| mikrolik said: Roger Ebert once said the purpose of reviews is for the reader to decide whether or not he would like the product, regardless of whether or not the reviewer liked it. To illustrate his point, he was asked by some people in an elevator what he thought of a movie. Ebert said he thought it was a very intelligent, well crafted movie. "Oh thanks," said one of the people: "That doesn't sound like anything we'd like to see." |
This is the truth. I used to manage and purchase content for a video store. Several times a day I would get the question, "is this video good?" However, if I answered that question, I wouldn't really be doing an effective job. Instead, I'd try to answer the question, "would this customer like this video?" If they were a regular customer, I could probably do that quickly, but with most people, I had to find out what other videos they liked and why. For example, I'd look at the box they held up, ask how they felt about subtitles, they'd say, "I don't like the kind where I got to read," and I'd tell them to put back The City of Lost Children. Reviewers can't tailor thier work lfor every reader, however.
That's why some of the complaints I heard about subjective review scores sound kind of silly. No one else, at least not a stranger on the internet, can decide what every reader will like. A review is not the reader's opinion, it's someone else's opinion that's there for the sake of discovery.
With most people, the first logical step is to find a reviewer who somewhat shares the same likes and dislikes. Writers who do not share the same tastes are not wrong, they're just less personally relevent. People who can't understand that without getting upset really shouldn't read reviews at all.
