cos sometimes it's hard to really quantify a piece of work based on stars. Two items with the same star rating might not neccariliy be equally good.

[kirasuran]

welll this sounds like a good way to both help ppl and myself!!! and since i like reading .............ill sign up for reviewing!!!

but i must warn you that i might not be able to do all that many...for example one every 2 weeks? is that too long?

i dunno. sometimes ill have time, other times i wont. so yeh.

take this into account when you're selecting me...and if you're fine with that then im in! also please take note the things i review will be more english/western based, if you know what i mean? i cant read chinese OR understand mando hahahaha~ so remember this as well.

[kahel]

I agree that all people who want to review should be given a chance to do so. Like a submit it to a head reviewer and have it approved.

And maybe we could have a list of requests that people want to be reviewed, at least it could give us a clear direction on what people want to be reviewed.

[linny]

And actually, why not have multiple reviews for one cd/drama/book if they're well done and have differing views? Since reviews are by nature subjective, including more than one review might help out.

Needless to say, sign me up as a potential reviewer. This is something I am extremely interested in doing. (:

[dagamezmasta]

I'm interested in this as well. The problem would be that I don't really watch TV much, so I can't help out much with TV dramas.
I'm probably more fit for books, movies, albums, anime (lol), and maybe only a bit of TV (like Lost). But I'd love to review for the areas that I'm capable of doing so in.

I don't know if you're preparing a team of reviewers or if it's going to be a free-for-all. But I think there should be a central leader whom everyone submits their reviews to who then posts the reviews all in one thread. Therefore, we won't have 5 threads flying around at once or reviewers posting replies in threads in order to add their own review. How bout a person who makes the post and then edits the post whenever any new reviews come in?

[jaychou_21]

I am so behind this one so I'd like to volunteer as a reviewer. :happy:
This is one of my dreams, to review albums, movies, books or dramas. So please consider me.
I'm a die hard music lover, a bookworm and a couch potato so I guess I'm qualified.

[lattae]

I think that we should have some guidelines as to contitutes a good review.
I agree with dazz. As opposed to rewarding depending on the "take" a reviewer has, we should reward the quality. Maybe we should implement some rules/format.


Music album:
1) Album info (artiste, producer, release date etc)
2) General commentary on the music style/artiste
3) Song by song review (brief) OR Highlights, e.g. reviewer's favourite 2-3 songs
4) Overall rating

Movie/Drama series
1) Movie information (cast, director, release date, poster, yesasia link if applicable etc)
2) Brief General Plot
3) Reviewer's comments (whats good, whats bad... etc)
4) 1 teaser/interesting fact/quotables
5) Overall rating

Book
1) Book information (author, amazon link perhaps?)
2) Brief General Plot
3) Review's comment
4) Recommended read for...
5) Overall Rating


I know we are moving away from "Jay" but.... well, I thought Jay is still like "definitive" for us. Instead of stars, which can be boring/norm, why dont we award "Jay". Like:
Rating: http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3269/jayratingtq2.gif

[laruku]

Like:
Rating: http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/3269/jayratingtq2.gif
This is kinda a cool idea! We can cut Jay into half so you can get 3 1/2 Jays..

:D

[jayx8318x]

And maybe we could have a list of requests that people want to be reviewed,


Absolutely, I was thinking the same thing, it would be nice to have a request threads or something in there.


And actually, why not have multiple reviews for one cd/drama/book if they're well done and have differing views?

I agree on this too. Like for me, the only 2 kdramas I've seen are Goong and Full House, but so have 3142142 other people. So they'd be the only ones I can review (if I wanted to), but if one of those 3142142 people beat me to it, then all I can do is pout.

If you guys are curious as to what the new reviews post would look like, this is the vBulletin add-on that I will implement
http://www.thevbgeek.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40
I'm not sure to go with reviews or article style. I guess article style would be more appropriate for the spotlight forum.

[ftlouiea]

Music album:
1) Album info (artiste, producer, release date etc)
2) General commentary on the music style/artiste
3) Song by song review (brief) OR Highlights, e.g. reviewer's favourite 2-3 songs
4) Overall rating

Because I've seen this implemented in another forum before, reviewing the songs one by one turns out to be rather repetitive and an 'easy' way to finish a review.

But reviewing is a good idea... if there isn't too much clutter, it'd be useful to create a sub-forum for people to do a heads up on what they are posting a review on. Purely because, say when Jay releases his album, everybody will want to (i hope?) review the album. It's not so much an issue when multiple reviews are allowed, but you could see the reviews available for you to have a look at in the reviews forum.

... And I'm volunteering! :rolleyes:

[dagamezmasta]

I'm not sure whether it would be beneficial to you guys to have a designated team of reviewers... because those reviewers won't be able to watch/read/listen to every single movie/book/album that's out there.

So I think people should be able to review what they want so we can have more reviews on a bigger spectrum of topics, because different people have seen/read/listened to different things.

But as before, I think it will be helpful for the reviewers if there're a few leaders who post a thread for each subject, and then add on reviews as they come in. Thus we won't have posts flying around for each review submitted.

A problem that arouses from such a plan would be that the reviewers won't get the 2 rep points of pay that you guys plan to implement... so I'm not sure about how to fix that...

[lattae]

If you guys are curious as to what the new reviews post would look like, this is the vBulletin add-on that I will implement
http://www.thevbgeek.com/forumdisplay.php?f=40
I'm not sure to go with reviews or article style. I guess article style would be more appropriate for the spotlight forum.
I didn't like the members review bit of the review forum there. It's way too complicated. Can't we have a simple one like other forums, just a simple, "*number( of users found this review useful"

[judes]

i changed up and edited a few things on the first post to include list of volunteers. if i missed anybody let me know.

i took out the stuff regarding multiple reviews and added lattae's format of reviews. but question: do we have to have that for every single review? because it would be repetitive for each review to contain the same amount of background detail.

perhaps like dag (i am too lazy to dbl check and spell your name) suggested, we can have a thread that is posted up with all the background info, and then everyone just post their reviews afterwards. don't know if that would be clean enough though, because people want to respond to reviews and we want to have a "good review" button or something, right?

umm...so we have to decide which way would be better.

[JianDan[Ai]]

LOL lattae i like the little jay heads

I dunno, Ive really been out of the music scene for a long time, and few movies grab my attention like they did before (dont think ive seen a korean movie since like...Windstruck came out =/) . I am also way to bais to do reviews well, but ill probably start writing a bit more I guess next time i upload an album or something.

[dagamezmasta]

perhaps like dag (i am too lazy to dbl check and spell your name) suggested, we can have a thread that is posted up with all the background info, and then everyone just post their reviews afterwards. don't know if that would be clean enough though, because people want to respond to reviews and we want to have a "good review" button or something, right?
umm...so we have to decide which way would be better.

Well what I actually meant was not that people post their reviews afterwards, but they maybe PM their reviews to the thread starter, and the thread starter can then edit the first post and add the reviews into the first post. The only two problems I can think of that would arise from such a scenario would be 1) the reviewers themselves won't get as much credit and would have difficulty getting the 2 rep points you guys want to use as pay and 2) the first post would get longer and longer... I'm not sure whether there's a character limit to posts in JCNET... I've never actually tried posting something so long. But the first post would get really long and people would have to scroll through a lot.

[judes]

^ i think there has to be a character limit finally on how long each post can be, because i would think each review has to be fairly substantial. and also, the person who did the first review may not be around for a while, so it wouldn't be fair to the other reviewers because their reviews may not be posted for quite a while.

[dagamezmasta]

^ i think there has to be a character limit finally on how long each post can be, because i would think each review has to be fairly substantial. and also, the person who did the first review may not be around for a while, so it wouldn't be fair to the other reviewers because their reviews may not be posted for quite a while.
Yup, that would cause a problem. Because each review, as you said, will be quite lengthy, and thus a character limit might kick in.

And I meant that the thread starter isn't actually a reviewer, but more like a designated person who leads the people. He/she might write reviews as well, but what I meant was that he/she takes care of all the threads having to do with reviews. And if this designated person isn't there, we can have a back-up person or a mod/admin edit it.


Another solution might be that we have an entirely separate domain for the reviews (i.e. reviews.jay-chou.net) where the reviews can be posted as webpage articles, rather than as posts in a forum. The trouble with that would be that I'm not sure what will be needed to start a subdomain and whether Karen is willing to do it and whether she has the energy/time/money.

[Hanzo]

I'd also like to sign up for being a reviewer. I'm a huge fan of movies! And this sounds like a great idea.

[Galzs_revolution]

how bout setting up for reviewer competition? so pick a film, movie or book that is pretty popular and test them. the trouble is it's not a fair chance if the person hasn't read/watch the book/movie.

[JianDan[Ai]]

how bout setting up for reviewer competition? so pick a film, movie or book that is pretty popular and test them. the trouble is it's not a fair chance if the person hasn't read/watch the book/movie.

That wont work too well, if its popular, there are gonna be tons of review on it already, so its hard to say that their review wont be influenced by what other people have said already.

Its fairer (for lack of a better term) to pick an upcoming popular movie/album and hear their review within the first few days it comes out.

[dagamezmasta]

how bout setting up for reviewer competition? so pick a film, movie or book that is pretty popular and test them. the trouble is it's not a fair chance if the person hasn't read/watch the book/movie.
Yeah... and in a competition some people will put forth more effort just cuz it's a competition and then slack off during actually reviewing when it's normal.

I think we should just follow an urbandictionary style format, in which each review gets rated by the readers, and the ones with the best overall ratings appear on top. That would bring up one problem though: if there are like 40 reviews for something... people might not bother to read a review that's not even rated simply because it's new and is at the bottom.

[Hanzo]

or we could set up some classes for the editors like what we see in the actual newspaper or magazine companies.

First we divide into 3 specific branches of reviewers.

books/magazine reviewers
movie/show reviewers
music reviewers

each branch will have head, senior, and junior (later on as we get more and more reviewers, we can have the applicant reviewers category)

and ofcourse the higher your rank is, the higher up your review will appear. All the reviewers that signed on will start with an initial rank of junior. and everytime someone "thanks" or "finds the review useful" that person will receive points which will accumulate and slowly increase his rank to senior reviewer and so on.

these reviewers may also cross branches and be co-reviewers of music and or movie reviewers.

also to prevent reviewers from getting lazy as time goes on, for example if they have 150 review pts, which gives them the rank of senior reviewer, but he hasn't put up any reviews in a month, we should introduce a system to reduce his/her review points... for example remove 5 points from every reviewer bi-weekly or monthly... this way the active reviewers will increase in rank while the lazy ones will get their points reduced....

that's my 5 cents.

[judes]

^ we want good reviews though, not an obligation to review. because i know that people have other commitments and that sometimes reviewers leave for months because real life is more important than the internets.

so it would be a good way to run things if jcnet was a website strictly for reviewing, but it will be a small part of the big picture. i also can't imagine the kind of work it will require to implement a system like that apart from all of the rankings and the various deals around the forum. that would require another FAQ all in itself

[kirasuran]

hmm yeh ill try my best to write a good review, and yes i might not be here for some time...but definintely NOT months. ill come here at LEAST once every week...or 2 weeks but i seriously cant resist coming to jcnet so yehh~ hahah

when do we start? im going on camp in the coming week, and then 3 weeks from now, i have my yearly exams. so...yeh..

[twilighthush]

Okay, I just skimmed through most of this discussion and it looks like this is all in judes' ring, but, as an English Lit major, I just wanted to say that I absolutely HATE reading plot summaries with a passion you will not believe. Most English Lit academics really hate it when we have to read that kinda crap, so it's probably best if you don't make it a rule that there HAS to be a summary. ESPECIALLY because what the master narrative reads is not necessarily what the subtext reads. And that's where it gets all sorts of complicated.

Let's use Vladimir Nabokov for example. His text, Lolita appears to be a belletristic take on a pederastic fantasy. However, what he's actually doing is deconstructing the social notions of what we believe "sex" is, and of what is acceptable as sex. If I wanted, I could draw comparison's with Foucault's History of Sexuality etc etc and expound upon it endlessly. So to just give the summary isn't doing the writer a favor when the writer may be trying to achieve something else beyond just the master narrative.

Does this make sense at all?

[dagamezmasta]

From what you've demonstrated, it looks like you'd like a short literary analysis of the particular work to go along with the review.
But does literary analysis and review go together?

And lit analysis is indeed a hard task... I mean we all have different perspectives on things, and different people interpret works differently. Furthermore, JCNET is an international forum, so I'm not sure whether some people would have the English skills to do such a deep lit analysis as you have demonstrated.



But as you have said, I don't like reading about summaries in reviews either. For me, though, the reason is because knowing the summary/plot is kind of a spoiler, so it's no fun anymore. Let's try to avoid summaries and try to instead focus on how the work affects us, touches us, etc. And our main thoughts about it.
Sorry, that last paragraph wasn't exactly too helpful or descriptive.

[twilighthush]

^Yeah, I think that's actually a lot better.

If you read more 'educated' reviews like from the New York Times, oftentimes they do a bit of an analysis in their reviews. At least, that's what I've seen. I know that when I write my reviews, they will definitely have quite a bit of analysis in it. But not too much, cuz then it gives way too much away.

It's much better if we don't give away the plot, and instead, give a VERY VERY VERY brief (one sentence) summary of what it is, then talk about how it affects you.

[scarletwillow]

Can I do porn site reviews? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE?

[twilighthush]

Jialiu, you're absolutely retarded. <3333333

[judes]

*rolls eyes* how much is there to 'review' for those sites? most of the good ones you have to pay to get in!!!

regarding summaries though: but i think most people would still like a brief idea what the storyline is like. because when i read reviews or the main page for a show, i'd like to hear that it's not another "RICH GUY MEETS POOR GIRL AND SPARKS FLY" story. i don't like downloading an entire episode only to realize that it's the suck and i could have avoided it just by reading the summary on the site. and on most taiwanese drama pages there's a short summary of the first episode and you get an idea of what's going on, except most of them reveal a little too much.

maybe just an "intro" instead of a "summary"?

[twilighthush]

^ I think the SAFEST thing to do is instead of saying "summary" to have a blurb instead. Blurbs are usually very short, concise, and to the point.

[scarletwillow]

You know there's hackers out there. I'm part of enough security organizations to be able to l33th4xx0r most pr0n site passwords ;O Well uh, get some friends to do it anyways <3

[judes]

^ my primary site satisfies me, thanks. HAHAHA.
nah i don't really have a primary site. i have the boyfriend, it's only during the summer when...and that seems to take too much effort to get some pr0n. limewire much?

back on topic. maybe "blurb" would sound better too. we should make a rule saying that they can't give spoilers or too much of the plot in the "summary/intro", but i think in reviews they should be able to give spoilers as long as they mark it accordingly.

[twilighthush]

*grumblegrumble* Alright, I'll try not to be too much of an Elitist Bitch when it comes to things like this. XD;;;

[scarletwillow]

Hi guys this is my first book review.

My name is Jialiu and I just read Da Davinci Code By Dan Bron. In it a man called Robert Lagdon and a girl called Sophie Nevee try to find jesus mom.But there are bad french guys who try to kill them and it turns out RObert Lagdons old friend is really a Catolic guy and Catolic guys are bad like the french. In the end Robert and Sophie dont have sex because Robert is gay for Leonard Davinci. It was good book but watch the movie cuz it better.

[judes]

thanks for spoiling the entire book for me, jialiu.
*runs off and sulks*

i've actually never read that book.

did we decide on what format the reviews are going to have? i think someone suggested it a little while back. and who is taking care of reviews anyway? i don't think i am because i'm not the mod there. fishie, petricia, and you, krystal, right?

[twilighthush]

I'm helping fishie out with the Book Review section. ;D

But I'm off to lunch now, and I need to sit and talk to fishie more about it. I think she gets to make the final call~

[Hanzo]

*rolls eyes* how much is there to 'review' for those sites? most of the good ones you have to pay to get in!!!
regarding summaries though: but i think most people would still like a brief idea what the storyline is like. because when i read reviews or the main page for a show, i'd like to hear that it's not another "RICH GUY MEETS POOR GIRL AND SPARKS FLY" story. i don't like downloading an entire episode only to realize that it's the suck and i could have avoided it just by reading the summary on the site. and on most taiwanese drama pages there's a short summary of the first episode and you get an idea of what's going on, except most of them reveal a little too much.
maybe just an "intro" instead of a "summary"?

agreed, the review should contain a brief intro to the movie but it should not give much of the plot away and definitely not the conclusion.

what should be commented that I suggest are:

1. performance of the cast
2. cinematography
3. sound track
4. comparisons with other movies in the same genre
5. special effects (if applicable)

Hi guys this is my first book review.

My name is Jialiu and I just read Da Davinci Code By Dan Bron. In it a man called Robert Lagdon and a girl called Sophie Nevee try to find jesus mom.But there are bad french guys who try to kill them and it turns out RObert Lagdons old friend is really a Catolic guy and Catolic guys are bad like the french. In the end Robert and Sophie dont have sex because Robert is gay for Leonard Davinci. It was good book but watch the movie cuz it better.


Best summary I've read! and the awesome part is, you didn't spoil it by telling us who Jesus's mom was!!! bravo! two thumbs up :shifty:

[andantino]

hey guys.
i'm interested in the movie reviewings.
can i sign up now?

i've been going in cinemas very frequently ever since there a new cinema located opposite my house! hahaha.

i love doing the spoilers too. ;p ;p

question: can the other members who didn't sign up write for the reviews as well?

[HarmonyCloud]

Hi guys this is my first book review.

My name is Jialiu and I just read Da Davinci Code By Dan Bron. In it a man called Robert Lagdon and a girl called Sophie Nevee try to find jesus mom.But there are bad french guys who try to kill them and it turns out RObert Lagdons old friend is really a Catolic guy and Catolic guys are bad like the french. In the end Robert and Sophie dont have sex because Robert is gay for Leonard Davinci. It was good book but watch the movie cuz it better.

I have to review Jialiu's review...5 star!

Could we just post our reviews?

[linny]

Random question! For the album reviews, should we include tracklisting or make a space for tracklisting? Most reviews I read have a graphic of the album and tracklist off to the side so it's not that noticeable unless you need it, so... yeah. :x

And! For foreign albums, do we include the English translation of the song titles if they're in another language? Yes right (since this is an English forum?)?

[ShuiMei]

I'd love to be a part of this :3 I listen to an absurd amount and variety of music and I'd really like to write some music reviews ^^ it'd also be a nice way for me to contribute more to the site and be a more active member XD

[stryker7]

Hey! This seems like a great idea by coming up with reviews of books, cds and movies. I would definitely like to have a part in this, probably the music and movie reviews.

I've a few suggestions, though:

1. It would be better if a review template is typed out so the reviewer can just fill in the necessary details and comments. This allows all the reviews to be standardized and neat. (I don't mind coming up with this template =] )

2. Reviews should also be accompanied with a display picture of the movie poster, cd cover and book cover. Something like those you see in amazon.com, kinokuniya.com, etc.

Hope these suggestions would come in handy! And I hope I can play a part in this project! =]

[dagamezmasta]

Lmao Jialiu's review is one good piece of reviewing. From now on, we shall try to emulate his greatness.

To stryker7, I don't think we should have a specific template, though. If that was all we needed, reviews wouldn't be unique and people would just kind of do a "fill in the blanks" review instead of giving their thoughts and analysis on the work.

I'll be putting up a review once I think of something I have passion for and would love to write about. I tried writing one for Timeline but that didn't work out too well.

Edit: Oh and I think we could have a subforum for reviewing games as well.

[ShuiMei]

Ooh that's a good idea, video game reviews would be great :D I don't think I would be able to write any, I don't play that many games, but I'd be interested to read what other members are playing and what they're reccomend.

[dagamezmasta]

It seems the reviews forum is getting off to a pretty slow start. Not many people are reviewing. Don't you guys have something you want to write about?
Anyone got any ideas for making it livelier?

[linny]

Hum, well it is somewhat of a slow month as far as releases go, so that might be why it's so slow right now? I know a lot of anticipated cds that will be released from about September on, but not so sure about others...

Maybe if someone wanted to take up reviewing Jay albums, it might be a little more lively. XD

[judes]

....to be honest i thought it was a good start.
i didn't expect an outpouring of reviews because most of those reviews will be crap. there should be some thoughtful reviews being written, nothing that can just be done in five minutes.

[jayx8318x]

I also hope people don't think that just because there is a review on something already, they can't review it as well. And I agree with judes, it's gotten off on a good start, we don't want crappy reviews...and especially..copy and pasted plagiarized reviews

[ShuiMei]

I didn't think it was so bad either, so far the quality is good and they've been interesting to read.

I have some old reviews I wrote of Jay's last three albums that I was thinking of rewriting or 'sprucing' up then maybe posting? I have some Hamasaki Ayumi, Wang Lee Hom and JJ album reviews too, I guess I just figured more people would be interested in more recent releases rather than some that are several months, some even year(s) old.

[jayx8318x]

I guess I just figured more people would be interested in more recent releases rather than some that are several months, some even year(s) old.
I actually would like to read older reviews of artists that I've just gotten into, Lee Hom for example. I only started listening to him after the Shangri-La album. So when I tried to go find his older stuff, it's hard to weed out what's good or worth listening too since he just has soo much. Having some review to refer too would be helpful. Same with Ayumi, I dunno how many times people have asked me what songs I recommend and whatnot. I think alot of members would benefit from it!

[jaychou_21]

Yes it was a good start. I mean the reviews. Especially the music reviews.
I wasn't expecting more than 3 reviews within the first two days of the implementation.

Anyway, I just wanna ask something about the user comment system.
When I clicked on the comment button, wrote something, scored the album and posted it,
the scores were different from what I had given. Does the system automatically changes it or what?

[Saharial]

just wanted to say i love the review section. I'm looking fwd to contributing lot to all that and sharing opinions etc :)
I have a ton of albums and films -- ahh where to start???

[jayx8318x]

Anyway, I just wanna ask something about the user comment system.
When I clicked on the comment button, wrote something, scored the album and posted it,
the scores were different from what I had given. Does the system automatically changes it or what?


I'm still playing with the settings for that forum, so any buggy inconsistencies and the like will be worked out eventually.

[ColaPoP]

The section under the 1st review post... is that to discuss the review, or to discuss the actual movie/book/etc (in which case there will prob be spoilers). I've had a look at the reviews section and it looks fantastic.

Also, if we do general discussions under "critics & reviews", will that make the "General Entertainment" forum less effective? Considering the same books/movies will come up in both forums?

[judes]

^ it's probably to discuss the review and sometimes put forth their own reviews, right? it's a more "serious" place rather than in general discussion where you squeal about such and such plot development, you simply express your like or dislike for the whatever so that other people can see the discussion and have an opinion.

should we make the replies spoiler free as well?

[jaychou_21]

^ As spoiler free as possible, though it's inevitable that some vital parts of the plot may be revealed.
I think a summary with a few tasty infos are okay, but the significant details like the ending
or the answer to the mysteries shouldn't be unveiled as much as possible.


Also, if we do general discussions under "critics & reviews", will that make the "General Entertainment" forum less effective? Considering the same books/movies will come up in both forums?

I've been thinking about this too. :hmm:
But like what judes said, I guess only decent comments from a critical point of view
should be allowed in the critics and reviews section; the ranting and the lot,
the less formal comments should be kept in the general entertainment discussion.

[judes]

everyone should be aware that we have a new spoiler tag now, and to use this as often as possible if you are revealing key plot points.

see guide here: http://www.jay-chou.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20569