Beyond the simple act of leaving a written comment, you will be granted the additional and highly interactive possibility of assigning your own numerical evaluation to any given album review through Pitchfork’s carefully structured rating system. This feature allows each reader not only to express an opinion verbally but also to quantify their perception of an album’s artistic merit, thereby producing a more nuanced form of audience engagement. Once you submit your personal score, it will appear directly beside your accompanying comment, making your assessment visible to both editors and other members of the Pitchfork community.
Moreover, your individual score will not exist in isolation. Instead, it will be algorithmically combined and averaged with all other user-submitted ratings to create a collective measurement referred to as the ‘reader score.’ This aggregated figure will be displayed in parallel with Pitchfork’s own official rating, establishing a dynamic juxtaposition between editorial judgment and public sentiment. In doing so, the system elegantly integrates the authoritative voice of professional critics with the diverse perspectives of its readership, ultimately producing a more democratic representation of musical evaluation.
In its completed form, each album review page will thus present a clear and structured sequence of information: the review itself as the central critical text, followed by Pitchfork’s professional score, then your personally contributed rating, and finally, a space containing a series of user comments that together reflect the broader conversation surrounding the album. This layered presentation ensures that every reader can engage both intellectually and emotionally with the music criticism process, participating as both audience and contributor within Pitchfork’s evolving digital ecosystem.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/news/804749/pitchfork-is-beta-testing-user-reviews-and-comments-as-it-approaches-30
