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Originally Posted by npcomplete
I bring this up because while they will naturally argue for their position, the purpose of a review (at least a "professional" review) is to provide a service to the reader. Yes, having a reviewer you judge as one that you personally can trust is good, but having a site as a "trusted" place for reviews in general would then demand a balance of reviewers if you cannot get someone who is even-handed.
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While I won't disagree with the sentiment, I think the important question is figuring out exactly how you go about doing this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by npcomplete
I kind of like that idea though. There are some people who are actually interested in everything, meaning that they don't automatically have an aversion to certain things, and could see the good and bad in what they review. Such a review from a single person can even provide useful recommendations to literally everyone if they can shape their review to be propositional so that the outcome or recommendation to the reader is predicated on multiple conditions--taste, attitude, sensibility compatibility--that applies to the reader.
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But reviewers can do this anyway without it taking up the entire review. Arguably a good review serves multiple purposes. There's nothing to say that a review can't spend a certain amount of time presenting, unambiguously, the reviewer's take on a given title and then focus on trying to pinpoint who, among their readers, it would appeal to. I think the only place where we seem to disagree is how much energy should be allocated to one or the other.