Critics.gr

Critics.gr is a Greek evaluation and reviews aggregation website. It collects Reviews and ratings for products circulating in the Greek market. It is developed by nett O.E. (nett C.O), based in Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, Greece.

It is the first Greek website that collects Greek and international reviews from a wide variety of media, and present a small summary of each. Non-Greek reviews are translated in Greek language.

Products reviewed in Critics.gr belong to following categories: Movies (Cinema & DVDs), Technology (hardware, cell phones), Games (computer & video games), Music, Publications (books, magazines, blogs), Vehicles. The staff of Critics.gr don't review these products. Instead, the site works as a "Metamachine" that collects information from a large number of Greek and international sources and mass media. The moderators of Critics.gr commit a daily search in all available sources for new or upcoming products.

Each product page consists of 1) An extensive enumeration of many of the details of the product, such as related videos, links, categorization based by tags, categories, list of importers, a description or motto and additional information regarding the details of the product, 2) A list of reviews which consist of a (translated if needed) summary, the score (ranking) and metadata for that particular review (if they exist), 3) A list of user comments and votes similar to the reviews. Score ranks are converted to a "0 to 100" scale if a rank exists, or they are assigned a rank based on the assumptions of the staff of Critics.gr that adds the review. The final rank is calculated through a complex weight system which consists of many factors. Those factors are: 1) The weight of each review: Previews generally have a lower weight, so do reviews that don't have an explicit rank). 2) The weight of each reviewer: Well-known and established reviewers have greater weights than new or unknown reviewers. 3) The weight of all reviews versus the weight of user votes and user comments.

Since there's usually quite a large number of collected reviews and ratings for each products (taken from both Greek and international sources), Critics.gr developers claim that their ratings are as objective as possible. Critics.gr motto is "Objectivity through plurality" ("Αντικειμενικότητα μέσα από την Πολυφωνία", Greek), but its developers admit (in their "Faq") that all reviews and ratings are always subjective. In order to minimize subjectivity, a "coherence-factor" is calculated along with every product's average score. This factor represents the "agreement" or "disagreement" between all different reviewers. A coherence-factor close to 100% means there is a general agreement amongst the reviewers so the average rank can be trusted. Values close to 0% represent a general discordance of opinions between the reviewers, and as such, it's better to find out for yourself whether the rank of the product has any validity.

Critics.gr is different from websites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic in many aspects. One of them is that Critics.gr visitors can add by themselves every published review they find if it isn't listed in Critic's product pages, reducing chances of unfairness. Visitors can also add their own comments and ratings for each product, modifying a products final score.

External links

• Critics.gr
• Computer Active Magazine article
• Greek Web Watch article
• Toplinks.gr article