Hello, this AniList profile exists. Barren of anything apart from an enormous ego buttressed with an itty, bitty brain.
My scoring methodology is (possibly) a mystery to even myself. But here are my axioms:
- Quality and/or enjoyment is normally distributed (i,.e. a bell-curve). This is naturally produced when the entire range of numbers, from 0 to 10 is used to qualify opinion on a work.
- Influence and popularity follow a pareto distribution, which is obviously one of the grand irritants of many who dare to have an opinion on media. What is popular is not necessarily what you consider "good" (as I have been thoroughly raked over the down-vote coals for with my re:zero review haha).
- Scores should ideally be whole numbers, with distinctions between works (of same score) elucidated in writing. Some people may be able to believe there is a distinctions between a 9 and a 9.2, but I don't believe that difference is captured in any meaningful sense numerically. I have previously used intervals of 0.5 to indicate works that straddle an edge for me, but I'm trying to avoid it now because it makes my stat page look like shit lol.
- The quality of a work is subjective, but each subject's perspective can contribute to a collective consensus that builds a canon of quality, important and/or influential works (which is as close as we get to "objective"). Though I will say that tracing the importance/influence of a work seems to be something that can be done with increasing objectivity with the passage of time. Examples of this in academia would be encyclopedias of scientific accomplishment, or a book like "The Western Canon" by Harold Bloom etc.
- While opinions and scores are subjective, opinions themselves are similarly variable in quality. As you can tell from all my portentous bellyaching, I consider my own VERY important ;)
My own personal struggle with scoring is whether I want to attempt some personal commentary on quality, or whether to just represent my enjoyment (which will comment on quality to varying degrees). You can see this push and pull occurring in my review of "When The Villainess is in Love". I felt balanced in my emotional profile while reading it, which would typically signify a 50. At the same time I also thought it was pretty garbagio, which signifies the score it got of 25.
The reason I write reviews is to improve my writing and thought, spark conversation with people online and for the fun of it! I experiment with the way in which I write reviews, and they are very quickly produced. I'm also pathologically lazy... As a result they won't always be "great" or fully formed, so if you do read one of my reviews, please give me a message to tell me what you thought (from the writing to my analysis/opinion). I generally avoid changing reviews once published, but I will make an exception for quality input from other people.
Also find me:
https://www.mangaupdates.com/members.html?id=450483