Quality and diskmag ratings
While I was doing my final touches for this Hugi issue, I decided to read all the unfinished articles in my write directory. There I found quite an interesting comment on the quality of diskmag articles. I wrote this three months ago when I was thinking about including ratings in my diskmag reviews. Let me just quote it here.
People tend to mistaken originality for quality. An article about somebody's world tour is probably original in a diskmag, but that does not mean it's a quality article. Quality means that a text is structured in an intelligent way, contains valueable information or is of high entertaining value, that the argumentation is logical, and enough research has been done on the topic to reduce the amount of wrong information. If somebody writes an article on diskmags and does not even know the exact name of a zine, the quality of this article is questionable, no matter how creative his ideas are.
Another thing is the language of an article. Actually you can't separate the level of English from the overall quality. But since most editors of scene diskmags are neither native English speakers nor do they have people who proofread their texts, I rate the language level indepently from the other aspects of quality. What does language level mean exactly? Correct grammar, correct vocabulary and correct spelling in this very order of importance. Especially well fitting vocabulary and sophisticated stylistic devices give bonus points.
What do I think about this today? Basically the same as then. This is my definition of quality. That is what I expect from an article. What has changed is that I have come to the conclusion diskmag ratings are pretty useless. Every diskmag has its emphasis on different aspects. Some focus on good articles in the sense of my definition while some focus on nonsense articles and some do not care about the articles at all but concentrate on design. What diskmag you prefer is a matter of taste. It depends on what you find important about a diskmag. And the number of diskmags released per month is low enough that you can read all diskmags yourself and make your own opinion of them anyway. You don't need a guide to do that who perhaps doesn't correspond to your taste anyway.
And to express my opinion on a mag, for its editors and all others of you who are interested in it, I don't need to give ratings. My opinion should be obvious when you read my review.