About TJJ Scores

A: To put it simply, a TJJ SCORE is a weighted average of reviews from TJJ critics who attend events. For those of you who enjoy math, read further.

Our staffers will go to events and assign a score on a 0-10 point scale in various categories that we rate for making a great event. These individual critic scores are then averaged together to come up with an overall score.

This overall score, or TJJ SCORE, is a weighted average of the individual critic scores. Why a weighted average? We noticed that some critics consistently write better (more detailed, more insightful, more articulate) reviews than others. In addition, some critics typically have more prestige and weight in the industry than others. To reflect these factors, we have assigned weights to each publication, thus making some publications count more in the TJJ SCORE calculations than others.

In addition, all of the weighted averages are normalized before generating the TJJ SCORE. To put it another way that should be familiar to anyone who has taken an exam in high school or college, all of our events are graded on a curve. Thus the TJJ SCORE may be higher or lower than the true weighted average of the individual reviews, thanks to this normalization calculation. Normalization causes the scores to be spread out over a wider range, instead of being clumped together. Generally, higher scores are pushed higher, and lower scores are pushed lower. Unlike in high school, this is a good thing, since it provides more of a distinction between scores and allows you to better compare scores across events.

The resulting TJJ SCORE, then, is a good indication of how a particular event was reviewed. The better the reviews, the higher the score will be; the worse the reviews, the lower the score will be. Ideally, if reviews are completely divided between good and bad, the TJJ SCORE should be close to 50.

TJJ SCORES range from 0-100, with higher scores indicating better overall reviews, and lower scores indicating less favorable reviews from critics. Various ranges of TJJ SCORES are also identified by different colors, so you can tell at a glance how critics felt: generally, green scores indicate favorable reviews, yellow scores denote mixed reviews, and red scores are used for unfavorable reviews.

Q: What's with these green, yellow, and red colors?

A. Assuming you are looking at our website and not at your Christmas tree, it's fairly simple: "good" TJJ SCORES are coded in green; "average" TJJ SCORES are yellow, and "bad" TJJ SCORES are red. If the numbers are too complicated to read, you can simply look at the pretty colors to tell what the reviews said.

Here's how the scores break down:

Q: Are user votes included in the TJJ SCORE calculations?

A: No. While we solicit votes from our site, we do not include those votes in the TJJ SCORE. The TJJ SCORE is a weighted average of the published critic reviews contained in the chart on that page, and thus does not include any votes or comments from our users. However, you may see the average user vote by glancing at the user comments section.

Q: Last week, [Event XYZ] had a TJJ SCORE of 67, but now it says 75. What's up with that? Am I hallucinating?

A: First of all, we're happy that you are visiting our site so frequently. And no, you're not hallucinating (unless you can see that talking donkey in the corner). TJJ SCORES can change, and in fact can do so frequently. The main culprit behind these changing scores is new reviews.

In a perfect world, all of our publications would have a review prior to its release. However, in our world, this is not the case, and reviews trickle in over a period of time. Thus as we continue to add reviews over time for a particular item, the item's TJJ SCORE can fluctuate. Since the TJJ SCORE is basically an average, it will fluctuate more when a new review is added if there aren't a lot of reviews to begin with, and won't change too much if there already are a lot of reviews.

Q: Can you tell me how each of the different critics are weighted in your formula?

A: Absolutely not.

Q: Why should I trust your scores? Isn't it all a scam to make money?

A: First of all, if you've been reading the papers lately you'd realize that NOBODY is making money on the Internet. (Although, frankly, we'd like to... and if you'd like to help, contact us about advertising on our site or licensing our content.) We are not affiliated with any Promoter, studio, record company, or game company; nor do we directly sell any of the products reviewed on our site. Our goal is to provide completely impartial information you find on our site, so that you may make an informed decision when deciding where to go, hear, or enjoy. The way we see it, if we weren't completely impartial, you wouldn't come back to the site. So we have made objectivity our top priority.