Rules & guidelines for reviewing

[Penzoline]

Updated guidelines will show as bold.

Please read and respect these rules/guidelines before posting new reviews.

1. Please use the appropriate release year before posting . If you're posting in a "multiple year" thread (ie. 1990-1994) then specify the release year in the thread title.

2. If youre an artist / label that wants to promote a new release please use the Promos group and not this one! ANY promos found in the reviews section will be moved and the one responsible for it warned.

3. This section is for psytrance reviews and psytrance related genres reviews. If you want to discuss the best releases this year, what albums should be considered classics, the reviews section layout, the quality of reviews, the latest Tool release, want to request a review, etc. etc., then please use the General or Off-Topic sections of the forum!

This is intended for psytrance music and its subgenres so no reviews of parties or other music genres. A bigger tolerance will be allowed for old stuff (stuff released before 96) since back then there wasn't an "official definition" of psytrance.

Also chillout/ambient genres are allowed as per usual.

4. Before posting a new review, check if a review of the album hasn't already been written. If its the case then write your review in the already existing thread and do NOT open a new one! Finding older topics should be easy, use the Search function: type part or the whole album title and dont forget to limit the search to the subforum of the year you want to post in.

If you're starting a new thread for a compilation then you should ALWAYS write the title under the format : "V/A - Name of comp". So that all the compilations will be easier to find. So do NOT start a topic with "VA" (no "/" between the V and the A) or "V/A :" (":" instead of "-"), "VA Name of Comp" (no "-" between the V/A and the name) etc. This is because how search works.

5. When opening a new thread put the name of the album and artist in the topic title and make sure it doesn't have any typos (or else the search function wont work). If you made a mistake, you can easily re-edit the title by using the Edit button at the end of your post, if that function is not working, then use the report function and report your topic to moderators asking to correct the typos.

(UPDATED 2021) 6. You should aim for the first post to be more informative. This doesn't mean an essay by any means, but giving people better understanding of the release should be the goal of the first post. People come here to read about the release and to get some information how it is and stuff like "this release is killagrgrhrhrg" won't tell them anything. After the first post you can post these mini-reviews and discussion if you so wish, but no derailing of a thread is allowed. If you feel so strongly about something that does not generally have much to do with the release, please make a thread in an appropriate section and stop posting in the review thread.

Here is a few well made reviews that should give the general idea on how an informative review could look!

https://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?/topic/54539-solar-fields-movements/
https://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?/topic/56930-fragletrollet-playground-of-spirit-shaman-film-records-media
https://www.psynews.org/forums/index.php?/topic/54395-crop-circles-tetrahedron
https://www.psynews.org/forums/topic/73083-martian-arts-giant-locusts-tip-records/

7. Personal grudges against artists or reviewers are not welcomed and will be deleted and might lead to moderation so try to use your brain before posting. If you have anything to say to the artist or another reviewer you can always PM (Private Message) or e-mail them.

8. When you open a thread please include Cover Art, Tracklist(preferably with track lengths), release date, label etc. relevant information regarding the album you are reviewing. Also it might be a good idea to include links to shops that are selling the release.

(UPDATED 2021) 9. For color or size codes please do not over-do with them and remember this forum has 2 skins so the color white won't show up on another very well and color black won't on the other. Also remember to clean up font formatting that may be carried over when copying your review from one site to another. For Image usage, it is allowed to post images or gifs in reviews but for images try to keep them relatively small in size so it won't make the review look cluttered and cause problems for readers.