Fellatious Commentary Readers

I

IronDuke

Ancient Mariner
Excuse the disturbing metaphor for now, but hear me out.
I recently visited the Commentary to see the lyrics of the new album (yes, I'm thinking about listening to it...not convinced yet, though).
I wanted to see which were the most popular songs so far, so I clicked on the "View results" link on the voting thing. I noticed something disturbing: every damn song has 4.5 or 5 stars. How the hell is that possible? Thinking it was just enthusiasm for a new album which has skewed the results, I began looking at other songs' ratings.

Surprize - they ALL have abnormally high ratings. What's the point of rating the songs if they all recieve basically the same rank? I'll admit, some songs to have 2-3 star ratings, but not nearly enough to properly balance the statistics properly. With 100+ songs, one would expect the ratings to at least begin to resemble a bell curve, right? I'm not saying any of Iron Maiden's songs are bad per se (except "Flight of Icarus" because of its retarded use of Neo-Nazi imagry), but surely we can all agree that there are some which are much, much, better than others.
If they all do, in fact, merit 5 stars, perhaps we should raise our levels of expectation a bit.

In other words, if I may be so blunt, stop sucking Nicko's drumsticks and try to be a bit more critical (in the "thinking" way, not the "I hate everything" way. I do hate everything, but that's not the issue at hand, you dumbass!  :whogivesafuck:)
 
My feelings exactly, Dukey. I try to get the Maiden fans to think for themselves, but it doesn't seem to work...  <_<
 
This is precisely why I have not voted on virtually any song yet.  :innocent:  I think I may have to listen to each album for ten years to truthfully decide what rating each song should receive.  Don't worry, Duke, 'Flight of Icarus' will not receive a 5 star or even a 4 star rating.  :halo: 
 
I haven't voted yet either, since every time I listen to the album I change my opinions of some of the songs. I'm confused :innocent:
 
Most people who care to vote, do it because they love Maiden very much.
Comparing Maiden songs with songs of other bands might result in high grades. A simple explanation if you ask me.

I didn't vote by the way, but I am sure I will give very high grades as well. If there should be any norms for the grading, the owner of the site should emphasize them in a more prominent way ;-P

One other thing:
Originally, the grades were given by the owner of the site himself, which is a far better idea in my opinion. The owner (who hates polls on tis forum ;) ) writes the commentaries, not the voters.

Just my 2 cents.
 
My  reasoning, Forostar, is just the opposite. Since we are all in agreement that Maiden is thousands of times better than anyone else, all of their songs would rate high in comparison to other bands'. However, when Maiden songs are compared to other Maiden songs, there can be some real ratings.
 
I agree Iron Duke. However, I think Forostar has a point too. The person who writes the commentary should be the one to give it a rating. After all, it's his commentary. I haven't voted simply because my opinion changes depending on mood, time of day, that sort of thing. Additonally, whilst some songs are great rockers, there are others which aren't, but are incredibly melodious and deep, and yet how can I compare such two songs, especially when I love them both? :(
 
Natalie said:
After all, it's his commentary.
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The Iron Maiden Commentary is however the result of the abundant feedback I receive from visitors who have a deeper insight than me in some domains, and I am grateful to anyone who can shed some light on aspects that I may have neglected. Although the maintenance of the site is mainly the work of a single man – known here as Maverick – the content is the product of a collective mind.

Source  :smartarse:
 
People are too lazy to give ratings (myself included).  The more that people rate, the more accurate the ratings will be.

I also think that people should be limited in their ratings, for example only 10 "5 star" ratings, 15 "4.5 star" etc...
 
Maverick said:
The Iron Maiden Commentary is however the result of the abundant feedback I receive from visitors who have a deeper insight than me in some domains, and I am grateful to anyone who can shed some light on aspects that I may have neglected. Although the maintenance of the site is mainly the work of a single man – known here as Maverick – the content is the product of a collective mind.

Source   :smartarse:
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All right, all right, have it your way. :lol:
 
Basically, Natalie, I agree with you and Forostar in principle. But as Mav said, the Commentary is really a group project (albeit Mav is the nerdy kid who ends up doing most of the work while the cool kids like me and Perun steal from our parents' liquor cabinet....I digress)
 
Maverick said:
The Iron Maiden Commentary is however the result of the abundant feedback I receive from visitors who have a deeper insight than me in some domains, and I am grateful to anyone who can shed some light on aspects that I may have neglected. Although the maintenance of the site is mainly the work of a single man – known here as Maverick – the content is the product of a collective mind.

Source   :smartarse:
Click to expand...

Alright, then what's the problem ? Accept this collective mind or deny it, but do not critize it, since it is the life blood for the content of the site. ;)

Still some guidance could be given for the people who grade though.
 
(still quoting manually because I miss the button)

except "Flight of Icarus" because of its retarded use of Neo-Nazi imagry
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What makes you think that? I don't see any nazi imagry in there...

EDIT: Okay, Child of the Grave pointed me to the right thread. But what I don't understand is why you make such a definitive statement here ("the song uses neo-nazi imagry") whereas you simply theorized in your original thread, and many people said that it very probably is not what the song is about...
 
MadMax said:
(still quoting manually because I miss the button)
What makes you think that? I don't see any nazi imagry in there...

EDIT: Okay, Child of the Grave pointed me to the right thread. But what I don't understand is why you make such a definitive statement here ("the song uses neo-nazi imagry") whereas you simply theorized in your original thread, and many people said that it very probably is not what the song is about...
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It's called sarcasm. I use it a lot, bud. I'm trying to insert a joke here and there into my posts; I was hoping some "old time" users of these forums would remember that little post of mine and chuckle. I even hoped some newbie would get curious and go see WTF I was talking about. I guess I was right!
 
IronDuke said:
It's called sarcasm. I use it a lot, bud. I'm trying to insert a joke here and there into my posts; I was hoping some "old time" users of these forums would remember that little post of mine and chuckle. I even hoped some newbie would get curious and go see WTF I was talking about. I guess I was right!
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It has to be said, Duke, the odd joke you have posted here and there has gone way over a few heads! But it is quite interesting to see how some folk interpret them.
 
Albie said:
It has to be said, Duke, the odd joke you have posted here and there has gone way over a few heads! But it is quite interesting to see how some folk interpret them.
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Don't get me started on that... JK Duke. 



I would personally vote more often and change my votes when needed, if that were possible.  Some songs stay in the 5 starts still (Paschedale, Hallowed By Thy Name...).  But most move back and forth.  I don't want to commit until I'm absolutely certain.  :bigsmile:
 
The thing is, I don't think I'd ever be absolutely certain. There are weeks when I just listen to Dance of Death (the album) and think all of them merit 5 stars, and there are other weeks where I just don't want to listen to Dance of Death and listen to Somewhere in Time instead. On some days I'm in the darker, melancholy mood and think all songs like Paschendale should have 5 stars, and there are other days when I'm in the rock mood and listen to stuff like Chains of Misery and Bring Your Daughter...To the Slaughter. On any one of these given days I would most likely rate whatever I am listening to higher than those songs that I'm not listening to at the moment. However, the next day I would immediately want to change the rating around once I start listening to the songs I wasn't listening to on the day before. It's just too hard to settle on songs, it all depends on the mood, environment, etc etc. I mean, there are even days when I've just got to listen to something other than Maiden and will rate all Maiden lower (blasphemy, I know).
 
Natalie said:
The thing is, I don't think I'd ever be absolutely certain. There are weeks when I just listen to Dance of Death (the album) and think all of them merit 5 stars, and there are other weeks where I just don't want to listen to Dance of Death and listen to Somewhere in Time instead. On some days I'm in the darker, melancholy mood and think all songs like Paschendale should have 5 stars, and there are other days when I'm in the rock mood and listen to stuff like Chains of Misery and Bring Your Daughter...To the Slaughter. On any one of these given days I would most likely rate whatever I am listening to higher than those songs that I'm not listening to at the moment. However, the next day I would immediately want to change the rating around once I start listening to the songs I wasn't listening to on the day before. It's just too hard to settle on songs, it all depends on the mood, environment, etc etc.  (blasphemy, I know).
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I often feel like this also, 'cause Maiden songs have so much replay value, they just never become boring to me. I'm relatively new to Maiden, so I still often rediscover songs. I remember listening to some of the songs for the first time, and thinking "ah, they're OK", but then I'd listen to them again after couple weeks and thinking "Oh, I got it all wrong, this song is much more than OK, it's brilliant". It's the same with AMOLAD. I needed to hear it 4 or 5 times before I was able to fully appreciate it.
 
Here's my take on the Duke's allegation that a sample of over 100 Maiden songs ought to result in something resembling a bell curve...

In my opinion, most Maiden songs are very good. I don't recall all the ratings I gave, but most of them were around 3.5 to 4.5 stars. I did give a very few low (0.5 or 1 star) ratings, and of course several 5s. But with Maiden's music being very good overall, it is reasonable to expect the curve to peak around 4 stars rather than 2.5.

In fact, I'd say this statement is true of all bands I really dig. Led Zeppelin is an example of another band whose "average" song would be around 4 out of 5 for me. However, there are bands whose average (for me) is around 2.5 out of 5 - for example, the Scorpions. And there are bands I like even though their average might only be 1 or 1.5 stars - for example, Motley Crue (who have a handful of great songs that compensate for all the bad ones).

So the bottom line to Duke's concern: on a site frequented by Maiden fans, it is reasonable to expect high ratings for most songs. If the votes came from a wider population, then a bell curve would result.

Consider an analogy with political polls. (I'll use US politics here because I'm American and that's what I know best, but I'm sure there are parallels for all countries.) Right now, the US is very close to evenly split between Republican vs. Democrat supporters, with Republicans having a slight edge for the last decade. So if you poll a representative sample of the population, you usually see results that are close to evenly split. But if you only poll Republicans, the results are skewed. The same thing is happening on this site; the people coming here all have a similar ideology when it comes to Maiden, so the results are skewed.

Finally, to get a little technical about the statistical mathematics involved here...
The results of these polls are known in statistics as a sampling distribution. Different samples from a population will give different sampling distributions. However, it is a theorem of mathematics that given a sufficiently large and representative sample, all sampling distributions converge to the normal distribution (the technical term for a bell-shaped distribution). I've already discussed how the sample is not representative. But even if it were, is it large enough to have a reasonably small margin of error? The polls have several hundred (but usually less than 1000) results for each song. With that sample size, if the population were representative (which it isn't), I'd expect a margin of error around +/- 4%. Sorry, I'm too lazy to pull out a calculator and figure it out exactly (especially since it would be different for every song).
 
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