Metacritic to crack down on phoney user ratings

Yes joystiq, this has nothing at all to do with games on both systems being downvoted by retarded fanboys. Only rabid ps3fanboys do this sort of thing. and before someone points it out, I know they didn't say that, but it's pretty much implied in the article.

Played it last night,
definitely worth 9/10

EBGames stinks and all, but at least they disabled rating reviews (you can still write about the game) for games that haven't been released yet. This is a tech issue and shouldn't exist. Just flag it based on its release date, for starters. You can deal with the quality of reviews afterwards.

Omg this flame war is bigger than I thought. Go check out the out the reviews on ign. Who knows how big this will get. This is so fun to watch. userhttp://rr.xbox360.ign.com/rrobj/xbox360/object/14232680/
http://rr.ps3.ign.com/rrobj/ps3/object/14211237/

Maybe they need to start employing an electoral college-type system, where issues like this can be pre-culled before going into an official rating submission.

...Or maybe Gears 2 isnt as good as the hype machine says it is? Y'know, like Halo and GTA4?

Not sure WHAT they can do to stop idiot fanboys from giving bad scores to games on systems they dislike. Upgraded registration process or not, the true fanboys will go out of their way to bomb a rival console's games. Sad but true.

Gears of War the first, was not that great, and I don't really expect the second one to be better. Most of these 3.5/10's are probably just massive down-voting, but GoW1 deserves 6-8/10 in my book. The game was pretty repetitive and monotonous; it wasn't a bad shooter, but it pretty much consisted of: move forward, cover, shoot, move forward... God forbid you throw in a puzzle or two.

"I wonder how they are going to verify user ratings."

Good question. One way to discourage random losers is to make it harder to register and post. Looks like they're going to do that. Another way is statistical analysis. For example, blocks of score numbers that are way off the normal distribution can be slashed away. Standard deviation is your friend here. Of course, if most ratings come from the losers, a human hand will be required to define the expected normal distribution. That will bring charges of bias, but I don't care. That's what I would do in a heartbeat.

"metacritic delays trolling a bit"

Why do people care about User Ratings? It's simply a way for Metacritic/IGN/etc. to add user interaction with their website.

Thank you for your comments. I will respond to each one.

@shibathedog:
Thank you, I hope someone can pick up on this idea and actually put it into use. Also, I'm a dude :)

@Jimiisama:
I drive a 2005 Pontiac Vibe five-speed ;)

@xGeneralDEATHx:
I apologize for my confusing statements from before. The user would piss into a cup, then the cup would be snapped/screwed into a designated area on the peripheral. The device would be the size of a NAS unit and would essentially be a mini-laboratory. The unit would lock the computer down during the testing process, analyze the sample after locking itself down, process the result, and finally deliver the outcome. A positive outcome will present the user with the computer unlocked and ready to use, whereas a negative outcome will keep the computer locked. The prepubescent fuckwad will be told to GTFO and read a book.

I can't wait to hear more of your ideas.