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Contents

Questions

What's the motivation behind the publishing system?

It's simple: We want the review section to be dedicated to text that primarily discusses the content of the recording (the actual music/cinematic content).

We also want published reviews to:

• be written in a respectful manner


• be coherent and understandable by everyone that views the album pages (not just people who know you personally)


• stand alone (written as if your review is the only one that appears on the page)


• stand the test of time (not contain references to things that won't matter or could change in the future, such as average rating or what some random person said one time)


• and to generally be well-formatted and readable (especially regarding spacing, lack of noise, and consistency in text formatting)

We respect the fact that some users want to have more freedom in what they write, so we've added the option to not publish your review to the album page. This way, you can write mostly whatever you want (as long as it meets the community rules), and your reviews are still published to your profile page and to all of your friends on the site.

Why do you want reviews to conform to those rules?

Because the primary purpose of RYM is to learn about and discover music. When the album pages are clogged with off-topic content, in-jokes, or even well-meaning but badly-formatted reviews (that waste space, for example), it makes RYM less useful to everyone.

The review section of the album/film pages are a shared resource with a very limited amount of space. We want to make the best use of that space by making sure the content is as useful as possible.

What if I don't want to conform to these rules?

Unpublished reviews have far fewer restrictions. You can write unpublished reviews by unchecking the "publish to album page" box when you write reviews. The reviews will still appear on your profile page (and also on the album/film pages when viewed by your friends).

Note that unpublished reviews are still subject to the community rules - for example, you can not insult other members of the site or use sexist/racist/homophobic language.

What happens if my reviews don't conform to these rules?

We will temporarily unpublish your reviews from the release/film pages, and remove your ability to publish. You can either continue to write unpublished reviews, or you can follow the steps in this FAQ to have your publishing privilege returned.

How do I know if I've lost my publishing privilege?

When you try to publish a review, the checkbox for "Publish this review to the album page" will be grayed out and unclickable, and you'll see a message mentioning that your review publishing privilege has been revoked. If the checkbox is selectable, then you have not lost your publishing privileges.

How do I know which of my reviews are unpublished?

For the moment, they show up as a lighter shade of gray on your collection/review page (we plan to make this more prominent/visible).

But note that when you lose your publishing privilege, then all of your reviews are usually unpublished.

Why are all my reviews unpublished when only a few of them break the rules?

There are over 1 million reviews on RYM, and only a handful of people responsible for enforcing the rules regarding reviews. It's impossible to individually filter every single review and make a judgement. It's your responsibility to read the rules and apply them properly.

Why was I unpublished when there are still other reviews on the page that break the same rules?

For the same reason given above. We have over a million reviews to sort through, and it will take a long time to cover all of them.

I lost my review publishing privilege. How do I get it back?

You should read the Rules and guidelines for reviews, and then read the rest of this FAQ - especially the section with examples of the types of reviews that we consider unpublishable.

Then, edit your reviews until all of them meet the publishing standards.

Finally, submit a feedback request (using the contact/feedback link at the bottom of every page) to request that your publishing privilege be restored.

My review doesn't appear in the review section along with the others. Does that mean that I've been unpublished?

No - that's how it works for everyone. Even if your review is published, your own review only appears in the "you" section of the page for you.

Other users can see your review in the review section while browsing the album pages.

Examples of unpublishable reviews

The following is a non-exhaustive list of some of the types of reviews which cause members to lose their publishing privilege, along with explanations of why they are unacceptable:

• Reviews that aren't about the content of the work.
  When it comes down to it, most reviews are simply unpublished because the majority of the content of the review was not about the musical/cinematic content of the work.




• Reviews that are responses to other reviews.
  Reviews should never directly reference other reviews, because there is no guarantee that the other review will stick around. Published reviews should stand alone - if you publish a review, it should be completely independent, as if you were the only person reviewing it.




• Reviews that complain about the average rating or the "wrongness" of the genre voting, etc.
  Reviews should not discuss such things, because they are subject to change. Again, published reviews should be able to stand the test of time. In any case, these types of reviews aren't useful to anyone and don't actually discuss the content of the work. Instead of talking about what other people think about it, talk about what you think about it.




• Reviews in a chat-log or dialog-style format.
  These reviews waste a large amount of space to often say nothing about the music itself. They are only allowed if they are particularly well-written and are very much tied into the musical/cinematic content of the work.




• Reviews inciting violence or hatred toward an artist.
  Any review that suggests or advocates violence or any other kind of hatred toward an artist is forbidden. Reviews should be about the music, not about the artist and his/her fans, personal life, level of attractiveness, etc. (Note: historical commentary in reviews is fine, of course, if it's tied in to the musical content or its creation).




• Reviews that are simply a quote from the film.
  These aren't reviews and are not publishable.




• One-line reviews that are a snappy comeback to the title of the album or one of its tracks, and have nothing to do with the music itself.
  Such as writing a review for "Is this it?" with "No, this is not it."




• Similarly, reviews that are just offhand remarks/jokes about the album cover.
  Again, the majority of the content of any review should discuss the actual content.




• Reviews that have ASCII art, pictures, links to images/videos/GIFs, or reviews that use whitespace to make a point.
  All of these elements are annoying and distracting. We want the review section to be text discussing the music in question. There are exceptions: If you want to link to video review you made for a release, you can do so, but you should also write something about the album in the space as well.




• Reviews in which the majority of the text is not discussing the content of the album. For example, reviews that are mostly just stories that are tangentially related to the album.




• Similarly, reviews that are completely off-topic, with one line at the end saying "and I was listening to this album when it happened."




• Reviews that break the formatting of the page with a long string of characters with no spaces.
  If you write a long string of letters that breaks the formatting of a page (ex. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) then you'll instantly lose your publishing privilege.




• One line reviews that say "this sucks," or "this rules," or "if you don't like this than you're an idiot!" or "greatest album ever!" or anything similar.
  These are glorified ratings; there's no need to publish reviews like this. In these cases, your rating already says everything you wanted to say about the release.




• Reviews in which the majority of space is filled by the tracklisting or other metadata about the album (credits, etc)
  Here's an example of such a review:
  
  1 Airbag 4.5/5
  2 Paranoid Android 4.8/5
  3 Subterranean Homesick Alien 4.3/5
  4 Exit Music (For a Film) 4.2/5
  5 Let Down 5/5
  6 Karma Police 5/5
  7 Fitter Happier 3/5
  8 Electioneering 4.4/5
  9 Climbing Up the Walls 4/5
  10 No Surprises 4/5
  11 Lucky 4:19
  12 The Tourist
  
  Total: 8.9
  This is an instant classic - one of my favorite albums of all-time.
  
  These reviews aren't allowed as publishable reviews. They take up as much space as a normal review, without saying much about the music. They also duplicate information that's already available on the album page itself (the track listing).
  
  If you want to rate tracks, please use the track ratings feature. If you want to note additional info about an album, please use lists or private notes - or integrate them into the the review itself "When [ArtistXXX] was producing this album in 1983 with [ArtistYYYY]...."
  
  It's not expressly prohibited to include such info, but if your reviews contain excessive metadata - especially in proportion to the actual review content, then they may be unpublished.




• Using spoiler tags in music reviews.
  The only time that spoiler tags should be used in music reviews is the rare case where the album is telling a story that can be spoiled. Don't use spoiler tags as a general text-hiding mechanism.




• Reviews that are excessively "meta" - talking about RYM, interactions with other members, etc..
  The review section is for everyone and therefore your review should make sense to any random visitor who happens to see the page. If you want to write deeply meta/personal reviews, you don't need to publish them because your friends will see them on the album page anyway.




• Spammy/Annoying reviews.
  Reviews that are annoyingly spammy (for example, repeating the same word or phrase over and over again, written in all caps, etc) are not publishable.




• A review that takes a disproportional amount of space in relation to the message it's conveying.
  If your review is full of whitespace like this:
  
  
  
  
  ....
  
  
  
  
  ...
  
  
  
  
  
  ...
  
  
  Then you're needlessly taking away space from other people who deserve to have space on the review section as well.