> It's the same reason Rotten Tomatoes differentiates between a score and a top critics score. You can have a consumer reports score, and an amazon verified buyer score.
With sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, I almost always completely ignore the "top critics" reviews and go with user reviews. In almost 100% of cases where the scores for TV shows significantly diverge, I find the user score to be spot on.
I think the user scores on these sites aren't horribly out of whack with reality because there's not much to be gained by gaming them. I'm sure only a small minority of consumers go on such sites to pick what to watch next.
Im not even bringing in the user reviews. Im not saying the top critics are better. All I am saying is that rotten tomatoes differentiates between casual movie bloggers, and long standing paid journalists whos day job it is to review movies.
Lion king has 388 critics reviewing the movie, and only 46 are considered "top."
It's nice to be able to contextualize scores. For me the presence of users reviews doesnt negate the benefit of critical reviews. I enjoy being able to see discrepancy between groups.
I think it matters a lot more to know the reviewer than to understand what portion of critics like/dislike a thing, and I find that aggregators are accurate only when signaling the same scores that the majority already expects before they check the aggregator.
Every reviewer has a consistent voice and set of tastes, and it matters if a reviewer you generally agree with falls into the positive 40/300 on one movie or the negative 260/300 on another.
Maybe your favorite media reviewer Bob Obert can't stand historical drama movies or mockumentary series, or the Meater blog you read is consistently biased toward giving BBQ joints high scores. When you see Obert give a The Office episode a 4/5 that is mediocre by Generic Yahoo Contributor standards, or Meater feature a seitan food truck in Portland while being critical of an artisan brisket restaurant, you're going to value those reviews much more over the majority of others.
If we are talking more about product reviews, a certain percentage of my opinion will be based on build quality and glitches, which PARTIALLY can only be determined by a large portion of users. It is helpful to compare expert reviews (like rtings) with a crowd sourced aggregate to look for manufacturing, design, or supply chain issues that might not pop up in a single review.
With sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, I almost always completely ignore the "top critics" reviews and go with user reviews. In almost 100% of cases where the scores for TV shows significantly diverge, I find the user score to be spot on.
I think the user scores on these sites aren't horribly out of whack with reality because there's not much to be gained by gaming them. I'm sure only a small minority of consumers go on such sites to pick what to watch next.