Very true LOL

I only can think of two things to make the rating little better,

rating should have minimal word count, so saying GREAT GAME will not be enough to rate a game.

second, ratings and comments should be reviewed by a moderator before it goes online

It all comes out in the wash. The only thing i think we should guard against are multiple users coming from the same ip rerating the same machines poorly. Even that doesn't really amount to a real issue, this is PINBALL, after all.

TMI!

Why? I guess i should have explained that the back of my knees burn everytime someone gets angry at me on the internet. Whilst i ride this wave of pinside love my knees are currently inside my pants. Unpure minds may differ in their thought patterns but hey, thats life.

Yes, it would have been nice to have that info up front L0L!

WOW, now ACDC is Number1....great game, but number 1????REALLY? Man Tron took a tumble
Long live the King of Payne!

RUDY....!!! AHHHHHHH get him away!!!

I've played both AC/DC pro and premium, even with the ruleset unfinished it's worth at least a 3.5 or 4.

<<<I've played both AC/DC pro and premium, even with the ruleset unfinished it's worth at least a 3.5 or 4.>>>

Agreed. 100%. Played it at the MI Pinball Expo. Wife too! Son too! So much fun....3 for 3 players (my family) had a blast! Stern did great with AC/DC!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would (and have since 2009) take the time to install and learn how to configure and play Visual Pinball/VPinMame ALL DAY before I'd be naive enough to log on, read a couple reviews and go "Gee, MM must really be worth $12k....guess I'll sell my home and go get it and AFM since they both are so dang high!"

I mean, really...we all pay at the very bare minimum $1000 for these games, yet some people depend more on what others say than to just take the time to at least TRY to run a simulated version of the game? And yeah, I agree, VPinMame/VisualPinball isn't a substitute, but it isa REALLY good indicator if you'll like the game.

Here's my suggestion with the ratings...

If it is possible, make it so that there either needs to be a 'critical mass' or a certain waiting period (or both) before a game gets listed in the ratings. That way, you can hopefully miss a lot of the 'new' bump that people get from opening up a new game.

IMDB started doing this a while ago. It used to be the ratings would appear the day the movie came out, but it caused a lot of movies that had big fans who saw it early to be rated very high, and then to slowly nose dive off the top movies as more and more people saw them. To fix that, they implemented a waiting system. I feel like a three or six month waiting system to official 'list' a game wouldn't be a bad idea at all, and would hopefully allow people to really get an impression of it before rating it.

The other suggestion, not from a web site standpoint, is to develop your own interests based on what you are told, and then read through the comments that people made on those games, ignoring the positions and everything that they fall into. I tend to rely on IPDB's ratings a lot more heavily, as here it seems like people write one sentence and are done, while there people really dive into what they like or don't like. I've purchased a number of machines unplayed by reading through what other people said that seem to have similar tastes to me on that site, and only once or twice did I not pretty much fully agree with the ones who seemed to be like me.

Having said that, IPDB never keeps Sterns up very high for long, because every time they do they have a bunch of people rate them at like 3 stars anonymously. So don't trust the ratings -- everyone is different -- and read them for the content instead

I would really like to stimulate people to write better rating comments. We could even feature the best reviews at the top instead of them being buried in a list of hundreds of reviews on a game!

A way to do this is would be to allow Pinside visitors to vote wether they think a rating comment was helpful. A bit like all those webshops out there do it.

"This rating comment was helpful"
yes or no.

Nice and simple!

For example, here's a screenshot from Amazon:

helpful-yes-no.jpg

I really like that a lot!!!!

Since we are naming names, here is another troll rater:

http://pinside.com/pinball/community/pinsiders/flipperfingers/ratings

The guy is admitting to rating games down just to hurt the game's overall rating rather than to give it his honest rating values (see SM rating).

I like the idea Robin.

I commented on this one in another thread. I think the MM review should be removed as the reviewer refers to anyone who likes MM as a monkey .

Well, I will say one thing, he is definitely a Lawlor fan.

Not that there is anything wrong with being a monkey. Or a close relative of them anyway..

Aha! i knew i'd find a troll rater hater somewhere in here..... Begone evil spirit!...hahaha.

Robin, excellent idea. I mentally "rate down" reviews with bad grammar, spelling errors and unhelpful hyperbole ("this pin is sas much funn as doing taxxes"). It would be nice to be able to push those down the stack. And I'd like to reward people who earnestly explain why they think a game has a "fatal flaw" or a "killer mode", even if I disagree with them.

Robin,

That's a very thoughtful idea. If it is possible, it would be great.

I have a scientific background. One of the most basic methods of sampling is to throw out the top and bottom numbers. Say somewhere between the top and bottom 1-5%. It's a major oversimplification of statistics, but it's only pinball ratings. It has been mentioned by other members. It would not require deleting someone's review. The algorithm will simply not include the top and bottom set percentage when posting an average rating.

It's possible that both methods could be used.